BLACKWOOD’S EDINBURGH MAGAZINE.
CONTENTS.
| The Russian Empire | 129 |
| Autobiography of a German Headsman | 148 |
| Edinburgh after Flodden | 165 |
| Subjects for Pictures | 176 |
| Jerusalem | 192 |
| My English Acquaintance | 194 |
| Our West Indian Colonies | 219 |
| Now and Then | 239 |
THE RUSSIAN EMPIRE.
(Secret History of the Court and Government of Russia, under the EmperorsAlexander and Nicholas. By H. SCHNITZLER. Two vols. Bentley: London.)
Russia is the most extraordinarycountry on the globe, in the four mostimportant particulars of empire,—itshistory, its extent, its population,and its power.
It has for Europe another interest,—theinterest of alarm, the evidence ofan ambition which has existed for ahundred and fifty years, and hasnever paused; an increase of territorywhich has never suffered theslightest casualty of fortune; themost complete security against theretaliation of European war; and agovernment at once despotic andpopular; exhibiting the most boundlessauthority in the sovereign, andthe most boundless submission in thepeople; a mixture of habitual obedience,and divine homage: the reverenceto a monarch, with almost theprostration to a divinity.
Its history has another superbanomaly: Russia gives the most memorableinstance in human annals, ofthe powers which lie within the mindof individual man. Peter the Greatwas not the restorer, or the reformerof Russia; he was its moral creator.He found it, not as Augustus foundRome, according to the famous adage,“brick, and left it marble:” he foundit a living swamp, and left it coveredwith the fertility of laws, energy, andknowledge: he found it Asiatic, andleft it European: he removed it asfar from Scythia, as if he had placedthe diameter of the globe between:he found it not brick, but mire, andhe transformed a region of h