by Russian intervention, in 1733.  In 1741 Maria Theresa relied on Russia, and in 1746 Russia and the Empress of Germany formed a defensive alliance.  The Cotillon Coalition of the Seven Years’ War, formed for the destruction of Frederic II., and the parties to which were the Czarina Elizabeth, Maria Theresa, and Madame de Pompadour,—­a drunkard, a prude, and a harlot,—­brought Russia famously forward in Europe.  In the Eighty-Seventh Letter of Goldsmith’s Citizen of the World, published a century ago, are some very just and discriminating remarks on “the folly of the Western parts of Europe in employing the Russians to fight their battles,” which show that their author was far in advance of his time, and that he foresaw the growth of Russia in importance before she had seized upon Poland.  In Catharine II.’s time, the Russian Empire was the object of much adulation from Western envoys, and the English sought to obtain the assistance of the barbarians in the American War, but with not such success as they desired, though they managed to keep our envoy from the court, and to make Russia unfriendly to us.  Our diplomatic relations with Russia did not begin until a generation after the Declaration of Independence.]

Thus the United States and Russia began their careers at the same time, as nations destined to have influence in the ordering of Western life.  They were then, as they are now, very unlike to each other.  In one respect only was there any resemblance between them:  In this country there were some myriads of slaves, and in Russia there were many millions of serfs.  Now who, of all the sagacious, far-sighted men then living, could have ventured to predict that at the end of one hundred years the American nation that was so soon to be should be engaged in a civil contest having for its object, on the part of those who began it, the perpetuation and extension of slavery, while Russia should be threatened with such a contest because her government, an autocracy, had abolished serfdom?  Many years earlier, Berkeley had predicted that Time’s last and noblest offspring would be the nation that was growing up in North America; and when he died, in 1753, he would not have admitted that slavery was an institution which his favorite land could hug to its bosom, or that America would be less benevolent than that semi-barbarous empire which was rising in the East,—­an empire, to use his own thought, which Europe was breeding in her decay.  Franklin was then at the height of his fame as a philosopher, and his merits as a statesman were beginning to be acknowledged; but, wise as he was, he would have smiled, had there been a prophet capable of telling him the exact truth as to the future of America.  Probably there was not a person then on earth who could have supposed that that would be which was written in the Book of Fate.  That freedom should come to a people from a despot’s throne was almost as hard to understand as that the