The Emperor Nicholas began his remarkable reign with the desire strong in his mind to emancipate the serfs,—­or, if that be too sweeping an expression, so to improve their condition as to render their emancipation by his successors a comparatively easy proceeding.  Much of his legislation shows this, and that he was aware that the time must come when the serfs could no longer be deprived of their freedom.  Such was the effect of his conduct, however, that all that he did in behalf of the serfs was attributed to a desire on his part to create ill-feeling between the nobility and the peasants.  Then he was so thoroughly arbitrary in his disposition, that he often neutralized the good he did by his manner of doing it.  But that which mainly prevented him from doing much for his people was his determination to maintain the position which Russia had acquired in Europe, and to maintain it, too, in the interest of despotism, “pure and simple.”  A succession of events caused the Czar’s attention to be drawn to foreign affairs.  The French Revolution of 1830, the Polish Revolution of the same year, the troubles in Germany, the Reform contest in England, the change in the order of the Spanish succession, the outbreaks in Italy,—­these things, and others of a similar character, all of which were protests against that European system which Russia had established and still favored, compelled Nicholas to look abroad, and to neglect, measurably, domestic government.  At a later period, he was one of the parties to that combination of great powers which threatened France with a renewal of those invasions from which she had suffered so much in 1814 and 1815.  Turkey was the source of perpetual trouble to the Czar; and his eyes were frequently drawn to India, where one of his envoys half threatened an English minister that the troops of their two countries might meet, and was curtly answered by the minister that he cared not how soon the interview should begin.  The extinction of Cracow served to show how close was the watch which the Czar kept upon the West, and that he was ready to crush even the smallest of those countries in which the spirit of liberty should show itself.  Had San Marino lain within his reach, he would have been induced neither by its weakness nor its age to spare it.  The struggle with the Circassians was long, vexatious, and costly.  Finally, the Revolutions of 1848, leading, as they did, to the invasion of Hungary, in the first place, and then to the war with the Western Powers, operated to prejudice the Imperial mind against every form of freedom, and to provide too much occupation for the Emperor and his ministers to permit them to labor with care and effect in behalf of the oppressed serfs at home.  It would have been a strange spectacle, had the man who was trampling down the Hungarians employed his leisure in raising his own serfs from the dust.