victory to a grand Russian army, like that laurelless triumph which was then won in Hungary, when the victors were nothing but the bloodhounds and gallows-feeders of the House of Austria; but of military glory the present Russians could hope to have no more.  To regain the place they had held, it was necessary that they should be made personally free.  That they might be the better prepared to enslave others, they were themselves to be converted into men.  The freedom of the individuals might be the means of supplying soldiers who should equal the fanatics who followed Suvaroff, or the patriots who followed Kutusoff, or the avengers who followed the first Alexander to Paris.  The experiment, at all events, was worth trying; and the Czar is trying it on a scale that most impressively affects both the mind and the imagination of mankind, who may learn that his works are destined greatly to bear upon their interests.

In war, it is not only men that are wanted, and in large numbers, but money, and in large sums.  Always of importance to the military monarch, money is now the first thing that he must think of and provide, or his operations will be checked effectually.  War is a luxury that no poor nation or poor king can now long enjoy.  It is reserved for wealthy nations, and for sovereigns who may possess the riches of Solomon without being endowed with his wisdom.  Having impressed so many agents into its service, and subdued science itself to the condition of a bondman, war consumes gold almost as rapidly as the searches and labors of millions can produce it.  The only sure, enduring source of wealth is industry,—­industry as enlightened in its modes and processes as imperfect man will allow to exist.  Russia is an empire that abounds with the means of wealth, rather than with wealth itself.  It is a country, or collection of countries, of which almost anything in the way of riches may be predicated, should intelligent labor be directed to the development of its immense and various resources.  Russian sovereigns have frequently sought to do something for the people; but Alexander II., a wiser man than any of his predecessors, is willing that the people should do something for themselves, because he knows that all that they shall gain, each man for himself, will be so much added to the common stock of the empire.  The many must become wealthy, in order that one, the head of all, may become strong.  Time and again has Russia found her armies paralyzed and her victories barren because she was moneyless; and but for the gold of foreign nations she must have halted in her course, and never have become a European power.  With a nation of freemen all this may be, and most probably it will be, changed,—­though it is not so certain that the change will be attended with exactly that order of results which the Czar may have arranged in his own mind.  The mightiest of monarchs are not exempt from the rule, that, while man proposes, it is God who disposes the things of this world.  Not one of those reforming kings who broke down the power of the great nobles of Western Europe, and so created absolute monarchies, appears to have had any just conception of the business in which he was engaged; but all were instruments in the hands of that mighty Power which overrules the ambition of individuals so that it shall promote the welfare of the world.