The greatest danger to the emancipation project proceeds from the side of foreign countries.  As we have seen, both Alexander I. and Nicholas were led away from the pursuit of a policy that might long since have converted the Russian serfs into a Russian people, through their desire to interfere in the affairs of other nations.  They could not reform Russia and crush reformers elsewhere.  That they might decide grand contests in which Russia had no immediate interest, it was necessary that Russians should remain enslaved.  What was it to Russia whether Bourbons or Bonapartes should reign over France?  If she had an interest in the question, it was rather favorable to the Bonapartes, whom she overthrew, than to the Bourbons, whom she set up in order that the French might again overthrow them.  The old Bourbons were never friendly to Russia, and would gladly have headed a coalition to drive her back to her forests; and the first Bonaparte was very desirous of being on good terms with the Northern Colossus, as if he were dimly forewarned of his coming fate at its hands.  Led away from the true path, Alexander I. squandered on foreign affairs the time, the industry, and the money that should have been devoted to the prosecution of those internal reforms that were necessary to convert his subjects into men.  Nicholas inherited from his unwise brother that policy which he so vehemently supported, and which caused him to waste on France and Austria the attention and the energy which, as a conscientious sovereign, he was bound to bestow upon Russia.  The danger now is that Alexander II. will walk in the same wrong path that was found to lead only to destruction by his uncle and his father.  The world was never so unsettled as it is now, and wars of the most extensive character threaten every country that is competent to put an army into the field.  The Italian question is yet to be solved, and its solution concerns Russia, which is strongly interested in every movement that threatens to break up the Austrian Empire, or that promises to create in the Kingdom of Italy a new Mediterranean nation.  The Schleswig-Holstein question is yet to be settled, and Russia has an immediate interest in its settlement, as Denmark, she expects, will one day be her own.  The Eastern question is as unanswerable as ever it has been, and it is but a few weeks since the belief was common that Russia and France were to unite for the purpose of settling it, which could have meant nothing less than the partition of the Turkish Empire,—­the union of one of the “sick man’s” old protectors with his enemy, for the perfect plundering of his possessions.  This arrangement, had it been completed, would have led to a war between France and Russia, on the one side, and England and Austria on the other, while half a dozen lesser nations would have been drawn into the conflict.  But if an alliance for any such purpose was ever thought of by the Autocrat and the Stratocrat, it is supposed that it fell through in consequence