S.E.T.

LITERATURE OF THE DAY.

“The Russian Revolt:  its Causes, Condition, and Prospects.” 
  By Edmund Noble. 
  Boston:  Houghton, Mifflin & Co.

The internal condition of Russia, though a matter of more than speculative interest to its immediate neighbors, is not likely to become what that of France has so often been,—­a European question.  The institutions of other states will not be endangered by revolutionary proceedings in the dominions of the Czar, nor will any oppression exercised over his subjects be thought to justify foreign intervention.  Even Polish insurrections never led to any more active measures on the part of the Western powers than delusive expressions of sympathy and equally vain remonstrances.  In these days, not Warsaw, but St. Petersburg, is the centre of disaffection, and the ramifications extend inland, their action stimulated, it may be, to some extent from external sources, but incapable of sending back any impulse in return.  Nihilism, being based on the absence, real or supposed, of any political institutions worth preserving in Russia, cannot spread to the discontented populations of other countries.  Even German socialism cannot borrow weapons or resources from a nation which has no large proletariat and whose industries are still in their infancy.  In the nature of its government, the character of its people, and the problems it is called upon to solve, Russia stands, as she has always stood, alone, neither furnishing examples to other nations nor able, apparently, to copy those which other nations have set.  The great peculiarity of the revolutionary movement is not simply that it does not proceed from the mass of the people,—­which is a common case enough,—­but that it runs counter to their instincts and their needs and rouses not their sympathy but their aversion.  The peasants, who constitute four-fifths of the population, have no motive for seeking to overturn the government.  Their material condition, since the abolition of serfdom, is superior to that of the Italian peasantry, who enjoy the fullest political rights.  As members of the village communities, they hold possession and will ultimately obtain absolute ownership of more than half the soil of the country, excluding the domains of the state.  In the same capacity they exercise a degree of local autonomy greater than that which is vested in the communes of France.  They are separated from the other classes by differences of education, of habits, and of interests, while the autocracy that rules supreme over all is regarded by them as the protecting power that is to redress their grievances and fulfil all their aspirations.  The discontent which has bred so many conspiracies, and which aims at nothing less than the subversion of the monarchy, is confined to a portion of the educated classes, and proceeds from causes that affect only those classes.  Among them alone is there any