of revolt spread to Belgium and to Italy, and then leaped, as such epidemics will, across the intervening space to Russian Poland.  The surface calm in that unhappy state ruled by the Grand Duke Constantine swiftly vanished and revealed an entire people waiting for the day when, at any cost, they might make one more stand for freedom.  The plan was a desperate one.  It was to assassinate Constantine, who had relinquished a throne rather than leave them; to induce Lithuania, their old ally, to join them; and to create an independent Polish state which would bar the Russians from entering Europe.

In 1831 the brief struggle was ended, and Europe had received the historic announcement, “Order reigns at Warsaw.”  Not only Warsaw, but Poland, was at the feet of the Emperor.  Confiscations, imprisonments, and banishments to Siberia were the least terrible of the punishments.  Every germ of a Polish nationality was destroyed—­the army and the Diet effaced, Russian systems of taxes, justice, and coinage, and the metric system of weights and measures used in Russia were introduced,—­the Julian Calendar superseded the one adopted all over the world—­the University of Warsaw was carried to Moscow, and the Polish language was prohibited to be taught in the schools.  Indemnity and pardon were offered to those who abjured the Roman Catholic faith, and many were received into the bosom of the National Orthodox Church; those refusing this offer of clemency being subjected to great cruelties.  Poland was no more.  Polish exiles were scattered all over Europe.  In France, Hungary, Italy, wherever there were lovers of freedom, there were thousands of these emigrants without a country, living illustrations of what an unrestrained despotism might do, and everywhere intensifying the desires of patriots to achieve political freedom in their own lands.

Nicholas, as the chief representative of conservatism in Europe, looked upon France with especial aversion.  Paris was the center of these pernicious movements which periodically shook Europe to its foundations.  It had overthrown his ally Charles X., and had been the direct cause of the insurrection in Poland which had cost him thousands of rubles and lives; and now nowhere else was such sympathetic welcome given to the Polish refugees, thousands of whom were in the French army.  His relations with Louis Philippe became strained, and he was looking about for an opportunity to manifest his ill will.  In the meantime he addressed himself to what he considered the reforms in his own empire.  He was going to establish a sort of political quarantine to keep out European influences.  It was forbidden to send young men to Western universities—­the term of absence in foreign countries was limited to five years for nobles, three for Russian subjects.  The Russian language, literature, and history were to be given prominence over all studies in the schools.  German free-thought was especially disliked by him.  His instincts were not mistaken, for what the Encyclopedists had been to the Revolution of 1789, the new school of thought in Germany would be to that of 1848.  So from his point of view he was wise in excluding philosophy from the universities and permitting it to be taught only by ecclesiastics.