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The closing decade of the reign of Nicholas II was marked by an extraordinary increase of Prussian influence in his court, an achievement in which the Kaiser was greatly assisted by the Czarina, who was, it will be remembered, a German princess.
But the Queen's mind had since recurred to the matter, and as in these later years of her reign one of her constant desires was to hinder James from making too sure of the succession, she was evidently willing to play his sister off against him.
The inhabitants of the capital blamed the impetuosity of the youths; to say the least of it, if it were not disloyal, it was ungallant; and what was worse, they showed no regard for the welfare of the citizens, over whom they each aspired to reign as sovereign, for they must be aware that now was the time that the citizens, from such an influx of aspirants, were reaping a golden harvest.
She was the godmother of all orphan girls and provided their dowers when they were married, and it is said that during her reign she procured good husbands for thousands of friendless girls who otherwise must have spent their lives in slavery.
The recollection of the reign of Nicholas I., with its stern military regime, and minute, pedantic formalism, makes many Russians condemn in no measured terms the administration under which they live, and most Englishmen will feel inclined to endorse this condemnation.
Except during Clare Dagonet's brief reign the depths in him had not been stirred; but in taking what each sentimental episode had to give he had preserved, through all his minor adventures, his faith in the great adventure to come.
Controversy will soon be at an end; there will be no need to dispute whether any part be of the eleventh or of the twelfth century; both alike are making room for a spruce imitation of the nineteenth. We shall no longer see the dwelling-place either of Robert the Devil or of Henry Fitz-Empress; in its stead we shall trace the last masterpiece of the reign of Napoleon the Third.
Of the civil war which followed in the reign of Charles I, and of the triumph of English freedom, it is unnecessary to write here. The blasphemy of a man's divine right to rule his fellow-men was ended. Modern England began with the charge of Cromwell's brigade of Puritans at Naseby. Religiously the age was one of even greater ferment than that which marked the beginning of the Reformation.
After having therefore seriously reflected thereon, I declare, without constraint, and in the most solemn manner, to the Russian empire and to the whole universe, that I for ever renounce the government of the said empire, never desiring hereafter to reign therein, either as an absolute sovereign, or under any other form of government; never wishing to aspire thereto, or to use any means, of any sort, for that purpose.
There is one wise act to record in the reign of Paul although it was probably prompted not by a desire to benefit the future so much as to reverse the past. Peter the Great, probably on account of his perverse son Alexis, had set aside the principle of primogeniture; a principle not Slavonic, but established by the Muscovite Princes.
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