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In a word, the Emperor pledges himself to tolerance, and

to an improvement of the condition of the peasantry, both social and economic, and also to give help to the rural clergy and the rural nobility. It is impossible not to admire the Emperor's efforts to do right, though we cannot but fear that the Atlantean weight of the great bureaucratic machine will render his reforms, especially as regards tolerance, of no avail. The old saying, indeed, may be altered to run that there is no sight in the world so pathetic as that of a well-meaning ruler struggling with obscurantism and officialism. The fact, however, that M. de Witte is with the Emperor is of good Omen. He is a strong man and an able man, and he holds the purse-strings, and that is much in any State, and very much in Russia.

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