The publication of the article headed "The Tsar" in the
Quarterly for July is a most serious incident. The Quarterly is the gravest, and one of the ablest, of all English periodicals ; it is supposed to represent, and often does represent, intellectual Conservatism. Yet it publishes a contribution from "a Russian official of high rank " which for cold, con- centrated venom directed against the Czar personally has but few precedents in our literature. It is as bitter as the "Letters of Junius." The Czar is represented as a feeble and superstitious ruler, intoxicated with a sense of his own power and mission, who disregards the advice of his Ministers, allows nothing to be done without his personal intervention, and is directly responsible for errors like the war with Japan, the persecution of the Jews, the plunder of the Armenian Church, and the attempt of the Imperial family to extract an enormous fortune out of a timber monopoly on the Yalu. He is even accused of sanctioning cruelties in individual cases, and of overriding the remonstrances of a Ministry, for once united, in order to strip the Armenian Church of its wealth. The Czar is represented as being entirely in the hands of obscure flatterers and spiritualist dreamers, the only two strong men who influence him being the Chief of the Holy Synod, M. Pobiedonostzeff, who is described as a Torquzinada, and M. de Plehve, who believes only in violent repression. No such indictment of a Sovereign has ever been issued in our time, nor one, we are bound to add, so penetrated, and probably vitiated, by personal hatred and contempt.
