29 JANUARY 1870, Page 3

Alexander Herzen, who was, not many years ago, a great

revo- lutionary power in Russia, through the influence wielded by his secretly circulated Russian paper the Kolokol (published in Pater- noster Row), has passed away. The Pall Mall Gazette of last Monday, which contained a very interesting notice of him, truly remarked that Alexander Herzen, aristocrat by blood and Red by political creed, had as little in common with an English Radical as two men who can manage to squeeze themselves under one and the same general name, can manage to have. Herzen was as great a conspirator as Garibaldi or greater, and it is mentioned, we believe in one of Herzen's own books, that Garibaldi once proposed to him to man a couple of ships-of-war, and cruise about the world as a general republican propaganda, adopting for the nonce the flag of any republic in need of assistance. As acute as he was Red, Herzen saved his Russian property by a very ingenious device, which he himself has recounted. Finding Russia too hot for him, and knowing what was coming, he went and mortgaged his estate,—we think he says for /20,000,—to the great Rothschild firm. Soon after, he received the decree of confiscation, and meeting Rothschild in the street, remarked blandly on the unfortunate fate of the security which he had given for the mort- gage. Of course Messrs. Rothschild were incensed, and were powerful enough to rescue the property from the Czar's hands, and of course M. Herzen knew that it would be so.