No one, outside Russia at least, appears to have any
definite idea of the character of the Cesarewitch. He has been kept aloof from politics, like most Heirs-Apparent, and is not well known oven to politicians within the inner ring of diplomacy. According to most accounts, he is a much weaker replica of his father ; but we distrust all gossip about heredi- tary Princes, who almost invariably conceal rigidly part of their dispositions. The new responsibility, too, sometimes changes them, as it changed Frederick the Great. The worst circumstances in the position of the new Czar will be that he will be a new mark for Nihilist attacks, without his father's defence of absolute seclusion ; and that he has no great Minister in whom, at first, he can trust implicitly. M. ee Giers is not Chancellor of the Empire, and, it is said, is too completely the Czar's servant, and no other Minister, except M. Pobiedonostzeff, has made any impression abroad. There is, however, a large group of permanent and able officials round every Czar, and the Cesarewitch, who is twenty-six, will hardly act for a time on his own inspiration alone. It would seem that his marriage is postponed, as is natural under such melancholy circumstances, to an indefinite date.
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