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PRINCE ADAM CZARTORYSKI.* PRINCE ADAM CZARTORYSKI, a venerable, if not specially picturesque figure in Polish history, lived to the age of ninety- one, and spent more than two-thirds of that long period in strenuous efforts to restore the Kingdom of Poland, which was first partitioned in 1772, when he was two years old. It was a career as rare as it was pathetic, and presents a striking example of the good man struggling with adversity, yet never wholly giving up his hope of a restoration, not even when Alexander II. had addressed to the Polish nobles his famous phrase,—" Point de reveries ! tout ce que mon pre a fait est hien fait." His life was one long series of disappointments, stretching through the great wars, the troubled years of the long peace, the revolution of 18.31, doomed from the outset to failure, and extending to the reign of Napoleon III. He saw every illusion vanish into thin air, and he had many illusions ; yet to the very last such was his abiding faith, that the least sparkle of the old spirit in Poland filled him afresh with fervent rejoicings Happily for him, he did not live to see how tragically the latest insurrection ended. His first illusion was that Alexander I. would or might call up the Kingdom from the grave and become its King; his last, that the Poles of 1861 might triumph by passive resistance, by means of their "virtue and goodness," which he called "the indomitable forces of Poland." In them he believed to the end; but, looking to the hard facts, while we can admire his steadfastness and sympathise with his elevated sentiments, we cannot affect to be surprised at his failure, seeing that his faith and his hopes rested on no solid foundation. Nevertheless, they were their own reward, and lighted up his last hours.
Unfortunately, Prince Adam did not carry his autobiography to a later date than that of the Battle of Austerlitz, so that we have not from his own pen any regular record of his subsequent life. For the general reader, however, if not for the historical student, the fragment will surely be most interesting because it is full of personal details, bringing before us pictures of the semi-barbaric Courts of Catherine, Paul, and Alexander I. The Czartoryski family having taken part in the great insur- rection "when Kosciuszko fell," their estates were confiscated. They took refuge in Vienna, and the Emperor Francis begged Catherine to restore them. She insisted that Prince Adam and his brother should enter the Russian service, and at a family council it was determined that this sacrifice should be made. Accordingly, the young men went because they could not "condemn their parents to want ;" after long waiting, they succeeded in mollifying the old Empress by donning Russian uniforms, and the confiscation was rescinded. That is why we have the strange spectacle of a man whose education had been "Polish and Republican "—he had studied public life under hfirabeau and Fox—serving the Autocrat of all the Russias, even becoming his Minister for Foreign Affairs, and yet throughout striving to revive at least the qualified in- dependence of Poland. It is the dramatic contrast between the facts of his life and the aims of Prince Adam which gives so much interest to the Memoirs. He found Alexander, pro- fessedly, as hostile as himself to the policy of partition, or rather, to the partition and not to the policy ; he found him to be a "Liberal," and the young men formed a friendship which lasted a long time and stood very severe strains. The story of their intercourse, as related in the autobiography, is essential to the right understanding of Alexander's character, and a key to the somewhat capricious part he played in the great European drama. He was probably sincere in his professions of liberalism, from what we may call the literary stand-point where he had been placed by La Ilarpe ; but he was much more sincere in his character as Czar, the attributes of which he derived from his birth, and the hard education of facts which was more potent than that supplied by the Swiss teacher. The real puzzle is how a man of Prince Adam's evident intelligence could ever have come to believe that a Czar would or even might be able to set up a Poland having any approximate independence. The thing was not in the order of Nature, and we can only account for the Prince' hopes and long-suffering by his profound trust in moral • Memoirs of Prince Adam Czartoryski, and his Correspondence with Alexander L.; with Documents relative to the Prince's Negotiations with Pitt, Fox, and Brougham, and an Account of his Conversations with Lord Palmerston and other English Statesmen in London in 1832. Edited by Adam Gielgud, 2 vols. London : Remington and Co. principles or his conviction that the experiment, whether it succeeded or not, was well worth the trial. Had he been successful, would the result have been better for Europe ? What he wanted to see was the old Poland restored to a species of autonomy, and united for ever to the Crown of Russia. Separation, he said, would be only apparent. "The Crown of Poland would be irrevocably attached to the Throne of Russia; and the Empire would at the same time gain the remainder of Poland. Imperious circumstances "—and the passage is wcrth noting—" have forced Russia to commit the great political fault of allowing Poland to be partitioned instead of entirely possessing it. This fault has, to a great extent, been the cause of the 'misfortunes which have since overwhelmed Europe ; should it not be made good P" Imagine Russia commanding the resources of the whole country from the mouths of the Danube to the mouths of the Vistula, and consider what would be the lot of "Europe,"—that is, the lot of the countries which were not Slav ! Czartoryski "firmly believed," as Foreign Minister, that he could "make use of the Russian craving for glory and supremacy for the benefit of mankind." The more than Quixotic idea is expressed in another sentence. "I would have wished Alexander to become," he says, "a sort of arbiter of peace for the civilised world, to be the protector of the weak and the oppressed, and that his reign should inaugurate a new era of justice and right in European politics." Certainly Russia never before or since had a Foreign Minister of that stamp. He soon found, of course, that he stood alone in his dream- land. "So long as the only matter in question was the supremacy of Russia in Europe and the increase of her power, those who listened to me were on my side;" when he went beyond that, his audience "grew cold and constrained." No wonder ; but rebuffs did not dull the ardour of Prince Adam.
He always lived in a sort of ideal world, and was in no political sense a business man He wanted, somehow, an independent Poland; but he seems to have desired quite as much such a rearrangement of the rest of Europe, including Constan- tinople, as would have made the Slav Empire supreme.
It must not, however, be supposed that the whole of the two volumes is taken up with politics. Far from it. The earlier pages of the autobiography are alive with sketches of places and persons and manners. The way in which the people of all ranks regarded Catherine is likened to that of "the pagans who respected the crimes and the obscenities of the gods of Olympua and the Caesars of Rome." They were not in the least shocked by her murders and other crimes. The young Paul was even.
then feared, but his mother was admired for holding him in a state of dependence, "far from a throne which of right belonged to him." No one ever joked at her expense. "If her name were mentioned, all men's faces at once put on an air of seriousness and submission." After much waiting, the two brothers saw and were presented to Catherine as she came from chapel :— " She was well advanced in years, but still fresh, rather short than tall, and very stout. Her gait, her demeanour, and the whole of her person were marked by dignity and grace. None of her movements were quick ; all in her was grave and noble ; but she was like a mountain stream, which carries everything with it in its irresistible current. Her face, already wrinkled, but full of expression, showed haughtiness and the spirit of domination. On her lips was a perpetual smile, but to those who remembered her actions, this studied calm hid the most violent passions and an inexorable will. In coming towards us her face assumed a gentler expression, and with that sweet look which has been so much praised, she said : 'Your age reminds me of that of your father when I saw him for the first time. I hope this country suits you."
He saw her afterwards frequently, and once "in a morning negligg, and Zuboff [the reigning favourite] coming familiarly, out of her room in a pelisse and kid boots,—which did not dis- concert either the Empress, her favourite, or the bystanders."
He saw her a little later, dead, and Paul, afraid to use his. power, "doubting whether his mother would not recover after all." The description of Plato Zuboff and his brothers, and especially of the leths of the former, are lively reading, but do not tend to elevate one's ideas of humanity. Crowds of all ranks waited upon him to assist at his toilet. "When the folding-doors were opened, Zuboff slowly entered the room in a dressing-gown, with scarcely any underclothing, and after slightly nodding to the suitors and courtiers, who stood respect- fully in a circle, began his toilet." No one sat, except Field- Marshal Soltykoff. It is a humiliating business from end to end.
A certain Bezborodko, was "the only person of distinction at Court who did not flatter the Zuboffs," and seems to have been the only Minister with ability as well as moral courage. Paul figures in these seriously piquant pages as the eccentric person or madman that he was ; but Prince Adam thinks that he wished to be just and do what was right. "It often happened," he says, that after Paul "had dismissed some one whom he had badly treated, he called him back, embraced him, almost asked his pardon, confessed that he was wrong, that he had unjustly suspected him, and gave him presents to make up for his past severities. He inspired all the officials of his Empire with the terrors which he often felt himself, and this universal fear produced salutary effects." But it also led to his murder, because no one felt himself safe from the caprices of a fantastic monarch who did not always call back the persons whom he punished. And he likewise made himself ridiculous. He forbade round hats ; they were "a sign of liberalism ;" and as the wearers were chased and beaten, Lord Whitworth, in order to secure his safety in the streets, was obliged to have made for him "a hat of a peculiar shape." When Paul learned that the French officers wore large whiskers, he "at once ordered every man at Court to shave off his whiskers, and the order was executed an hour after- wards. At the ball in the evening there were a number of, so to say, new faces, with blank spaces on their cheeks, showing where they had shaved. People laughed as they met each other." Czartoryski was in Italy when the assassination took place ; but he has left a vivid description of the terrible scene, his version of its causes, and an account of Alexander's share in the transaction. It is one of the best chapters in the book, and well worth reading. On the whole, the same may be said of both volumes, although there is too much in the second which may be fairly called padding, and the important documents not published before are not specially pointed out or numbered. Czartoryski is certainly a novel personage in the gallery of memoir-writers, and we can only regret that, before death came, he had not finished what was so well begun.
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