Even if the allies should succeed in arms, which it is possible they may do, it would be next to impossible so to reconstruct a map of Europe as to prevent Russia from speedily recovering the provinces taken from her, and repairing her losses; for she is an agricultural rather than a maritime power, and has her resources within herself. Her present position and strength are not an accidental result, due to a temporary policy or to brute violence. They are less the result of violence than of the natural course of events. No doubt she could and even ought to have resisted that course, but that she has not done so is no more to be censured, than that the absorption of India by the British East India Company was not resisted by Great Britain. In modern times, at least, nations consult their interests, not what a high sense of justice or a nice sense of honor would dictate. Few, if any, of the wars which have resulted in the aggrandizement of Russia have been begun by her, or if so, without as plausible pretexts as conquering or growing nations usually have. Most of her acquisitions have been either the recovery of old territory possessed by her before the Tartar conquest, or made from barbarian tribes with whom peace was impossible. She is the natural centre to which gravitate all the members of the great Selavonic family, and has been for a long time in a position in which she could hardly help profiting by the divisions, wars, and rivalries of the other European nations. Her growth being in the natural course of European and Asiatic events, a natural, not a forced growth, it is no easy matter for the rest of Europe, by any new political or territorial combinations, to prevent her from recovering whatever she may lose by the fortune of war, or from ultimately obtaining those commercial advantages which would enable her to reduce France and Great Britain, especially Great Britain, to the rank of second or third rate powers, leaving for the first rank only herself and the United States. She is a vast centralized power, animated by a single spirit and moved by a single will; they are divided into separate nations and states, distracted by diversities of race, religion, and interests, and led on by various and conflicting counsels and policies. In the actual state of things, she is stronger than any one of them, and it is out of their power to form a permanent league against her. They might about as easily form themselves into a single federative state, and each give up its autonomy. They can never agree among themselves to do any thing of the sort.

The attempt to resist effectually the natural progress of any great living national power by leagues, coalitions, or alliances between feebler states, has never yet succeeded. Where the end is to overturn a dynasty, or to dethrone a prince, no longer national, or to effect a purpose which can be gained by a battle or a campaign, coalitions may answer. They answered in the long run against Napoleon I., for though he attracted the admiration of the French, he was not the living impersonation of the French people; he was not rooted in the national heart, and could count on being supported only so long as he was successful. He became nationalized, so to speak, only after his death, by the contrast of his reign with that of the effete Bourbons. But where the force needs to be constant and permanent, it must, in order to be effectual, be that of a single nation, strong enough to stand alone. If Great Britain were as strong by land as she is by sea, and if her dominions lay alongside of Russia, or if Russia were merely a commercial power, she would, perhaps, be able single-handed to cope with her. If France adjoined Russia, she would also, we think, be able to cope with her. But neither is the case, and no single power contiguous to Russia is or can be made strong enough to stand alone against her, unless it be Austria.

The danger from Russia to the West is only as by her advance in the East she deprives the western powers of the commerce of Asia. She cannot advance with advantage to herself any further westward than she has already done. Germany prevents Russia from laying her empire alongside of the French, as much as Germany prevents France from laying hers alongside of Russia. The two empires cannot, even by the conquest of Germany, become contiguous. Napoleon I. had the command of all Germany, but France did not leap the Rhine, as he found to his bitter discomfiture on his retreat from Moscow. The autocrat of the Russias, were he to command all Germany, would find that Russia would not leap the German frontiers. Germany would be in his way as much as she was in Napoleon's. The great danger is to Austria, regarded as separate from Germany. The German element is not the strongest in her empire, and she lacks unity and compactness. Half of her population have more sympathy of race with Russia than with her, and it would not be difficult to detach from her Bohemia, Galicia, Hungary, Croatia, and her Italian possessions, leaving her only the Tyrol and her hereditary duchy. Through the disjoint

ed nature of the Austrian dominions, and the heterogeneous character of her population, she is not able to stand alone against Russia, who can in spite of her continue to advance in the East, swallow up Armenia, Anatolia, and Persia in Asia, and the whole of Turkey in Europe, and the greater part of her own empire, in case she attempts resistance. Here is the danger.

Now it is idle to think of galvanizing the dead carcass of the Ottoman empire into sufficient life and activity to afford a safeguard to Europe. The only power to be relied on is Austria; and the true policy for the western powers is to strengthen her, and render her powerful enough to check Russian advance in the East. If any thing effectual is to be done, she must be permitted to extend her territory through to the Black Sea, by annexing to her empire Moldavia, Wallachia, and the greater part of Bessarabia. To pacify Italy, and soothe the jealousy of France, she might be required to exchange her Italian possessions, which should become independent under native princes, for Servia, Montenegro, and all of Turkey north of the Balkan. As a large portion of the population she would thus receive would by religion and race sympathize with Russia more than with her, she must, in addition, enter the German diet with her non-Germanic provinces. Since Turkey must fall, transfer the Hellenic kingdom to Constantinople, and annex to it all that would remain of Turkey in Europe and Asia, to the borders of Syria and Palestine, which last might be formed into the Latin kingdom of Jerusalem, in the house of Savoy, the heir, we believe, of the title.

Something like this would raise up a barrier to Russia without reconstructing the map of western or northern Europe, or creating in the East a power strong enough to harm the legitimate commerce of the western powers. But we are not so silly as to suppose that European statesmen will entertain such a project for a moment. They would fear the predominance of Austria. We therefore see no prospect of the war terminating to the advantage of Europe. One thing is certain, that Russia will not yield without an obstinate struggle. If Austria and Germany do not engage in it, the western powers will be worsted, and if they do, they will have to bear the brunt of the war, and all western and central Europe will become in addition the scene of a civil strife with the revolutionary party, encouraged and sustained by Russia, from which Italy and

Austria will be the chief sufferers. In the former case Russia gains the victory, and resumes with redoubled ardor her policy of getting the control of the East, and of hostility to the church. In the latter, Germany will be ruined, and Austria disabled, and both will fall a prey to Napoleon III. or his successor, and France will become once more the terror of Europe on the land, while England will continue with more insolence than ever to sing,

"Britannia rules the wave."

We do not wish to see Austria and the Germanic states under the tutelage of Russia,-a tutelage as incompatible with their true interests as with their dignity, and we should be most happy to see them escaping from it, and reconstructing a united and independent Germany, so essential to their own well-being and to European society. But, alas! it is impossible revocare defunctos. German unity becomes every day more and more difficult, and is well-nigh as impracticable as Italian unity. The sovereigns do not wish it, Russia is opposed to it, France and England will protest against it, and the German people, separated by political and religious differences, have no power to effect it. It is possible that an alliance with France and Great Britain would emancipate them from Russia, but it could only be by making of her an eternal enemy,--in a critical moment more dangerous as an enemy than she is as a friend. It does not do to overlook the internal state of Germany, or to forget that there is a powerful and increasing revolutionary party in her bosom, holding the most frightful principles of socialism and atheism.-a party almost strong enough in 1848 to overthrow all authority, and introduce the saturnalia of Jacobinism. Only by the utmost vigilance of the governments and by strong repressive measures are they prevented from open insurrection. The danger from them is not over, and we have not seen or heard the last of them. Though Russia may appeal to the revolutionary element against powers hostile to her, we know not where but to her the German governments could look for aid in case of a revolutionary outbreak. Great Britain could not be relied on; she is half a democracy already, and her government must obey popular opinion, and popular opinion is and will be on the side of the revolutionists. France would render no aid, because she would hope to find in the revolution the means of reëstablishing the empire of Charle

magne, the dream of the founder of the Napoleonic dynasty, a dynasty that establishes itself by professing liberal ideas and practising despotism.

Looking at the subject from this distance, and as impartially as we can, we see nothing hopeful for Old Europe. She has thrown away her opportunities, and we see no happy issue for her. Let the present war terminate as it may, we see no good likely to result from it. Indeed, wars undertaken from policy never end well, and there is no country that politicians will not sooner or later ruin, if abandoned to their lead. It is long since the European courts abandoned principle, justice, good faith, and religion, for simple state policy, and order is now nowhere maintained on the continent but by armed force. There is hatred between nation and nation, and war between the ruled and the rulers. There is no reliance to be placed on the courts, none to be placed on the people. The courts became corrupt, and have corrupted the people, as the demagogues are corrupting them here, and there is only one point in which the people and their sovereigns agree, and that is in hostility to the church, the only source of help for either. The one shows its hostility in trying to make her a tool of their despotism, and the other in seeking to crush her, and to substitute for the worship of God the worship of humanity.

Nevertheless, we may take too desponding a view of European affairs. Who knows the designs of Providence, whose prerogative it is to bring light out of darkness, and order out of confusion? Who knows but the celestial Spouse of the church is about to interpose for the joy and glory of his bride? It may be that Providence has suffered Russia to grow up and to become strong as an instrument for punishing the nations of central and western Europe for having abandoned him and betrayed the trust he confided to them. If so, we can only say the judgments of God are just, and his chastisements salutary. He may use Russia as the instrument of his justice, and dash her in pieces when he has served his purpose with her. She may cause much suffering to Europe, much injury to religion, but she will never realize the dream of universal monarchy. If she should overrun western and central Europe, she could not hold it in subjection, and her triumph would probably be as short-lived as was that of France under her great Napoleon. She may plant herself on the Bosphorus, and command for a time the Mediterranean Sea, and the Indian Ocean, the