of scattered intellectual and literary eminence than Scotland could exhibit -so much the smaller country, and with its whole mind gurgling through the single channel of an engrossing national strife. But, compared with the public men who were of note in England immediately before the Long Parliament, and in the early days of that Parliament, and especially with that Puritan section of them upon whom the leadership devolved, until the nation found its master in Cromwell, those five Scottish Presbyterian parsons Baillie, Dickson, Gillespie, Henderson, and Rutherford-were not inferior. This was recognised at the time by the English themselves. While as yet the struggle lasted in Scotland, and England was watching the issue as one in which the possibility of a recovery of her own liberties was involved, the names of those preachers of the north were words of household interest in many an English Puritan family; and, when some of them afterwards came south, to accompany the Scottish Commissioners accredited to Charles and the Long Parliament, and to help, by their sermons and their counsels, in the work of inoculating England with the true-blue Presbyterian sentiment, all London flocked after them, as after Irving or Chalmers in later days, to hear the novelty of wisdom's voice in a broad Scotch accent. Nor, when we try to individualize the men through what remains of them, do the Londoners seem to have been fools for their pains. Their writings, indeed, are mostly of a kind not now much read- sermons, treatises in divinity, pamphlets of ecclesiastical controversy, such as load the shelves of the British Museum library, to attest what laborious masses of literature there may have been at certain periods, charged with life to the generations which produced them, but now fossil and dead. There is, at least, one exception. Baillie's letters are as graphic a bit of historical literature as there is in the language-a book wherewith we can now correct Clarendon; a book in which every modern critic who knows real literary worth when he sees it

can descry sagacity, good sense, and the talent of a born historian, underneath the provincial style and the homely Presbyterian prejudice; a book which will be read, I venture to say, as long as Mr. Buckle's "History of Civilization." In Rutherford's letters, too, which are of quite a different stamp, and belong rather to that style of private devotional literature which is not yet without its charms for a part of the Christian world, the critic who has any softness of heart in that direction, or any power of going out of his own paltry self in such matters, will discern something of that sensuous genius of the poet, elevated by religion to the pitch of ecstasy, which appears in the sweet English pietists, or Song-ofSolomon theologians, of the seventeenth century. But, take even the polemical pamphlets of those Scottish preachers. In what Henderson, or Gillespie, or Baillie, or Dickson, or Rutherford, but especially the three first, did in this line, there was, allowing for the capa bilities of such a form of literature, more than the average show of capacity. Excepting Milton's pamphlets, which stand in glory by themselves, I do not know but that, if one were to turn over the pamphlets of that particular time still preserved in the British Museum, those which have the names of one or other of these Scottish ministers, or of several of them collectively, attached to them, would turn out to be among the very best. The men who wrote them, at all events, moved about among their contemporaries, whether in their own country, or in England when the common business of the two countries led them thither, as men whom ample trial had proved to be, whether by tongue or by pen, whether by learning or by power of reason, fit to lead. Dickson's reputation was that of a brave man, now a veteran, to whom the whole West of Scotland looked as its most zealous and powerful preacher-its Whitfield, we might now say-who had sustained Evangelism there when the rest of the land was cold and dark. Of Gillespie, who was still but a youth, Baillie could speak as "the noble youth, Mr. Gilles

pie," and could exult, in particular, that, when the Scottish divines had to hold their own with their English brethren, and to grapple with them on some points in the great Westminster Assembly, this stripling from Kirkcaldy could contend with the Goliaths and prove himself, by general confession, "equal to the first" there. But, not to multiply arguments to the same effect, were not these men, the whole five of them, in the midst of that Scottish national movement from 1637 onwards, of the difficulty of which, of its efficient and even splendid conduct, and of its singular importance in connexion with the general history of England, we have tried to give some idea? Was it not on these men, in conjunction with the Rotheses, the Argyles, the Loudouns, the Johnstones of Warriston, and, eventually, the Lesleys and other military Scots trained in the Gustavus-Adolphus wars, that the conduct of that movement devolved? Can a movement like that have had a "rabble" at its heart? And who among all the men who were at the heart of that movement towers up as the man in chief? I believe that, if a competent historian were called upon to name the ablest and most prominent Scotchmen of the middle of the seventeenth century, he would (always reserving on the Royalist side the gallant Montrose, the one man of really brilliant genius whom Charles had, after he forswore himself and let Strafford die), name unhesitatingly these four-the Marquis of Argyle; the lawyer Archibald Johnstone of Warriston, afterwards Lord Warriston; the crooked old GustavusAdolphus soldier, Alexander Lesley, afterwards Earl of Leven; and the Presbyterian parish-minister, Alexander Henderson. Nor am I sure but that, if one were required out of these four to select the one who was really the chief of all, that one would be, not the marquis, nor yet the lawyer, nor yet the soldier, but the Presbyterian parishminister. Yes, this honour, such as it is, belongs, I believe, to that particular member of Mr. Buckle's alleged "rabble."

Such is my belief, at least; and I have not formed it without reason. Wherever, in the Scottish movement of that time, I see the tremor of a new activity, showing that at that point a man of invention and courage has communicated an impulse from his own being to the surrounding element, there, if I investigate, I find Alexander Henderson. Wherever, in the same movement, I find things going wrong, and suddenly there seems to come the grasp of some massive judgment, controlling extravagant counsels, and bringing back order, without loss of energy, there again I find Henderson. Wherever, among the public Scottish documents of that time, I come upon one more statesmanlike in its conception, more cogent in its logic, more large and liberal in its speculative tone than the rest, I hardly inquire whose it is-I know it is Henderson's. Wherever he went, among Scotch or English, his superiority was felt. If even the furious English courtiers and royalists were compelled to make an exception in favour of one of the "rascally crew of the Scottish Covenant," and to allow that he at least had something sterling in him, the exception was always Henderson. "Incomparably the ablest man of us all for all things" is honest Baillie's character of him at the time when they elected him to the moderator's chair in the Glasgow Assembly of 1638; and when, after Henderson's death, in 1646, at the age of sixtythree, the same Baillie spoke of him before his assembled colleagues as "the "fairest ornament, after Mr. John Knox, "of incomparable memory, that ever the "Church of Scotland did enjoy," the assent of all ratified the eulogy. Indeed, it is from Henderson's death in that year that the affairs of Scotland begin visibly to go into sixes and sevens. is from that date, whether owing to that event or not, that the Scotch are seen floundering on in the worst fit of capernoitedness of which we have record in their history.

It

Is all this of no interest to the present generation? It ought not to be so. Over that particular combination of men

and events, Anglo-Scottish or ScotoEnglish, there rolled immediately the wave of a grander tumult. Greater names emerged, and new controversies enacted themselves, still pointing forward; and between that age and this there has been the march and tramp of two centuries of men now also among the dead. To us, in this busy age, of what avail this resuscitation of forgotten old matters, of names long unheard of and always uncouthMacdonnells and Colkittos and Galasps? Not so have thought the best writers among us the Macaulays and others of recent times, who have still turned, by a literary instinct which their reason could justify, back to the seventeenth century, as that period in the past history of the British Islands in exploring the transactions of which they could, with good results to their contemporaries, employ still more and more research. What is History for but to recover forgotten names that ought not to be forgotten, to make rich our memories, to connect the life of the present, through an avenue of increasingly strong recollections, with the life of the past? And more and more it will be found that in History, as in other things, superficiality will not do that there must be quarrying and deep digging, and turning over and over of heaps of buried material, and marshalling of entire orders of facts that have been lost sight of but are still recoverable; that the presentation again and again, as in most of our popular narratives, of a few large historical names and incidents already familiar, with repetitions of the old comments respecting them, and a dash of twopenny philosophy about the laws of progress, is a method of sheer indolence, which is beggaring our historical literature before our very eyes, and driving us farther and farther from all hope of ever knowing what the

real laws of human progress may have been; that, in short, while the largest names and events will always have the preference, it is the very use of History to chastise our ignorance and rouse our curiosity over and over again, by revealing to us what a multiplicity of things, behind those names and events, and yet in vital connexion with them, remains to be known. And where shall History exercise itself more usefully, with any such end in view, than in the exploration of our own national annals— of those English, Irish, and Scottish affairs of a few by-past centuries, out of which, by direct development, our own civilization has come? Shall it be deemed right and proper that volume after volume should be written that we may know a thing or two about TiglathPileser and other polysyllabic Assyrians -shall it be deemed a labour worthy of our scholars and historians to clear up for us the politics of Nikias, or to tell the true story of the Gracchi-and shall it be with impatience that, because of our very ignorance in our own national history, we hear of men who, though they did chance to wear homespun English or Scottish names, did more for us a good deal than ever Tiglath-Pileser meant to do, were more akin to us than Nikias, served our liberties more nearly than all the Roman Gracchi? At all events, if a modern writer, of his own free will, does make a raid among these less-known worthies of our national past

if, with an intent not to honour but to vilify, he pays a visit to their graves, disturbing in that little-invaded solitude the grass and the weeds that time has made so rank—what is any one else to do that may have been lingering among these graves before him, on an errand more like that of Old Mortality, but to start up, mallet and chisel in hand, and confront the intruder?

TWENTY-THREE millions of human beings -more than the whole population of Great Britain-set free by one stroke of the pen is a magnificent stride in the march of freedom. At such a spectacle the world would at all times look on with feelings of deep interest, but at the present moment those feelings cannot fail to be greatly enhanced. It is the work of the despotic ruler of a nation that we have been wont to call semibarbarous, and contrasts curiously with the events that are now happening among our Transatlantic cousins. model republic of the world is being shattered into fragments, and men's hands are being raised against the lives of their brothers, ostensibly to uphold and perpetuate a worse form of bondage than that which the Emperor of Russia has, of his own sole will and pleasure, swept away for ever out of his dominions.

The

We know very little about Russia— even less than the Russians know about

us.

English habits and English institutions are highly esteemed in Russia, and the desire to become better acquainted is growing stronger every day. English literature is fast superseding the flimsy French trash which has hitherto held undisputed sway; English governesses and English tutors meet with an appreciation and a rate of remuneration higher than fall to their lot in any other part of the world. It will therefore be well for Englishmen to give due consideration to a measure upon which, as a native writer has pithily remarked, the whole future of Russia depends, and to make themselves acquainted with its leading features.

The meaning of the term "serfdom," in Russia, has been very generally misunderstood. It is not slavery, as understood by the old Roman and Germanic laws, and it is not equivalent to the slavery of to-day in America. Slavery,

in its fullest and most complete sense, certainly did exist in Russia in the ancient and middle ages prior to the introduction of serfdom. The first book of laws which was issued by Yaroslaf, in 1020, and was termed "Rooskaia Pravda" (Russian jurisprudence), enacts that slaves, by capture, purchase, commitment for crime or debt, or by the voluntary sale of themselves, for a limited term, or for life, shall be considered fully and unconditionally the personal property of their lord or proprietor. Similar provisions are to be found in the "Soodebuik," a code of laws commenced by Ivan III. in 1497, and revised and completed by Ivan IV. in 1550. Slavery in this form, however, never existed to any great extent in Russia, and, with the establishment of an absolute form of government, it slowly but surely decreased. At the commencement of the eighteenth century, it merged into the system of villeinage, which was then gradually developing itself. Slavery, then, in the common acceptation of the term, has long ago ceased to exist in Russia; and in the judicial code of the present day there is not to be found even any trace of the word.

Villeinage, on the other hand, did not prevail to any great extent in ancient Russia. The inhabitants of villages and agricultural labourers were entirely free, from the time of the elevation of Russia into a state, until the end of the sixteenth century. They were subjected to various imposts, which differed as the lands on which they lived belonged to the Tsar or State, to monasteries, towns, communities, or private individuals; but they possessed the privilege of free transit from one locality to another, with the view of settling wherever they might deem it most advantageous to themselves. This right of migration at any season was

soon found to be injurious to a state geographically extensive, and chiefly agricultural. Taxes could not be collected regularly, and large tracts of land remained uncultivated. The landed proprietors were embarrassed in fulfilling the obligations entailed upon them by the possession of land under the crown, particularly with regard to military services which they were obliged to render to the state. The prevention of this evil first led to the permanent attachment of the inhabitants of the villages to the soil on which they dwelt.

The earliest traces of this attachment to the soil are, it is true, to be found as far back as the middle of the thirteenth century, during the Tartar domination, when a census was taken in 1257 in order to secure the regular collection of taxes. The inhabitants of towns and villages settled on the lands of the state were forbidden to leave them without special permission. But this order did not immediately become law. The custom sprang up by degrees of restricting the migrations of the peasants to the commencement, or termination, of the agricultural season. This custom legalized by Ivan III., in 1497, and confirmed by Ivan IV., in 1550; but the full and final attachment of the peasant to the soil was not consummated until at the close of the sixteenth century.

was

In the reign of the last lineal descendant of the house of Rurik, the Tsar Fedor Ivanovitch, the migration of the peasants was suppressed. By the counsel and influence of Boris Godunof, a Boyar, who was then all-powerful, and who actually succeeded to the vacant throne on the death of that monarch, a decree was issued, on the 24th of November, 1597, forbidding all peasants to leave those lands on which that date, St. George's Day, should find them. If, however, they had removed within five years previously, they were commanded to return to the lands to which they had been attached in 1592. From this it came to pass that the serfs have always regarded Boris Godunof as their enslaver, and his name is remembered with exeNo. 23.-VOL. IV.

crations to the present time, while Yurief Den (St. George's Day) has hitherto been an anniversary fraught with the most melancholy recollections throughout all Russia.

This was the first enactment that bound the peasant, hitherto free, firmly to the soil. It was not carried out at once, but passed through a series of changes, in the beginning of the seventeenth century, under Godunof, the Pretender Dmitri, and Vassilii Shuiski, and was only at length finally established in 1649, four years after the accession of Alexei Mikhailovitch.

According to the spirit of the laws, the attachment of the peasant to the soil did not legally enslave him. It was merely an administrative police-measure, which affected the whole of the provincial population, and was adopted with the view of insuring the regular collection of imposts, and of suppressing vagrancy, which had greatly increased. Similarly the burghers were fixed to towns for the same purpose, and the Boyars and their children were also subjected to compulsory service under the Government, their names being enrolled with that object in special registers. It was therefore not unnatural that the Government, in making the landowners responsible for the due payment of taxes on the lands belonging to them, and on those occupied by their tenants, and in summoning them with retainers equipped at their own expense for military service, should give them some privileges over the persons of the peasants settled on their estates. The laws of the seventeenth century ordained that every peasant attached to the soil should have an allotment of ground settled upon him. The landowners were always obliged to preserve a certain portion of land to be cultivated for the enjoyment of the peasants, and this ground was almost invariably called theirs in the legal acts of the times, in contradistinction to that belonging to the landowners. But the serfs had no security or permanence in the enjoyment of this privilege, for the landlords commenced transferring them from one estate to another, converting

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