had commenced, habitually called in men from beyond the Niemen to discharge the duties which their own countrymen were too dull or too bigoted to perform. To such a height was this system carried, that Marshal Suvoroff, when asked by Catharine II how she could repay his services in putting down the Polish rebellion, answered with his wonted rough-hewn sarcasm, "Mother Katrina, make me a German !" As a matter of course, popular enmity was strongly directed against these intrusive foreigners, who sat in the high places and ate up the bread of the "orthodox nation." During the earlier years of Nicolas' reign, more than one German official was cruelly murdered in the wilder provinces of the east. Popular literature, reflecting popular feeling as usual, made the German what the Tartar had once been-the villain of every national legend, and the butt of every village song. In the Cossack Tales of Nicholas Gogol, unquestionably the greatest descriptive writer whom Russia has produced during the present century, this ingrained antipathy takes a very curious form. A pious Cossack, while wandering alone on the outskirts of his native village upon Christmas-eve, is suddenly accosted by the Evil One in person, who endeavors to persuade him into the commission of a great crime. The Russian stands his ground like a man, and bids the foul fiend begone; but the latter only becomes more and more persistent, till the Cossack indignantly calls him "an accursed German" -at which overwhelming insult the demon instantly flies away in disgust! Many optimists are fond of asserting that this universal jealousy is merely a relic of ancient barbarism, fast disappearing before the advance of civilization. But this rose-colored theory is hardly borne out by existing facts. Even if the famous "Kalisch quarrel" of last January, between the German and Russian officers stationed on the frontier, be a newspaper myth, tokens of the same feeling are neither few nor slight in the Russia of the present day. No longer ago than in 1870, when the news of the fall of Paris reached Moscow, German workmen were mobbed in the streets in broad daylight, and German students made the objects of a patriotic demonstration to which the most vigorous college "hazing would have been as nothing. Similar excesses have more than once occurred in St. Petersburg; while in the great manufacturing towns of the Volga, where the German element is strong, the quarrels of the two races have several times assumed a very serious character. Even the Russian word for "German" ("Nyemetz," or dumb man) contains a covert insult, as implying one who cannot speak Russian, and who is, therefore, to be contemned and scouted by every true Muscovite. What the Russian Government itself thinks upon this question, a single example will suffice to show. During the "invasion panic" of 1871, it was accidentally discovered that a large proportion of the engine-drivers, brakemen, etc., employed on the frontier railways were Germans. By the admission of the Russians themselves, these men were faithful and valuable servants. They were always ready to do their duty, and to do it well. Nothing could be alleged against them, save the bare fact of their German blood. But that one fact was quite sufficient. The Cabinet of St. Petersburg instantly sent orders to dismiss every man of them, and to supply their place with native Russians. Could this summary expedient be employed in every case of the kind, even Russia's jealousy might perhaps be appeased at last. But the safety of an army upon which the fate of the empire itself may depend, is not to be hazarded as lightly as that of a few passenger-cars; and it is easier to replace a brakeman than a commander-in-chief. Indeed, the "superseding" experiment has already been tried, with results which Russia will long remember. In the great crisis of 1812, her best general was a Hanoverian named Barclay de Tolly. He had checked Napoleon's first invasion in 1807, and was vigorously opposing his second. It might well have been supposed that the veteran's unquestioned loyalty, together with the skill and valor of which he had given such abundant proof, would have palliated, even if they could not wholly condone, the crime of having been born in Germany. But not so thought the Russians. They clamored for his removal, and they obtained their wish. The gallant German was superseded by the aged and imbecile Kutuzoff, and the result was the defeat of Borodino and the fall of Moscow.* It is true that all these suspicions and jealousies are utterly groundless. No sane man can suppose that the czar's German officers, whatever their secret sympathies may be, will actually desert their colors in a body, the moment the Black Eagle of Germany is seen fluttering on Russian soil. But the effects of the popular prejudice against them may be almost as fatal to Russia as if they had done so. Let us suppose the German leader of a Russian frontier corps unsuccessful in his first operations against the invader. What follows? The cry of treachery is instantly raised against him-he loses all control of his men, and is superseded, or perhaps even murdered by his own soldiers. Another Russo-German commander, recognizing among his prisoners a relative or personal friend of his own, treats him with kindness, and dismisses him on parole. He is at once accused of secret communication with the enemy, and all is lost. These are no imaginary cases. After the defeat of Dresden, in 1813, the quarrels of the Russian and German officers, and their mutual accusations of treachery, came within a hair's breadth of dissolving the great league which finally overthrew Napoleon. In 1814, the gallant Wittgenstein, one of the bravest and most skilful of the allied commanders, found all his efforts neutralized, in more than one momentous crisis, by his unpopularity, as a German, with his Russian troops. What has happened once may happen again; and Russia's consciousness of this fact is one of her strongest, though most studiously concealed, reasons for endeavoring to avoid rupture with Germany. a NOTE. The "Polish rising against Russia" upon which many German theorists reckon so confidently in the event of *His statue, however, now faces Kutuzoff's in front of the Kazan Church at St. Petersburg, while his name is linked with that of his great rival in the popular couplet: "Barklai de Tolli i Kutuzoff F' dvaynadtzatom godu morozili Frantzuzoff." an invasion, is a somewhat hypothetical contingency at best; for the common people are far better off under the czar's rule than they formerly were under the grinding tyranny of their own "Panové" (nobles), and the insurrection of 1863, so far from being a "popular" movement, was the exclusive work of the students, the priesthood, and the nobility. But the climate and natural conditions of the country itself, which are Russia's salvation in one way, are formidably adverse to her in another. In the summer of 1855, when the doubtful attitude of Austria necessitated a strong concentration of force in the unwholesome basin of the Vistula, the Russians lost 30,000 men (some authorities say 50,000) without firing a shot; and should Russia's apprehensions of Germany demand a renewal of this precaution, the same catastrophe may very possibly repeat itself on a far more extended scale. DAVID KER. ART. IV. THE SCOTTISH POETS. 1. The Songs of Scotland, Ancient and Modern. 2 vols. BY ALLAN CUNNINGHAM. London : 1825. 2. The Scottish Minstrel. The Songs of Scotland, subsequent to Burns, with Memoirs of the Poets. By REV. CHARLES ROGERS, LL.D., F.S.A. Scot. New York: 1870. 3. Lives of Scottish Poets. By the Society of Ancient Scots. 3 vols. London : 1821. Pleasant are the words of the song! lovely the tales of other times! They are like the calm dew of the morning on the hill of roes! when the sun is shining faint on its side, and the lake is settled and blue on the vale.Fingal, Book iii. If the poems ascribed to Ossian by Macpherson are genuine, and not the skilful forgery of the eighteenth century, the national poetry of Scotland extends far back in the misty past. Whatever the Poems of Ossian may be, whether the production of a bard of the third century and translated from the Erse or Gaelic by Macpherson, or merely compiled by him from fragmentary legends and oral traditions, with original passages inserted where the connection seemed broken, and those passages struck out which might offend a more modern taste, softening the mode of expression-in short, constructing a work of great beauty from the choicest materials of the past, guided by the enlightenment of the present,these poems are a remarkable work; remarkable, if the production of a race represented as being at that time mere barbarians, or as one that was able to resuscitate the past so |