But not only does the presence of Nicholas, his absoluteness and his greatness, tend to check any too great tendency to assimilate with the West, but history is too full of startling warnings to permit any very rash experiments in such a direction. A few instances may confirm this, and show still better than we have done the present position of any so-called parties of the country.

It was Peter the Great, the reformer, who, two centuries and a half ago, introduced foreigners and their arts in a flood tide to his native land, and in order to bring Germany nearer to Russia, and to break in upon the almost hopelessly conservative state of things that must exist while Moscow was the capital, built the magnificent structures of stone in the pestilential marshes of the Neva. But what did it cost him? The Strelitz rose in mutiny, and it was not until he had abolished this rational force entirely, that he was enabled to go on with his projects. Peter III., who, after the death of Elizabeth, attempted to espouse the cause of Frederick the Great, in admiration of so illustrious a warrior, and introduce reforms from the West, paid the terrible penalty of his temerity, in dying by the knife of an assassin. Even Catherine, who longed to exalt her country by going to the East Indies through the acquired territory of Persia, who excluded all foreigners from her government, and who said to her English physician, "Bleed me, bleed me, that not a drop of German blood may be in my veins," gave offense by her reforms, and narrowly escaped the dagger.

Alexander, who stood the great monarch of Europe in the Tuileries; who had Richelieu, his governor at Odessa, made prime minister of France; who gave laws to France, through that minister, on the overthrow of Napoleon; and who thus left a shame to cause the blush of every Frenchman, only to be avenged, if avenged it can be, by the present contest with the Russian within the four castles that guard the Turks' dominions--even he had to hasten home from Paris to quell the discontent which his people manifested for his too little nationality. Diebitsh, the fearless and noble warrior, who crossed the Balkan, and pointed out this new pathway from the Kremlin to St. Sophia, fell under suspicion of being German, because too lenient to the Poles, and a speedy death removed him from further annoyance.

And lastly, to cite no further instances, we see the same warning to that country, against any lukewarmness in Russian sympathies in that appalling spectacle which inaugurated with blood the accession of the present emperor. Young Russia overstepped the uncertain boundary of discretion and safety. It was too fast. The grand conspiracy (to which we have

before alluded) which Nicholas punished, so entirely to the approbation of his whole dominion, even though a life-time of labor, and a banishment to Siberia, were part of the direful penalty, to some of his nobles, rings the loud clarion tones of terror to any who shall now attempt to Germanize the empire of Russia.

True, Russia has even gone out of her territories to form family alliances. But in almost every case, it is not to disturb her political condition at home, nor to lessen, but increase, her national and peculiar power. The Emperor draws other kings to him when he marries his offspring into a foreign line. Politics are as powerful when marriages, as when armies, lend their aid. Holland, and Wurtemburg, and Brandenburg, are witnesses.

And for this reason it is that Prussia, in the present struggle in Europe, can hardly dare to join France and England. The Prince of Prussia, in marrying a daughter of Nicholas, virtually promised to strain every nerve that the Baltic should be closed to English fleets, and that Warsaw should be guarded at its Eastern gates, even if neutrality was all that Prussia would consent to promise in behalf of the Russian. And this neutrality is all that Nicholas will ask. Hence the remarkable position which even the Chevalier Bunsen has occupied of late in regard to the Danish succession-a course that so certainly tends to make the throne of Denmark, through Prussian influence, but the seat of a vice-royalty of Russia.

For a long time, Constantinople has been longed for by Russia. Perhaps, if the powers of Europe were wise, they would place no impediment in the way, provided Russia would promise to make it her third and last capital, and not establish a mere provincial government on the Bosphorus. For, in such wise, might the great empire of Nicholas fall away to a mere Asiatic dominion-indolent, slavish, and effeminate, beneath a southern sun.

But if war must come, how desperate will be the effort of France and England to withstand the Russian, if Austria dare not side with them, and the watery highway to St. Petersburgh be obstructed by Prussia! However unwilling, and however tardy may be their submission to Russia, there seems every probability that the old, unalterable Russian system, so strong at home, will enter, through the chains and ties of marriage, to Berlin, and that, as there are no parties in Russia itself to coerce the sovereign, so there will be none on the Baltic, or the Danube, sufficient to arrest and roll backward his brilliant career.

Such, we think, is the case of Russian politics, so subtle,

extensive, peculiar, powerful. Uncontrolled by faction, political or religious, at home; and aided by them, both within and immediately around; with wealth, and family alliance, and a vast and intrepid army; and religious enthusiasm to give impetus to every move, how grand, how terrible, is the position of such a nation! As to the future, we do not speak. Nor as to right or wrong. Facts and arguments are here given, so far as we can get at them, amid so much of stratagem and secrecy. The past and the present are before us. Before such political ascendency, men will be truly courageous to stand in awe. To underrate that power, is to be unprepared to cope with it. Duty forbids any rashness, and any boasting. Archimedes longed for the fulcrum. Nicholas is trying to make one. Like the greatest of gladiators, he dares none but the fiercest foe.

In view of what has been said, let us remember the words of Alexander to Napoleon, both for the sake of estimating the capabilities of a country which, so long ago, and when it had but a part of its present influence, could promise so much; and for the sake, also, of estimating a part of the policy which that country is pursuing: "I offer you the half of Europe; I will help you to obtain it; secure you in the possession of it; and all I ask, in return, is the possession of a single strait, which is also the key of my house."

THE ENGLISH UNIVERSITIES.

Recommendations of the Oxford College Tutors' Association on the Relation of the Professorial and Tutorial Systems.—OXFORD: 1853. Report upon the Recommendations of Her Majesty's Commissioners for Inquiring into the State of the University of Oxford, presented to the Board of Heads of Houses and Proctors, December 1, 1853, by a Committee of their Number.-OXFORD: 1853.

Ir has, time out of mind, been a set prayer in the English Church, that, "in order that there might never be wanting a due supply of persons qualified to serve God in church and state, his blessing should be given to all schools and seminaries of sound learning and religious instruction, and more especially to the universities of the land." A character was thus given to the universities, which their system has been studiously designed to maintain. Their theory has been strictly in accordance with that idea; and if practically they have failed to realize it in all respects, they have yet constantly been resorted to by

those whose object in life was the public service, either in the state or the church. An university education has ever been considered indispensable to qualify an English gentleman for a statesman or a divine-nay, to fit him for any public profession where eminence is to be attained, not only in the senate or in the church, but at the bar, and even in the camp. Public schools there were in sufficient abundance, and of ample resources for all ordinary requirements, even of those who sought high classical and mathematical attainments. Eton, and Harrow, and Rugby, and Westminster, and Winchester, and Shrewsbury, are schools where there may be brought into operation every means and appliance for giving a much better education than perhaps three fourhts of English collegians commonly obtain. But they are, in a majority of cases, employed only as schools to prepare, as the phrase is, for the universities.

And here let us notice an element of the whole system, which is, from its principle of exclusiveness, creating a greater difficulty than almost any thing else in that adaptation of the universities now being made to the altered circumstances of the nation; we mean the religious element. Not only the univer sities, but the public schools which we have just enumerated, are all considered as Church institutions; their education is conducted upon the presumption that all who receive it are members of the Established Church, and the various rules of discipline laid down, and the religious principles inculcated, are in accordance with this idea. Dissenters, therefore, are necessarily excluded from them all; or if they now and then contrive to gain admission to the schools, it is only as it were by stealth, and under something very like false pretences.

There are two apologies for this exclusiveness, which are not, it must be confessed, without their plausibility, if not also their force. First, the founders, alike of the colleges and the schools, were Churchmen, and expressly designed them for, and limited them to, those of their own religious communion; and,. second, if religion is to enter into the system at all, it must be that which, being established, is regarded as the national religion.

Now, the fact of these institutions being founded, not by the state, but by private beneficence, and continuing to be supported not by any state grants, but by the funds which such private beneficence has amply provided, is certainly one which seems to impart to them a very different character from that which would have belonged to them had they been created, and were they maintained by the bounty of the state. "Is it not lawful for me to do what I will with mine own?" May we

not the founders have a right to say-prescribe the conditions on which our bounty is to be dispensed? Is it unreasonable, that being Churchmen ourselves, and our religion being that of the nation at large, established, and sanctioned, and protected by the law, we should stipulate that those who are to enjoy the privilege of being educated by our means must profess the same religion, and be brought under its discipline? The English Dissenters themselves have in their colleges and schools adopted, and are enforcing the self-same principle.

Then the difficulty, not to say the impossibility, if there is to be religion in the system at all, of adopting various creeds, and teaching different doctrines, is admitted on all hands. It is not as if the question were religion or no religion. In the case before us, that has been all along a settled point. They were to be "seminaries of sound learning and religious instruction." Such has been their character from the firstsuch the fundamental principle of their original institution. Their founders, in all probability, would not have endowed them on any other condition. Here, in the United States, where there is a different state of things, men act very differently. In the system of education provided at the cost of the public, the public being composed of citizens of all religious denominations, any distinctive doctrine of religion is expressly prohibited, in order that there may be no partiality, no exclusiveness. But with the English colleges and schools which we are now considering, the case is far otherwise. The law of the United States enacts, that "no school shall be entitled to, or receive any portion of, the school moneys, in which the religious doctrines or tenets of any particular Christian or other religious sect shall be taught, inculcated, or practised, or in which any book or books containing compositions favorable or prejudicial to the particular doctrines or tenets of any particular Christian or other religious sect, or which shall teach the doctrines or tenets of any other religious sect."* But consti tuted as the English universities are, this could never be the case with them. For, in the first place, the colleges of which they are composed were founded expressly, though not exclusively, for religious instruction; and provision was made, that such instruction should be in the doctrines and tenets of that particular body of Christians, the English Church. There, such religious instruction is not only to be taught and inculcated in the college schools, but practised in the college chapels. And, further, their libraries are full of the books containing compo

*Act relative to Common Schools.