The Holy Alliance was the first conception of Alexander on the return of peace. It died too suddenly to exhibit either its good or its evil. It has been calumniated, because it has been misunderstood. But it seems to have been a noble conception. France which laughs at every thing, laughed at the idea of ruling Europe on principles of honour. Germany, which is always wrapped in a republican doze, reprobated a project which seemed to secure the safety of thrones by establishing honour as a principle. And England, then governed by a cabinet doubtful of public feeling, and not less doubtful of foreign integrity, shrank from all junction with projects which she could not control, and with governments in which she would not confide. Thus the Holy Alliance perished. Still, the conception was noble. Its only fault was, that it was applied to men before men had become angels.
The author of the volumes now before us is evidently a republican one—of the “Movement”—one of that class who would first stimulate mankind into restlessness, and then pronounce the restlessness to be a law of nature. Metternich is of course his bugbear, and the policy of Austria is to him the policy of the “kingdom of darkness.” But, if there is no wiser maxim than “to judge of the tree by its fruits,” how much wiser has that great statesman been than all the bustling innovators of his day, and how much more substantial is that policy by which he has kept the Austrian empire in happy and grateful tranquillity, while the Continent has been convulsed around him!
No man knows better than Prince Metternich, the shallowness, and even the shabbiness, of the partisans of overthrow, their utter incapacity for rational freedom, the utter perfidy of their intentions, and the selfish villany of their objects. He knows, as every man of sense knows, that those Solons and Catos of revolution are composed of lawyers without practice, traders without business, ruined gamblers, and the whole swarm of characterless and contemptible idlers, who infest all the cities of Europe. He knows from full experience that the object of such men is, not to procure rights for the people, but to compel governments to buy their silence; that their only idea of liberty, is liberty of pillage; and that, with them, revolution is only an expedient for rapine and a license for revenge. Therefore he puts them down; he stifles their declamation by the scourge, he curbs their theories by the dungeon, he cools their political fever by banishing them from the land; and thus governing Austria for nearly the last forty years, he has kept it free from popular violence, from republican ferocity, from revolutionary bloodshed, and from the infinite wretchedness, poverty, and shame, which smites a people exposed to the swindling of political impostors.
Thus, Austria is peaceful and powerful, while Spain is shattered by conspiracy; while Portugal lives, protected from herself only under the guns of the British fleet; while Italy is committing its feeble mischiefs, and frightening its opera-hunting potentates out of their senses; while every petty province of Germany has its beer-drinking conspirators; and while the French king guards himself by bastions and batteries, and cannot take an evening’s drive without fear of the blunderbuss, or lay his head on his pillow without the chance of being wakened by the roar of insurrection. These are the “fruits of the tree;” but it is only to be lamented that the same sagacity and vigour, the same determination of character, and the same perseverance in principle, are not to be found in every cabinet of Europe. We should then hear no more of revolutions.
The life of the Russian emperor was a cloudy one. The external splendour of royalty naturally captivates the eye, but the realities of the diadem are often melancholy. It would be scarcely possible to conceive a loftier preparative for human happiness than that which surrounds the throne of the Russias. Alexander married early. A princess of Baden was chosen for him, by the irresistible will of Catherine, at a period when he himself was incapable of forming any choice. He was married at sixteen, his wife being one year younger. He never had a son, but he had two daughters, who died. And the distractions of the campaign of Moscow, which must have been a source of anxiety to any man in Russia, were naturally felt by the emperor in proportion to the immense stake which he had in the safety of the country.
For some years after the fall of Napoleon, Alexander was deeply engaged in a variety of anxious negotiations in Germany, and subsequently, he was still more deeply agitated by the failing constitution of the empress. The physicians had declared that her case was hopeless if she remained in Russia, and advised her return to her native air. But she, in the spirit of romance, replied, that the wife of the Emperor of Russia must not die but within his dominions. The Crimea was then proposed, as the most genial climate. But the emperor decided on Taganrog, a small town on the sea of Azof, but at the tremendous distance of nearly fifteen hundred miles from St Petersburg.
The present empress has been wiser, for, abandoning the romance, she spent her winter in Naples, where she seems to have recovered her health. The climate of Taganrog, though so far to the south, is unfavorable, and in winter it is exposed to the terrible winds which sweep across the desert, unobstructed from the pole. But Alexander determined to attend to her health there himself, and preceded her by some days to make preparations. A strange and singularly depressing ceremony preceded his departure. For some years he had been liable to melancholy impressions on the subject of religion. The Greek church, which differs little from the Romish, except in refusing allegiance to the bishop of Rome, abounds in formalities, some stately, and some severe. Alexander, educated under the Swiss, who could not have taught him more of Christianity than was known by a French philosophe, and having only the dangerous morals of the Russian court for his practical guide, suffered himself, when in Paris, to listen to the mystical absurdities of the well-known Madame de Krudener, and from that time became a mystic. He had the distorted dreams and the heavy reveries, and talked the unintelligible theories which the Germans talk by the fumes of their meerschaums, and propagate by the vapours of their swamps. He lost his activity of mind; and if he had lived a few years longer, he would probably have finished his career in a cell, and died, like Charles V., an idiot, in the “odour of sanctity.”
The preparation for his journey had the colouring of that superstition which already began to cloud his mind.
It was his custom, in his journeys from St Petersburg, to start from the cathedral of “Our Lady of Kasan.” But on this occasion, he gave notice to the Greek bishop, that he should require him to chant a service at four o’clock in the morning, at the monastery of St Alexander Newski, in the full assembly of ecclesiastics, at which he would be present.
On this occasion every thing took an ominous shape, in the opinion of the people. They said that the service chanted was the service for the dead, though the official report stated that it was the Te Deum. The monastery of St Alexander Newski is surrounded by the chief cemetery of St Petersburg, where various members of the reigning family, who had not worn the crown, were interred, and among them the two infant daughters of the emperor. The popular report was, that the ecclesiastics wore mourning robes; but this is contradicted, whether truly or not, by the official report, which states that they wore vestures of crimson worked with gold.