The daily morning journal and courier., 1895-02-20

Alexander IT, by the grace of God
 found himself placed. Yes, by the
 grace of God; unless we are prepared tc
 deny that every one of us is created tc
 cope with and overcome some special
 disadvantages into which no other per
 son is fitted so entirely to enter; disad-
 vantages not merely of circumstance
 but of temperament, of degree in abili-
 ty, or of whatever nature they may be.
 All that we are responsible for is to do
 the best that is possible under the cir
 cumstances we are in, be they favora-
 ble or unfavorable. But this, 1t may be objected, is what Alexander III failed
 to do. He might at least have carried on the work his father had begun, in- stead of in some points reversing 1t, Perhaps he might. I am not so sure,
 however, that any one of us would have acted otherwise than as he did had we
 been In his stead. The very steps that
 had been taken by Alexander II to re-
 form the evils he found In existence | had themselves led to new and unfore-
 seen difficulties; as, for example, the | land allotment, consequent upon the l emancipation of the serfs. and which
 had sufficed for the generation living at
 the time. has since been overtaken by
 the growth of the population, and has | opened up a new and complicated pro-
 blem to be solved-a new and lncreas- | ing ground for discontent. And, again, what has been the apparent result or all | the liberty Alexander II had granted
 after so prolonged an effort? His own
 most cruel death and the many times
 repeated attempts on the life of his sue
 cessor. With such alternatives as
 pressed upon him, with the yawning gulf of Nihilism on the one hand and | the cliffs of arbitrary repression on the
 other, 1t was very possible that Alexan- | der IT should make mistakes in the
 government of Russia. Perhaps he did so. Perhaps he even deserved the re-
 mark of a former British ambassador | to his court-that he was a good man, but bad emperor. It may be so; but for one am not able to blame him, for
 I cannot see all the way through the forest of difficulties by which he was surrounded, and so am forced to leave
 the criticism of his policy to the clever
 men who, if similarly situated, would have made no mistakes themselves.
 For my own part, would rather deal with him as a man than as an emperor; for I, too, am a man, and can feel as he felt when in the presence of the awful
 sufferings inflicted by the Turkish war,
 he let his pity get the better of his am
 bition as a soldier, and determined thereafter to stave off, as far as in him lay, the horrors of the battlefield from his own people and from others over whom he had sufficient influence. Whatever mistakes he may have made, where Is the man or woman, capable of reflection, who will not feel lastingly grateful to Alexander III for the bless ing of a long European peace in the stead of what, had he been man of harder heart, would most surely have been an era of European war
 No, that is no hard heart which may soon beat its last at Livadia! One sim pie incident will show this, and will cer- tainly win the sympathy of every read l CT Of these lines.
 The day before Alexander was born an English nurse entered the service of l the imperial family. I forget her full name, but in the palace she was always known as kitty" A God-fearlng wo- man, she exercised powerful Influence on the children under her care, and they returned that care with unbound ed love and respect. Tn her old age the Czar allotted her apartments in what answers in Russia to the English Hampton court-the Winter Palace for since the death of Alexander II it is no longer used as an imperial residence, though it still serves for some of thel state ceremonies. Here rooms, car riage, servants and everything that thought could devise. made the old nurses declining days easy The walls of her room were crowded with birth day and other presents from every member of the great family she had so faithfully served; and in these sur rather less than two years { ago, the time came for Kitty to die. Again and again the emperor would come and sit by her bedside to read her a chapter out of the English Bible that she had so often read from to him when he was little child; for to her early he had owed the strengthen- ing of whatever was good and gentle in him; and he repaid her with almost the affection of son to his mother The last time he came to see her the old nurse was past consciousness and failed to give him her usual smile of recogni- ton. Alexander bent down over the dying face and asked tenderly if she did not know him? But Kitty never spoke again. Her life's work was done.
 The morning of the funeral found the emperor and some other members of the family in the room, with the British chaplain of Petersburg and the under takers As the moment came for put ting the body into the coffin the men stepped forward to do so; but the Czar notioned them back. "No; no one shall touch her but ourselves" he said; and then, beckoning to his brother, the Grand Duke Sergius took the feet, and ne lifted the head, and they gently laid the remains in the coffin.
 It was a miserable winter day; but Alexander III followed that coffin for .wo miles from the Winter Palace, through the streets of Petersburg to the cemetery beyond the Neva, to see his i'd English nurse laid in the grave.