the Indian Ocean for the protection of India and Australasia.

As yet Russia is not proceeding directly towards Persia, for there is no reason why she should show her cards before the right moment. It is even supposed by some that China is the real object of the Russian advance in Asia. For purposes of trade China has been open to Russia ever since Siberia was acquired in the reign of Ivan IV. She now threatens her more immediately from the west, but perhaps still only to acquire a commercial preponderance. It may, of course, be otherwise. The Muscovite is just the person to have more than one string to his bow. He will take China gladly if he can get her, but of that the certainty is not so great as of the conquest of Persia. An army of 50,000 Russians would walk through Persia with ease; an army of 100,000 Russians might do the same through China. But an army of 200,000 men would in all probability never cross the Indus. It is true enough that India has been repeatedly invaded and conquered from the north, and so it might be again if her geographical defences only had to be overcome, and if the old conditions of her position and the old methods of warfare could be revived. The equipment of modern armies renders it perfectly impossible to convey the materials of war through long deserts and difficult mountains; and, while the invaders would necessarily be without such materials on their arrival in India, they would find the defenders amply provided with them. The European army in India, though small, is one of the most highly finished instruments of war in the world; and, taking India by herself, without reference to any extraneous assistance she could, or could not, receive,

England is there strong enough to defy any power that Russia could bring to bear on her. The European army of Russia has enough to do in watching the armies of Prussia and Austria, and no portion of it could be withdrawn, even during the profoundest peace in Europe. In Asia she has in all about 200,000 troops; and these are fully employed in keeping down the warlike population of Central Asia, now held by her under subjection. Not more than 20,000 men of this army are available for offensive purposes; and very extraordinary measures could do no more than double or treble that number. Of course Russia could, if she wished it, increase her forces by drawing on the innumerable nomad hordes of Asia. But, in the first place, it is doubtful if those hordes would not themselves form her chief enemies; and, even if they were friendly to her, such undisciplined levies would only act as a dead weight on her. Britain, on her side, has an inexhaustible store of military races in India to draw upon; and if half a century more intervenes before the rupture breaks out, India will have become too strongly consolidated for the whole of Russia-European and Asiatic taken together-to be able to make the slightest impression on her.

All that Russia could do in India, therefore, virtually resolves itself to this-she could stir up troubles against the English by exciting mutiny and rebellion. But that is a game which two can play at; and the hold of Russia in Central Asia is certainly more insecure than the hold of Great Britain on India. The purse of England can do more. There are plenty of combustible materials throughout the Russian empire. Poland still sighs for the liberty she has lost; the Cossacks hate the Russian

rule; the Circassians still dream of independence; even the Siberians are not well reconciled to their condition. It is therefore in the power of England to raise a tempest in Russia which all the strength of the northern giant may not be able to allay.

The extent of her territory renders, or rather will render, Russia eventually capable of producing every commodity required for insuring her greatness. At present, however, her conquests, in their backward state, are but a burden to her. She will require more than a century to lick them into shape; and if, instead of following the paths of ambition, she devoted her energies to this object only, her position among nations would be much higher than at this moment it really is. It is only by courtesy that she is recognised as a civilised power. She has been straining every nerve to attain European civilisation; but even in European Russia, all the civilisation she has acquired is confined to the higher classes only, and has not penetrated the manners and customs of the lower. An educated or civilised Russian is not a Russian in the same sense as an educated Frenchman is a Frenchman, and an educated Englishman an Englishman—that is, one of the mass; while, further to the east, the Asiatic Russian is really more uncivilised than the Chinaman or the Hindu.

CHAPTER VIII.

THE OTHER STATES OF EUROPE.

THE remaining states of Europe do not require such lengthened notice as we have given to the primary powers. Some of them, it is true, had their eras of greatness, especially Spain, Portugal, and Holland; but their present weakness and imbecility are too great to hold out any promise of a very brilliant career in the future, and a brief allusion to their past will therefore fully suffice for that comprehensive view of the whole world which we are anxious to furnish. The best phases of their existence have long disappeared; with the exception of Italy, not one of them is making any exertion to recover lost ground; no anticipations for the future arise in reading of them. Though belonging to the modern world, they are already of the past.

Denmark, Sweden, and Norway.

In the north of Europe are the states of Denmark, Norway, and Sweden, which were originally known by the general name of Scandinavia, which has a very interesting history of its own. The Swedes and the Danes trace their descent from Noah to Odin, and the

Norwegians from Noah to Thor; but the accounts they give are based on tradition only, a fair part of which may nevertheless be true. Odin, according to SaxoGrammaticus, was a king of the Hellespont, and apparently a Scythian, who proceeded in the direction of Germany and Scandinavia immediately after the fall of Troy. The aborigines of Scandinavia before this period were a few Lapps and Finns, who from this time forward were frequently overrun by immigrants from the south, the best known among whom were the Cimbri and the Goths. The people derived from a mixture of these races began to make themselves inconveniently known to their neighbours in the early ages of the Christian era by their piracies at sea. They were divided into tribes, each of which formed itself into a distinct community, subject to its own Jarl. The lands held by them were poor, and they had little disposition either for agriculture or trade; the whole of their life, therefore, was necessarily devoted to maritime expeditions. The age was that of giants and magicians, and of deeds of great hardihood and valour; and the traditions of the race are replete with accounts of both. In the ninth century Denmark was formed into a regular government by Gorm I., and Norway by Harold Haarfager (the fair-haired), who became their first kings respectively. Sweden. was later in adopting a similar organisation, which she received from Eric in 1001. But these changes did not give general satisfaction, and many of the pirate chiefs, embarking in their own ships, went away in disgust to Iceland, and the Faröe, Shetland, and Orkney isles, whence they annually ravaged the coasts of their old country; while others contented themselves by periodical depredations on the coasts of Britain and France. In Britain these invaders