little friendly to them as the Russians. Even if the trade had been such as the Allies supposed, surely this was not the moment to raise the question. But the fact is, this interference arose from the misapprehensions which grow out of names wrongly applied. Europeans have given the name of slave to the Circassian damsels who come to Constantinople, and have invested them with that interest and compassion which justly belongs to those victims whom no law protects from the caprice of a master in the United States of America. The truth is far otherwise.

The purchase and sale of women,' says Baron Haxthausen (p. 8), 'is deeply rooted in the customs of the nation; every man buys his wife from the father or from the family.* On the part of the woman no shame is attached to the transaction, but rather a sense of honour. In her own country a Circassian girl lives in a state of slavish dependence on her father and brothers, her position is therefore raised when a man demands her in marriage, and stakes his fortune to obtain her. The Eastern girl sees in her purchase-price the test of her own value; the higher the offer, the greater her worth. The purchase of women being the common practice among the Circassian tribes, the slave dealers, to whom they are sold, are to be regarded simply as agents, who dispose of them in marriage in Turkey. Their parents know that a better lot awaits them there than at home, and the girls willingly go to Turkey, where, as this traffic has existed for years, they constantly meet their kindred.'

We are, therefore, not surprised when the Baron tells us that on one occasion when he was himself present, a vessel having been captured with some Circassian girls on board, the girls were offered their choice-to be sent back to their own country under safe escort, to marry Russians or Cossacks of their own free selection, to go with the Baron to Germany where all women are free, or to accompany the captain of the ship who would sell them in the slave-market at Constantinople-unanimously, and without hesitation they exclaimed, To Constantinople to be sold.'

Our own traveller Mr. Oliphant says of some damsels whom he saw at their mountain-home,

Circassian

A

'We laughingly asked some of these young ladies if they would come with us to Stamboul; and their eyes sparkled with delight at the idea, as they unhesitatingly expressed their willingness to do so. Circassian young lady anticipates with as much relish the time when she shall arrive at a marketable age, as an English young lady does

The Circassian buys his wife, but at the same time he is obliged, pro formá, to steal her, and carry her off privately. This is the only reputable manner of obtaining possession of the bargain.

the

the prospect of her first London season. But we have prevented the possibility of their forming any more of those brilliant alliances which made the young ladies of Circassia the envy of Turkeydom. The effect is, in fact, very much the same as that which an Act of Parlia ment would have in this country, forbidding any squire's daughter to marry out of her own parish, thus limiting her choice to the curate, the doctor, and the attorney, and the result in all probability will be anything but beneficial to the morality of the community.'

The truth is, that the Circassians are in the habit of sending their daughters to Constantinople for an establishment, an inducement which is commonly supposed to have some weight even in England. The girls upon their arrival at Constantinople are almost without exception respectably married, and it is ridiculous to use the words 'slaves' or 'slavery' in such cases.

Having effected this sentimental reform, we left the Circassians to their fate. The causes which led to their abandonment by England may be summed up in these words-absence of policy on the part of the Government, and ignorance and indifference on the part of the nation. As we have seen, no means were taken by a judicious choice of agents to ascertain the condition of Circassia, and to direct public opinion towards what ought to have been done for that country and what it was practicable to do. The Turkish army was uselessly detained in the Crimea, instead of being left free to act in a congenial field of operations; and when at last it was permitted to leave Sebastopol, the season was already too far advanced, and the rains compelled Omer Pasha to put an end to his campaign in Mingrelia, which had begun favourably. When the period of negotiation arrived, it is singular that whilst we were tenacious as to Bolgrad and in keeping Russia away from the mouths of the Danube, not a word was said about stipulations binding the Russians not to resume their blockade of the Circassian coast, and preventing their rebuilding the forts which had been destroyed. Such policy was like leaving one door open whilst making great efforts to close the other. No voice was raised in behalf of the Circassians at the Congress; the opportunity was lost for recognising their rights as a free and unconquered nation; they were abandoned by England, after all the encouragement she had given them, and her silence confirmed

*The first attempt that was made, perhaps from benevolent motives, but certainly under a thorough mistake, to interfere with the so-called Circassian slavetrade, was in the time when Lord Ponsonby was our Ambassador at Constantinople. It is said that he replied that he did not well know how he could execute his instructions, for the Turkish Foreign Minister and two of the other Ministers were themselves Circassian slaves, and it would be difficult for him to tell them, or to make them understand that they held a degraded position.

the

the privilege claimed by the Muscovites of hunting down one of the noblest races of mankind.

But to return to the inquiry why the Russians have spent so much blood and treasure in conquering the barren Circassian mountains. The mountains of the Caucasian chain are of no value in themselves, and their acquisition can only be looked upon as a means to an end. A wide extent of territory inhabited by Tatars intervened between the Caucasus and the provinces inhabited by a Russian population, so that the Russian empire had no danger to apprehend from the Circassians; but Russia had obtained by fraud the Christian kingdom of Georgia.* The Russian yoke is not sufficiently light to reconcile a nation to submit to it for ever, especially a nation which has a history and a church dating from the fourth century, and has maintained its separate existence through the wars of Timur and of the Persian monarchy; and Russia has reason to fear that Georgia will reassert her independence under some one of the surviving heirs of her ancient kings. With the Caucasus for a bulwark and its mountaineers for their allies, the Georgians might have again enjoyed national independence; but their chances of success will be very much diminished when the Caucasus shall have been depopulated, or its population so reduced as to be no longer capable of offering any resistance. But it is not merely for the sake of holding Georgia that the Tsar seeks to rivet his chains upon that country. Russia has no superabundant population to dispose of, and Siberia affords her a means of getting rid of disaffected subjects, so that her army of the Caucasus is not a political necessity for her, but only an expedient, and the advantages to be derived from the revenues of Georgia cannot be such as to counterbalance the expenditure for an army seldom less than a hundred and fifty thousand men, unless there were another object in view. This army in Georgia is a menace against Turkey and Persia; it presses especially upon Persia, and the continual fear of Russia has checked the progress and development of that country, which in the last few years, since it has been left more to itself, has laid down telegraphs and in other respects has been steadily advancing. Friends of Russia say that she has civilized Georgia; but beyond introducing the French language amongst the upper classes of Tiflis and erecting a theatre there, it is difficult to say in what way Georgia has been benefited by the Russian occupation. What Russian civilisation is there, may be learned from Lermontoff's

The Queen mother and her son King George XIII. were induced to leave Georgia and proceed to Russia, where this last of the Georgian kings surrendered his inheritance and the independence of his country to the Tsar Paul; and in 1801 Georgia was united to Russia.

Life in the Caucasus,' which has been translated into French and English, and of which it may fairly be said that it equals in iniquity the worst of French novels.

But Russia has an ulterior object in subjugating the Caucasian mountaineers, and this one more especially concerns England. So long as the Circassians and Daghestanlys could maintain their strongholds, and were in a position to occupy the passes of the Caucasus, Russia could not make use of Georgia as a safe base of operations against India; and of this we were repeatedly warned, whilst there was yet time to have done something by treaty stipulations to avert the evil. Alas! that the warnings should have been unheeded.

Although Sheikh Shamyl is not a Circassian, and his people have never combined with the mountaineers near the Black Sea, yet as he has so long been the protagonist in the Caucasian drama, it would be impossible not to mention him in writing of the Caucasus. His life offers a singular parallel to that of another man who has similarly occupied the attention of Europe. He and Abd-el-Kader both struggled at the head of their people for many years against overwhelming military force. Sheikh Shamyl (or Shamuyl, as his name should be spelt, for it is the same as Samuel), has shown much more power of organization and a higher military capacity than the Algerine Emir, but he had a mountain fastness into which he could retire to prepare for another blow; whilst Abd-el-Kader could only retreat into the shifting sands of the desert, and disperse his followers in order to reunite them at some other point. These two men have alike closed a noble career ingloriously, and the motive with both has been personal ambition. Sheikh Shamyl was not the hereditary chief of the confederation of which he was the soul. He owed his authority solely to his religious character, and to his military capacity: he wished to bequeath this chieftainship to his son. The tribes were not willing to acquiesce, and being disappointed in these expectations, Shamyl treated with the Russians, and, instead of dying at his post and bequeathing to history an unsullied name, which would have ranked with that of William Tell, he unfortunately preferred to become a pensioned prisoner of the enemy whom he had so long defied. If he had been only wearied with a hopeless struggle, and anxious to save his countrymen from further sufferings, it was open to him to have bid them make terms for themselves, and to have taken refuge in some other part of Asia, closing his days in devotion, thus ending his life as he had commenced it. Again, although Abd-el-Kader had been imprisoned in France in violation of the plighted word of a

French

French General and of a son of the French King, yet when a Sovereign of another French dynasty set him again at liberty, gratitude required him not to take part or to act against his liberator. These feelings did not, however, make it necessary for him to become a flatterer of the French, and an agent of France, on account of the prospect of the Government of Syria that was dangled before his eyes. In short, both Sheikh Shamyl and Abdel-Kader have preferred the part of Themistocles to that of Leonidas.

The prestige of the diplomacy of Russia is far greater than that of her army, and it has not been in any way lessened by the events of late years; whilst on the contrary the ideas formed of the Russian army in 1812 and 1815 have been materially modified. The almost uniform success of the Russian schemes has given rise to the erroneous belief that the generality of Russian diplomatic agents are superior to those of other countries, and particularly to those of England. The success of Russia is owing as much to her having an undeviating policy, and to the sleepless activity and concentrated attention of her Foreign Office, as to the somnolent indifference of the rest of the world. Russians as individuals are not only not superior, but they cannot claim to be equal to educated Englishmen: their education does not admit of it. For instance, they pass for the first linguists of Europe, because they learn from their nurses and governesses to talk German, English, and French with fluency; but it is notorious that at the Court of the Emperor Nicholas, their own language was entirely neglected, and many ladies were actually unable to speak it at all. To be a linguist it is necessary to be a grammarian, and there is no other road to that accomplishment than to plod through the Latin grammar; so that it was not without good reason that Joseph de Maistre drew the boundary of civilised Europe there where Latin ceased to be taught. Russian diplomacy has an advantage in the entire concurrence of action on the part of her agents, and their unswerving obedience to their orders,-backed by the fear of Siberia. This is wanting in England, as it must be in all free countries; but in the occasional independent advice and action of such men as Lord Ponsonby and Lord Stratford de Redcliffe, and in the energy and freely expressed opinions of unofficial persons, our country finds much to counterbalance the unfitness of many of our public agents. of our public agents. We extract a valuable and striking passage from Mr. Oliphant's account of Omer Pasha's Transcaucasian campaign, published before the peace :—

'Both these objects (the promotion of English and Mingrelian interests), as it appears to me, might be gained by stipulations which should have the effect of abolishing those mercantile restrictions