12 



ALEXANDER II. 



ANGLICAN CHURCHES. 



which it was the prelude the Chancellor was 

 not responsible. He, as well as the Finance 

 Minister, and other members of the Cabinet, 

 earnestly tried to dissuade the Czar from his 

 attitude to the Slav agitation which led to the 

 Turkish War. The Emperor had no sympathy 

 with the Panslavistic cause. Between him 

 and the Philoslav party there were only mutual 

 distrust and repulsion. But he refused to 

 check the belligerent proceedings of the Sla- 

 vonic Benevolent Society and the Moscow Sla- 

 vonic Society, or to forbid his officers to volun- 

 teer in tin- Servian War, because his sympathies 

 were with the Turkish Christians, and he could 

 not in his conscience disapprove the intense 

 popular feeling of the time. The traditional 

 duty of the Czar to protect the Orthodox 

 Christians of Turkey was present in his mind, 

 not the desire of founding a Panslavic em- 

 pire or of forcing the Eastern question and 

 conquering the Bosporus. He was drawn 

 into the war without anticipating it. The 

 speech which he made at Moscow, in which 

 he declared that, if Europe would not secure a 

 better position for the oppressed Slavs, Russia 

 would act alone, he expected would serve as a 

 menace which would be sufficient to bring 

 Turkey to her reason. He was with the army 

 until after the capture of Plevna, visiting the 

 hospitals frequently and winning the hearts of 

 the soldiers by the sincere sympathy and kind- 

 ness which he showed for the sick and wounded. 

 The grief which he felt for the misery caused 

 by the war was recognized by the people. He 

 was called the " Martyr " and the " Guardian 

 Angel." Yet he refused to listen to advisers 

 who urged the conclusion of peace before the 

 Turkish power was broken. 



The first attempt on the Czar's life was in 

 1866. The following year he was assaulted 

 with murderous intent in the Bois de Boulogne 

 at Paris. After the conclusion of the Berlin 

 Treaty, the flames of Nihilism burst out all over 

 Russia. It became evident that every branch 

 of the public service, every social circle, even 

 the higher ranks of officials, the first families 

 of the aristocracy, and probably the imperial 

 family itself, contained agents and friends of 

 the revolution. A mania for desperate con- 

 spiracy seemed to rage. Heterogeneous dis- 

 affected elements sought to attain their various 

 objects through a political cataclysm ; but the 

 authors and perpetrators of the revolutionary 

 deeds were the Russian socialists, the most 

 daring and resolute political conspirators of 

 any age. Every arrest and condemnation for 

 political crime was a provocation for acts 

 more flagrant and defiant. In 1879 the Em- 

 peror knew that his death was compassed by 

 the Nihilistic committee in St. Petersburg, the 

 central source of terrorism. The Czarina died 

 in 1879. The relations of the Czar to the 

 Princess Dolgorouky, his determination to 

 marry her morganatically, and the vehement 

 opposition. of his children, were the cause of ad- 

 ditional unhappiness at the time when he felt 



that the sword of Nihilism was suspended over 

 his head. He did not shrink from the task of 

 trying to extirpate the dangerous growth. 

 The measures taken are described in the last 

 two volumes of the " Annual Cyclopaedia." 

 In April, 1879, the school-master Solovieff fired 

 four times at the Czar in the palace garden at 

 St. Petersburg. In November the dynamite 

 mine was exploded on the Moscow Railroad, 

 which, owing to a change in the programme, 

 destroyed the baggage-train instead of the car- 

 riage in which the Emperor was traveling. 

 In February, 1 880, explosives fired in the cel- 

 lar of the Winter Palace would have destroyed 

 the Czar and his guests while at dinner, had he 

 not by a rare chance been a few minutes late. 

 Melikoff's administration of the extraordinary 

 powers confided to him seemed to be success- 

 ful in unearthing the Nihilist conspirators and 

 checking their activity. There was a prospect 

 that a man of his liberal ideas and popular 

 sympathies might eventually find out a remedy 

 for the disorder more effective than mere re- 

 pressive violence. But the murder of the 

 Czar altered the situation. The plot was laid 

 this time so that the Emperor could hardly 

 escape and his assassin must surely be captured. 

 Four conspirators were posted along the street 

 through which the Czar was driving home 

 from a review. Each had ready to cast a 

 small bomb of certain and terrible explosive 

 power. Confederates in the throng gave the 

 signal. The second petard proved fatal. The 

 particulars of the plot and the disclosures of 

 the trial of the conspirators are recounted in 

 the article RUSSIA. 



ANGLICAN CHURCHES. The clerical list 

 of the Church of England for 1880 contains 

 twenty-six thousand names, showing a gain 

 of about six thousand clergymen since 1859. 

 More than six thousand clergymen are not in 

 pastoral work. 



According to the report of the Ecclesiastical 

 Commissioners for England, four thousand sev- 

 en hundred benefices were augmented and en- 

 dowed by them between 1840 and 1880. The 

 increase in the incomes of benefices, from the 

 augmentations and endowments made by the 

 commissioners or through their instrumentality, 

 amounted on October 31, 1880, to about 756,- 

 500 per annum, representing the income from 

 a capital sum of about 23,000,000. 



The eighty-second annual meeting of the 

 Church Missionary Society was held in Lon- 

 don, May 3d, the Earl of Chichester presiding. 

 The total receipts for the year had been 207,- 

 508, of which 189,685 were applicable to the 

 general expenditure, the rest having come in 

 special contributions. Besides the European 

 missionaries, 110 native clergy and 1,720 lay 

 teachers were employed in the missions, and 

 1,000 schools were attached to them. The re- 

 port stated that between three and four thou- 

 sand well-instructed adult converts were bap- 

 tized each year through the society's labors. 

 The missions in India absorbed one half the mis- 





