He kept his word; made
sympathetic reference to M. Kireeff in the opening of his Preface;
but passed in pursuance of his original design to a hostile
impeachment of Russia, its people, its church, its ruler. This was
an error of judgment and of feeling; and the lady, reading the
manuscript, indignantly desired him to burn the whole rather than
commit the outrage of associating her brother's name with an attack
on causes and personages dear to him as to herself. Kinglake
listened in silence, then tendered to her a crayon rouge, begging
her to efface all that pained her. She did so; and, diminished by
three-fourths of its matter, the Preface appears in Vol. I. of the
Cabinet Edition. The erasure was no slight sacrifice to an author
of Kinglake's literary sensitiveness, mutilating as it did the
integrity of a carefully schemed composition, and leaving visible
the scar. He sets forth the strongly sentimental and romantic side
of Russian temperament. Love of the Holy Shrines begat the war of
1853, racial ardour the war of 1876. The first was directed by a
single will, the second by national enthusiasm; yet the mind of
Nicholas was no less tossed by a breathless strife of opposing
desires and moods than was Russia at large by the struggle between
Panslavism and statesmanship.
Pages:
71
72
73
74
75
76
77
78
79
80
81
82
83
84
85
86
87
88
89
90
91
92
93
94
95