the subject, they received in the early part of the past year, a communication from an American gentleman, suggesting as an effectual means of redress, the insertion in the Magazine, from time to time, of an article from a native or naturalised citizen of the United States, who should establish a copyright in his own person, or that of an assignee, and thus either protect the whole work or compel the publishers of the pirated edition to reprint it in an imperfect form, such as would materially check their success, and, in either way, break up the system. The tone and talent of this communication seemed to the publishers to recommend their correspondent as himself well qualified to lead the way in this most righteous enterprise, and the result was, the appearance in the October number of the article "Maga in America," which has been highly relished on both sides of the Atlantic. Of this article a proof was despatched to Mr Jay, a solicitor of eminence in New York, who, with the utmost promptitude, registered the copyright in his own name, and, presenting himself to Messrs Scott, the reprinters, inquired if they were about to publish the Magazine, as usual, that month, as he thought it right to inform them that, by so doing, they would be placed in a delicate position. On hearing an explanation, Messrs Scott were considerably taken aback, and, although unwilling to acknowledge that the game was up, they seemed to have a painful consciousness that such was the case. The negotiation terminated in the meantime, in their agreeing, after various letters, and not a little conversation, to pay a sum as copyright, before they issued the October number, and a like amount for each succeeding number, until a further arrangement were made. It would have been very easy for the proprietors to have brought the reprinters under heavy responsibilities, by giving them no hint of their movements, and allowing the October number to be published as usual, when Messrs Scott would have become liable to a severe penalty for every copy sold. This was not done, as no blame is attached personally to Messrs Scott, who have merely acted under a bad system, in which any one publisher might think himself free to seize an advantage which was open to all. This movement has been most cordially welcomed by the American press, and it will be a source of great pleasure and pride to the Messrs Blackwood, if the step they have taken should in any degree, however humble, assist in establishing an international copyright, which alone can effectually check a system of reprinting which is ruinous to American authors, and only very moderately profitable to American publishers, who are compelled, by the fear of rival reprints, to sell at a price which leaves a narrow margin of profit, even with no expense but paper and print. They are also in their turn afflicted with a host of smaller weekly pirates, who select the best, or at least the most attractive articles from all the periodicals, and serve them up in a cheap form, not without seasoning sometimes of a very questionable character both in taste and in morals. The more operose contemporaries of Maga will learn with some surprisewhether pleasant or painful, it would be presumptuous to say that the buoyancy of her contents scems to be used to float off a few hundred copies of their ponderous productions, which might otherwise be stranded without help or hope. It appears that subscribers are obtained to no less than four quarterly publications, by the inducement that, on such condition, they will receive Blackwood at two-thirds of the price. Edinburgh, January 1, 1848. Printed by William Blackwood and Sons, Edinburgh. BLACKWOOD'S EDINBURGH MAGAZINE. No. CCCLXXXVIII. FEBRUARY, 1848. VOL. LXIII. THE RUSSIAN EMPIRE. RUSSIA is the most extraordinary country on the globe, in the four most important particulars of empire,its history, its extent, its population, and its power. It has for Europe another interest, -the interest of alarm, the evidence of an ambition which has existed for a hundred and fifty years, and has never paused; an increase of territory which has never suffered the slightest casualty of fortune; the most complete security against the retaliation of European war; and a government at once despotic and popular; exhibiting the most boundless authority in the sovereign, and the most boundless submission in the people; a mixture of habitual obedience, and divine homage: the reverence to a monarch, with almost the prostration to a divinity. Its history has another superb anomaly Russia gives the most memorable instance in human annals, of the powers which lie within the mind of individual man. Peter the Great was not the restorer, or the reformer of Russia; he was its moral creator. He found it, not as Augustus found Rome, according to the famous adage, 'brick, and left it marble:" he found it a living swamp, and left it covered with the fertility of laws, energy, and knowledge he found it Asiatic, and left it European he removed it as far from Scythia, as if he had placed the diameter of the globe between : he found it not brick, but mire, and he transformed a region of huts into the magnificence of empire. Russia first appears in European history in the middle of the ninth century. Its climate and its soil had till then retained it in primitive barbarism. The sullenness of its winter had prevented invasion by civilised nations, and the nature of its soil, one immense plain, had given full scope to the roving habits of its half famished tribes. The great invasions which broke down the Roman empire, had drained away the population from the north, and left nothing but remnants of clans behind. Russia had no Sea, by which she might send her bold savages to plunder or to trade with Southern and Western Europe. And, while the man of Scandinavia was subduing kingdoms, or carrying back spoil to his northern crags and lakes, the Russian remained, like the bears of his forest, in his cavern during the long winter of his country; and even when the summer came, was still but a melancholy savage, living like the bear upon the roots and fruits of his ungenial soil. It was to one of those Normans, who, instead of steering his bark towards the opulence of the south, turned his dreary adventure to the north, that Russia owed her first connexion with intelligent mankind. Secret History of the Court and Government of Russia, under the Emperors Alexander and Nicholas. By H. SCHNITZLER. Two vols. Bentley: London. VOL. LXIII.-NO. CCCLXXXVIII. I The people of Novgorod, a people of traders, finding themselves overpowered by their barbarian neighbours, solicited the aid of Ruric, a Baltic chieftain, and, of course, a pirate and a robber. The name of the Norman had earned old renown in the north. Ruric came, rescued the city, but paid himself by the seizure of the surrounding territory, and founded a kingdom, which he transmitted to his descendants, and which lasted until the middle of the sixteenth century. In the subsequent reign we see the effect of the northern pupillage; and an expedition, in the style of the Baltic exploits, was sent to plunder Constantinople. This expedition consisted of two thousand canoes, with eighty thousand men on board. The expedition was defeated, for the Greeks had not yet sunk into the degeneracy of later times. They fought stoutly for their capital, and roasted the pirates in their own canoes, by showers of the famous "Greek fire." Those invasions, however, were tempting to the idleness and poverty, or to the avarice and ambition of the Russians; and Constantinople continued to be the great object of cupidity and assault, for three hundred years. But the city of Constantine was destined to fall to a mightier conqueror. Still, the northern barbarian had now learned the road to Greece, and the intercourse was mutually beneficial. Greece found daring allies in her old plunderers, and in the eleventh century she gave the Grand-duke Vladimir a wife, in the person of Anna, sister of the emperor Basil II; a gift made more important by its being accompanied by his conversion to Christianity. A settled succession is the great secret of royal peace but among those bold riders of the desert, nothing was ever settled, save by the sword; and the first act of all the sons, on the decease of their father, was, to slaughter each other; until the contest was settled in their graves, and the last survivor quietly ascended the throne. But war, on a mightier scale than the Russian Steppes had ever wit nessed, was now rolling over Central Asia. The cavalry of Genghiz Khan, which came, not in squadrons, but in nations, and charged, not like troops, but like thunderclouds, began to pour down upon the valley of the Wolga. Yet the conquest of Russia was not to be added to the triumphs of the great Tartar chieftain; a mightier conqueror stopped him on his way, and the Tartar died. His son Toushi, in the beginning of the thirteenth century, burst over the frontier at the head of halfTM a million of horsemen. The Russian princes, hastily making up their quarrels, advanced to meet the invader; but their army was instantly trampled down, and, before the middle of the century, all the provinces, and all the cities of Russia, were the prey of the men of the wilderness. Novgorod alone escaped. The history of this great city would be highly interesting, if it were possible now to recover its details. It was the chief depot of the northern Asiatic commerce with Europe; it had a government, laws, and privileges of its own, with which it suffered not even the Khan of the Tartars to interfere. Its population amounted to four hundred thousand then nearly equal to the population of a kingdom. In the thirteenth century it connected itself still more effectively with European commerce, by becoming a member of the Hanseatic League; and the wonder and pride of the Russians were expressed in the well-known half-profane proverb, "Who can resist Gon, and the great Novgorod?" There is always something almost approaching to picturesque grandeur in the triumphs of barbarism. The Turk, until he was fool enough to throw away the turban, was the most showy personage in the world. The Arabs, under Mahomet, were the most stately of warriors, and the Spanish Moors threw all the pomp, and even all the romance, of Europe into the shade. Even the chiefs of the "Golden Horde" seemed to have had as picturesque a conception of supremacy as the Saracen. Their only city was a vast camp, in the plains between the Caspian and the Wolga; and while they left the provinces in |
