SIR,—If the Emperor of All the Russias is so fortunate
as to see the friendly analysis of his character and position in your article entitled "A Word for the Ciar" (Spectator, July 23rd), its frankness, whether palatable or not, will certainly be whole- some for him. Your observations make me feel that the word "ineffectual," applied by Matthew Arnold to Marcus Aurelius, is better suited to Nicholas II. with his pathetic personality (not wholly unlike that of our Henry VI.), so thoroughly conscientious, but so weak and, at best, so helpless. More emphatically than St. Paul he might exclaim: " To will is present with me; but how to perform that which is good I find not." Indeed, the suggestive, and, if I may so say, modern-in-embryo, phrase employed by Herodotus (IIL 142) in his account of Maeandrius the Samian, might be given to his Majesty for a motto : Tw A ...IZOLSOTLLTV CiAp;;;;, • /3OvaOFufsy vimiadar, ovz itevirfro,—which may be freely translated thus : "He wished to be the justest of men ; but it fell out other- wise." (If slang were allowed, the abx iEvArero might be exactly rendered by " it didn't come off.") It was not; by the way, wholly in jest that, some years ago, a Colonial Chief Justice said in conversation: " The two most helpless men in Europe are the Pope and the Czar." What he meant, of course, was that the claims and pretensions of those august potentates were utterly out of proportion to their • real
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