with little or no encouragement, with a determination worthy of a better cause. The story of their discovery and arrest, as told by the prosecuting authorities, is as follows.

On the 28th of March (O.S.), 1875, an artisan, named Yakovlef, brought to the police authorities at Moscow some seditious books which had been given to him in a tavern by two peasants. The next morning the donors were arrested. Four days later came a woman who said that, as her lover had been imprisoned, she would like to give up the persons who had got him into trouble. They were members of a society which set at naught God, religion, and marriage, and desired to equalise the rich and the poor, with which intent they distributed books among peasants and artisans, urging them to rise in rebellion. This information led to the discovery of a nest of revolutionists, in whose house were found several seditious books and materials for forging permits and passports. Among the men were two Georgians, belonging to the class of nobles or gentry, named Djabadari and Tchekoidze, and a former student of the Technological Institute and the Medico-Surgical Academy, named Georgiefsky. Among the women, who all wore the dress of the common people, were a so-called Princess Tsitsianof; the two daughters, Olga and Vera, of an official named Liubatovich; two ladies belonging to the noble' class, named Sophie Bardine and Lydia Figner; and Betya Kaminsky, a merchant's daughter, who had studied at Zürich and at Bern. They all went under false names, and used forged passports, and most of the women worked in factories. One of them used to go in the evenings into the rooms set apart for the men, and read to them such books as the Tale of Four Brothers or the Cunning System, until at length the proprietor of the mill found a couple of revolutionary tracts which she had left there one night by mistake, whereupon he dismissed her. Some of the inmates of the seditious nest were arrested, but others made their escape for the time.

In the autumn of 1875 the police became aware of the existence of a secret society which was at work in Tula, Kief, Odessa, and some other towns. It turned out that some of the agitators who had escaped from Moscow, discouraged by the small amount of success they had obtained in that capital, had set up a provincial association, supplied with a code of laws and a common treasury, and were carrying on their revolutionary propaganda at different points. At Ivanovo-Voskresensk, for instance, a Tale of Four Brothers was given up to the police by a workman. It had been given to him, he said, by some weavers from Moscow, who stated that they had migrated thence because they were not sufficiently skilful for a metropolitan mill, wherefore they were generally known as the unskilled.' On their being arrested, 245 books and papers were found in their lodgings, as well as 253 roubles. In the purse of one

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of the women of the party was a writing in cipher. She tried to swallow it, but it was taken from her and laid on a table. Another of the women then repeated the attempt. A policeman seized her, and was in his turn seized by one of her companions, who called on the rest to assist. They attempted to do so, but the bystanders took the part of the police, who eventually got possession of the disputed document. It turned out to be a letter from Moscow, saying, ' We send you books and revolvers. Work, shoot, kill, raise revolt.' Another paper appeared at first sight to be merely a letter expressing sorrow at parting from a dear friend; but when read with the aid of a key it was found to convey certain information about the proceedings of the conspirators, how they had failed to effect the release of one of their number, and so forth. On further inquiry it appeared that the propagandists had come to the town from Moscow towards the end of May, and had obtained places as workers in factories. They lived in the same quarters, their women going barefooted, wearing the dress of the common people, fetching water, and doing all the work of the house for themselves. In the evenings, or on holidays, they would invite some of their factory companions to their lodgings, and would there read to them or give them books. Some of their papers showed that there was a revolutionary agent in Tula named Zlobine, the son of a government official, who had been serving for some time in a gun manufactory as a locksmith. There he had introduced revolutionary books among his companions, reading them aloud, explaining them, and inviting discussion. But the head centres at Moscow thought that he needed aid, so they sent several other agents to Tula. One of these, Kovalef, originally worked in a sugar factory at Kief. There he made the acquaintance of some of the propagandists, who induced him to go on their behalf to Tula, giving him five roubles out of their common purse to pay his travelling expenses. At Tula he co-operated for a time with the other agents of the society. Among these were the already mentioned Olga Liubatovich and a young man who passed as her brother. She called him so, she afterwards explained, because it would not have seemed right for her as a girl to be keeping house for a stranger.' But after a time Kovalef was severely reprimanded by a fellow-lodger for saying that he belonged to a society which renounced the Tsar, and sent agents among the common people to incite them to rebellion. So he repented of his co-operation, and betrayed his comrades to the police. This led to numerous arrests, including that of a young 'noble' named Sidoratsky, who had left the Kief Military Gymnasium in the spring, and had taken to being a locksmith, in order to be independent of his parents; also that of an ex-lieutenant of artillery named Petrof, who, finding himself without any other means of earning a livelihood, after suddenly leaving the Petrofsky Academy, bought a false passport for three roubles and went to work on a railway.

The prisoners were sent away by rail, and at the station a man named Gamkrelidze, who was seen making signs to one of the women, was arrested on suspicion. His rooms at the Ukraine Hotel in Moscow being searched, 300 seditious books were found, together with three revolvers, two of which were loaded. While the search was being made, a man and a woman entered the room, and were arrested by the police. The man drew a revolver, and twice fired at the officer in charge, but missed both times. An inspector immediately grappled with him, whereupon the woman seized the inspector by the throat, and tried to choke him off. But by the aid of the other policemen the two strangers were overpowered. The man turned out to be a Prince Tsitsianof, and the woman the Vera Liubatovich, whose name has already occurred. Their arrests led to those of the treasurer of the society, Stephan Kardashef, an ex-official, in whose quarters were found 9,645 roubles, and a number of books, proclamations, and other revolutionary publications. A little later a large bundle of books was confiscated at one of the Moscow and Kursk railway stations. It had been sent as a parcel containing bales of leather. The officials stole one of these supposed bales, substituting for it a log of wood, and then the nature of its contents came to light. Towards the end of September, also, a traveller styling himself Werner was arrested, who turned out to be one of the leaders of the propaganda. He was really a George Zdanovich, born in the Caucasus, the son of an ex-captain in the army. In his luggage were found 2,450 books, the MS. of a Programme of Action,' a number of revolutionary addresses, and a loaded revolver. Together with these leading personages were also arrested a number of persons of less importance, belonging to various classes of society, a few being peasants or artisans. After more than a year's delay the prisoners were all tried in one batch at St. Petersburg. Full reports of the proceedings have been published in the Official Gazette (and from it transferred to other Russian newspapers), from which it is possible to obtain an idea of how the conspirators lived, what they thought, and at what they aimed.

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The most interesting by far of the conspirators are the women. The type of character which they represent is one which is very unfamiliar to us. We find it difficult to believe that young girls, belonging to what we should call the upper middle classes, well educated, and by no means destitute of culture, can leave their homes and go away, of their own free will, to lead a hard life among strange people of a lower class—and all for an idea. We can understand such a sacrifice being made in the cause, let us say, of religion or loyalty, but for the sake of irreligion and disloyalty it appears unaccountable. Yet it was just because these young women refused to respect any existing laws, whether claiming to be of divine or of human origin, because they looked upon Church and State as equally obsolete

institutions, and because they wished to sweep away all political and social distinctions, and to leave nothing but a common land equally divided among the working classes, that they gave up their homes, and severed themselves from their kith and kin, and went into the wilds of Russian city life as Nihilistic missionaries. They had nothing to gain by the changes which they desired to bring about; they had everything to lose if their efforts should be detected. And yet they worked on, amid discouragement and discomfort, with neverceasing energy and determination. There must be something radically wrong in the institutions of a country when the good qualities of its inhabitants become enlisted on the side of rebellion.

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One of the girls, it appears from the evidence, is the daughter of a priest named Vvedensky, who has five other children. how hard it was for me to get on,' he testified, and so she turned her attention towards increasing my means.' She helped to educate her two sisters, and she worked very hard herself. Seeing that she had more than ordinary capacities, her father enabled her to go to Moscow, where she was allowed to attend without payment the lectures for women delivered by the Professors of the University. And there she studied so diligently that her father may well have looked forward to her being of valuable aid to him in the difficult task of bringing up a large family on small means. The two sisters Liubatovich had been sent abroad by their father, who held the official rank of Collegiate Assessor,' on account of one of them being in bad health. When they returned to Russia, they were arrested on the frontier, but released on bail. They were valued, one at 1,000 roubles, and the other at 2,000,' said their father in his evidence, who gave their ages as twenty and twenty-one. It was one of them, Olga, who kept house at Tula for a so-called brother, and had gatherings of workpeople in his rooms with a view to making converts to the cause of revolution; and it was the other sister, Vera, who tried to choke off the policeinspector from her companion, Prince Tsitsianof, after the latter's attempt to shoot the officer who arrested him. From her earliest years, deposed her father in the course of the trial, Vera was of so fierce a temper that her mother called her the wolf-cub.' The other young women who were engaged in the conspiracy resembled for the most part those above mentioned, as well in their social position as in their previous careers. The three sisters Subbotine were daughters of a captain in the army; Elena Medvedef's father bore the official rank of Titular Councillor;' Ekaterina Anserof was a priest's daughter. Anna Toporkof came from an inferior class, that of the artisans; but she had been sent, at the expense of one of the sisters Subbotine, to study at Zürich, whence she returned to act as a revolutionary agent.

Marriage seems to have been looked upon by the female propagandists as an obsolete institution, to which recourse was to be had

only for the purpose of obtaining freedom from parental rule or funds for the revolutionary chest. In the rooms occupied by one of them, named Batiushkof, a letter was found in which the writer said that she could not receive a legacy which had been left her until she got married, and therefore entreated her friends Vera and Natasha to busy themselves to find some volunteer or other' who would consent 'to act this comedy' with her. In such a case the end fully justifies the means,' she stated, after which she went on to say that if two of their friends were spoken to on the subject, perhaps one of them will consent, unless they are at present busied with more important affairs.' Two marriages of this kind really did take place between members of the society. On the 13th of July, 1875, Ekaterina Tumanof was married to Antimos Gamkrelidze in Moscow. The bride came to church without having taken the trouble to don a wedding garment, and the bridegroom and his friends did not appear to realise the solemnity of the occasion. After the wedding breakfast the bride drove away, leaving her husband to his own devices, and soon afterwards started for Ivanovo-Voskresensk, there to carry on her proselytising. Her dowry consisted in a bank bill for 1,000 roubles, which was afterwards found when the treasury of the association was confiscated. On the same day another of the young women was married at Odessa to a fellow-conspirator, who borrowed, for the time being, the name and title of that Prince Tsitsianof who was just then acting as a witness of Gamkrelidze's marriage in Moscow. The bride, having received her dowry, went away immediately to carry on the revolutionary campaign in Kief. A priest's daughter, Ekaterina Anserof, having been educated at a gymnasium together with the sisters Subbotine, wanted to go abroad with them, but her parents would not consent. Some of her Nihilistic friends urged her to get over the difficulty by nominally marrying one Joselian, in which case she could also obtain her dowry and pay it into the common fund; but the scheme came to naught.

What the men were like who were associated with these young women we have already seen. They were chiefly restless spirits who had commenced academical, or medical, or military careers, and then turned aside into the more exciting field of revolutionary agitation. Almost all of them the sons of small landed proprietors or of professional men, they represented to some extent the educated youth of Russia, with the exception of what we should call its aristocratic section. It is true that two princes figured among their ranks, but they belonged to that Georgian aristocracy which has little in common with the princely Russian families, and still less with the nobles of Western Europe. Mr. Mackenzie Wallace mentions in his Russia that a Prince Krapotkine is said to have lived as a cabdriver in St. Petersburg. Another Prince Krapotkine joined the ranks of the Nihilists, and distinguished himself after his arrest by a daring