About the year 1845, when the reaction against Romanticism was awakening in the reading public an interest in the affairs of real life,* began to appear what may be called “the men with aspirations,” a little band of generous enthusiasts, strongly resembling the youth in Longfellow’s poem who carries a banner with the device “Excelsior,” and strives ever to climb higher, without having any clear notion of where he was going or of what he is to do when he reaches the summit.  At first they had little more than a sentimental enthusiasm for the true, the beautiful, and the good, and a certain Platonic love for free institutions, liberty, enlightenment, progress, and everything that was generally comprehended at that period under the term “liberal.”  Gradually, under the influence of current French literature, their ideas became a little clearer, and they began to look on reality around them with a critical eye.  They could perceive, without much effort, the unrelenting tyranny of the Administration, the notorious venality of the tribunals, the reckless squandering of the public money, the miserable condition of the serfs, the systematic strangulation of all independent opinion or private initiative, and, above all, the profound apathy of the upper classes, who seemed quite content with things as they were.

     * Vide supra, p. 377 et seq.

With such ugly facts staring them in the face, and with the habit of looking at things from the moral point of view, these men could understand how hollow and false were the soothing or triumphant phrases of official optimism.  They did not, indeed, dare to express their indignation publicly, for the authorities would allow no public expression of dissatisfaction with the existing state of things, but they disseminated their ideas among their friends and acquaintances by means of conversation and manuscript literature, and some of them, as university professors and writers in the periodical Press, contrived to awaken in a certain section of the young generation an ardent enthusiasm for enlightenment and progress, and a vague hope that a brighter day was about to dawn.

Not a few sympathised with these new conceptions and aspirations, but the great majority of the nobles regarded them—­especially after the French Revolution of 1848—­as revolutionary and dangerous.  Thus the educated classes became divided into two sections, which have sometimes been called the Liberals and the Conservatives, but which might be more properly designated the men with aspirations and the apathetically contented.  These latter doubtless felt occasionally the irksomeness of the existing system, but they had always one consolation—­if they were oppressed at home they were feared abroad.  The Tsar was at least a thorough soldier, possessing an enormous and well-equipped army by which he might at any moment impose his will on Europe.  Ever since the glorious days of 1812, when Napoleon was forced to make an ignominious retreat from the ruins of Moscow, the belief that the Russian soldiers were superior to all others, and that the Russian army was invincible, had become an article of the popular creed; and the respect which the voice of Nicholas commanded in Western Europe seemed to prove that the fact was admitted by foreign nations.  In these and similar considerations the apathetically contented found a justification for their lethargy.