impeachment against the ministers for promulgating this ordinance for a modification of the constitution. In 1857 a treaty was made between Denmark and the principal states of Europe for the abolition of the Sound dues. Each maritime state agreed to pay a sum which was capitalized at 4 per cent. calculated on the average of five years. The share paid by England was £1,125,206. The disaffection of Holstein to the Danish government continued.

On the 4th of November, 1862, the "London Gazette" announced that the queen of England, in council, had given her consent to a matrimonial contract between the prince of Wales and the princess Alexandra, the daughter of prince Christian of Denmark. The following year prince William George of Denmark was elected king of Greece by the national assembly, and was proclaimed under the title of George I. The approval of England and France was given to this appointment. About the same time the king of Denmark issued a proclamation for consolidating and giving a constitution to his European dominions, exclusive of those belonging to the Germanic Confederation. Holstein was to have an army of its own and to bear its share in the burdens of the state, of which the details were to be declared upon by the legislature of the estates. In 1863, on the accession of Christian IX. to the throne of Denmark, the states of Holstein refused to take the oath of allegiance. This was followed by a proclamation of the duke of Holstein Augustenburg announcing his claim to the duchy, which was admitted by the German diet at Frankfort. The Danish government then sent a force to Kiel and forbad the meeting of the Holstein diet. The Saxon and Hanoverian troops, acting for the federal diet of Germany, marched into Altona and took possession of it, announcing that the proceeding was without prejudice to the rights of the king of Denmark, which were regarded as only temporarily suspended. On this the Danish troops withdrew. But the troops of the German Confederation, armed by the authority of the diet of Frankfort, extended their occupation to Schleswig, upon which Austria and Prussia declared that they should take the matter in hand, and called upon Denmark to annul the constitution by which Schleswig had been incorporated into the kingdom. To this the sanction of the Danish parliament, or Rigsraad, was refused, and marshal Wrangel, at the head of 70,000 men, summoned general de Meya, the Danish commander,

to evacuate Schleswig. The reply was that he had received orders to defend it. The circumstances of this conflict have been noticed under the history of Prussia. On the 30th of October, 1864, a treaty of peace was signed at Vienna between Denmark, Prussia, and Austria, by which Denmark consented to resign the duchies, to pay a considerable sum of money, and to submit to a rectification of the frontier of Jutland. The combined powers of Austria and Prussia declined to recognize the claims of the duke of HolsteinAugustenburg to the duchies of Schleswig-Holstein, declaring their own intention to hold them temporarily, the king of Denmark, their legal possessor, having resigned them into their hands. Lauenburg was attached to Prussia, which, in its turn, paid a sum of money to Austria.

SWEDEN AND NORWAY.-Bernadotte, who reigned over Sweden and Norway (under the title of Charles XIV.) for twenty-six years, died in 1844, in the 81st year of his age. Since then the Scandinavian kingdom has taken no prominent part in the affairs of Europe. Nevertheless his reign was a period of prosperity for both nations, which were governed under separate constitutions. Sweden, by the king and his ministers, with a diet of four chambers meeting once in five years at Stockholm; Norway, by the king, with a separate ministry and a parliament of 100 representatives meeting at Christiana. Charles XIV. was succeeded by his son Oscar I., who died in 1859, and was in turn succeeded by his son Charles XV., who united literary ability to many good qualities of mind and disposition. He died in 1872, when his brother, Oscar II., inherited the throne.

RUSSIA. The name of Russia was never more respected, we might rather say dreaded, than under the violent autocrat Nicholas. On no point was he more determined than on the effectual suppression of the Polish nationality. He raised a loan in the name of Poland, while everywhere the Polish refugees publicly warned the world that Poland herself disclaimed the loan. Turkey was in the power of Russia, for Russia had saved her from Egypt. In the treaty of Adrianople Circassia had been made over to the Russians, but the Circassians nobly resisted the transfer. Meanwhile the emperor of the Russias began to see his way into Persian politics. The arbitration of Russia had been asked on the occasion of a disputed succession to the Persian throne, and though the decision was superseded by the death of the intended heir, a step was felt to

have been made in the advance towards British India. Nowhere did the hand of Nicholas press more heavily, than upon Cracow, which had been by the congress of Vienna declared a free state, under the protection of Russia, Austria, and Prussia. On the emperor's saint's day expressions were uttered which reached his ear, and excited his wrath. With the concurrence of the other powers, he took military occupation of the city, and cleared it within eight days of all liberal refugees. The Russians then dismissed the militia, banished foreigners, instituted a Russian censorship of the press, established the Greek church, and dismissed the diet or parliament. The policy of Nicholas, though on the whole peaceful, was not without war. In 1849, advices from Cracow announced the march of a large Russian army through Galicia, to assist the Austrians against the Hungarian insurgents. The Austrian and Russian emperors held a conference at Warsaw. Kronstadt (Transylv.) having been taken by the Russians, under general Lüders, a battle was fought between the Austro-Russian troops, under general Wohlgemuth, and the Hungarians, commanded by Görgey, in which the latter were forced to retreat. In the summer of the same year, the battle of Waitzen was fought, on the 14th and the 17th of July, between the Russians and Hungarians, when the latter, under Görgey, broke through the Russian lines and retreated northward behind the Theiss. Two days afterwards another engagement took place between the Hungarians and Austro-Russian forces at Komorn. The former, under Bem, were defeated at Szegedin by the great Russian general of the day, general Lüders. They were finally crushed by the Austrians, under general Haynau, at Temeswar, and an army of 25,000, under Görgey, surrendered to the Russians at Vilagos, near Grosswardein. On the other hand the arms of Russia were employed against the Circassian fortress of Achula, the residence of the Circassian chief Schamyl, who effected an escape. On the 10th of September the grand duke Michael died at Warsaw. The Hungarians and Polish refugees had betaken themselves in large numbers to the dominions of the sultan. Austria demanded their imprisonment and Russia their expulsion. They were sent by the government of the Porte to Konieh, in Asia Minor. A public meeting was held at this time in London, at the instance of

Mr. Cobden, to take into consideration a loan to Russia of 5 millions of money. In 1856 the Russian army was increased by 180,000 men, by a conscription of 7 men in each thousand of the population of western Russia. In 1851, the railway between Moscow and St. Petersburg was opened for traffic. It was in May, 1853, that the Russian ambassador, prince Menschikoff, presented the Russian ultimatum to the Turkish government claiming for the czar the protectorate of the Greek Christians in European Turkey, with the irremovability of the Greek patriarch of Constantinople and the provincial bishops, the Russian emperor being the arbitrator in cases of alleged offences on their part. The result being unsatisfactory, prince Menschikoff left Constantinople. Early in July, the Russian army crossed the Pruth, in order to occupy the provinces of Moldavia and Wallachia. The Porte soon afterwards declared war against Russia. Omer Pacha was ordered to summon prince Gortschakoff to evacuate these provinces, and to commence hostilities if necessary. An appeal having been made to France and England for material support, the united fleets of those nations sailed for Constantinople, and the Crimean war commenced, which has been narrated under the head of English affairs. The czar Nicholas died in the course of it, on March 2, 1855, and was succeeded by his son Alexander II. His policy appeared to be more pacific than that of his father, and he not unwillingly, after the evacuation of Sebastopol, entered into a treaty with the allies, as has been related. The first great act of his government was the emancipation of all the Russian peasants from the date March 3, 1861. They had hitherto been subjected to a species of slavery by which they were held as serfs inalienable from the estates to which they were attached; but by the new system they received personal freedom and secured the advantage of certain municipal laws. In 1872 apprehensions were excited in England by a Russian expedition to Khiva, a further step towards the Indian frontier. Khiva was taken, and certain concessions were made by the khan to Russia. Some indignation was also felt at the violation of one of the articles of the treaty of Paris after the Crimean war, by the appearance of Russian ships-of-war in the Black Sea, but this article was felt by the English government to be untenable, and the Black Sea became open. The foundation of more

friendly relations between England and Russia was laid by the marriage of the duke of Edinburgh with the grand duchess Marie of Russia in 1874, and the subsequent visit of the czar, her father, to England.

XXVI.-The Southern States of Europe from 1844. SWITZERLAND.-In October, 1846, a revolution took place at Geneva. Lucerne and the other six Roman Catholic cantons leagued themselves against the five Protestant cantons. Their principal incentive was to provide an educational measure according to their own religious views, which would have placed the young under the instruction of the Jesuits. It was opposed by the Protestant cantons, and the question came before the council of Geneva. The council were not sufficiently decided in their tone to satisfy the Protestants, who rebelled, deposed the council, and established a provisional government. Fighting took place, and several lives were lost. The canton of Lucerne refused to recognize the new government. The Swiss diet decreed the illegality of the Sonderbund or separate alliance of the seven Catholic cantons. These cantons protested against the decree and prepared to resist it. The diet then decreed the expulsion of the Jesuits from the Catholic cantons, whom these cantons, on the other hand, determined to support. A civil war was set on foot between the federal army of the Swiss diet and the forces of the Sonderbund. The Sonderbund forces, under General Salis-Soglio, were defeated at Roth. The federal general Dufour entered Lucerne without resistance. The league soon after sent in their submission to the diet. The king of Prussia, in a note to the diet, expressed his sense of grievance that the federal forces should have entered the canton of Neufchatel, of which he was the feudal head. In January, 1857, a meeting was held of the Swiss residents in London in support of their government in this dispute with Prussia. It ended by the national council of Switzerland accepting the mediation of France and England; and on the 26th of May a treaty was signed at Paris, by which the king of Prussia, on receiving an indemnity of 1,000,000 francs, resigned any claim to Neufchatel. In August, 1859, the federal assembly of Switzerland passed a law prohibiting the enrolment of Swiss troops in foreign services, under penalty of temporary imprisonment and loss of civil rights.

In 1865, Switzerland was a party entered into with