LIBERALISM--EMANCIPATION OF SERFS When his life and the hard-earned conquests of centuries were together slipping away, the dying Emperor said to his son: "All my care has been to leave Russia safe without and prosperous within.

But you see how it is.

I am dying, and I leave you a burden which will be hard to bear." Alexander II., the young man upon whom fell these responsibilities, was thirty-seven years old.

His mother was Princess Charlotte of Prussia, sister of the late Emperor William, who succeeded to the throne of Prussia, left vacant by his brother in 1861.
His first words to his people were a passionate justification of his father,--"of blessed memory,"-- his aims and purposes, and a solemn declaration that he should remain true to his line of conduct, which "God and history would vindicate." It was a man of ordinary flesh and blood promising to act like a man of steel.

His own nature and the circumstances of his realm both forbade it.