It is a singular circumstance that although, up to the time of Ivan the
Great, Russia had apparently not one thing in common with the states of
Western Europe, they were still subject to the same great tides or
tendencies and were moving simultaneously toward identical political
conditions. An invisible but compelling hand had been upon every
European state, drawing the power from many heads into one. In Spain,
Ferdinand and Isabella had brought all the smaller kingdoms and the
Moors under one united crown. In France, Louis XI. had shattered the
fabric of feudalism, and by artful alliance with the people had
humiliated and subjugated the proud nobility. Henry VIII. had
established absolutism in England, and Maximilian had done the same for
Germany, while even the Italian republics, were being gathered into the
hands of larger sovereignties. From this distance in time it is easy
to see the prevailing direction in which all the nations were being
irresistibly drawn.

The hour had struck for the tide to flow toward _centralisation_; and
Russia, remote, cut off from all apparent connection with the Western
kingdoms, was borne along upon the same tide with the rest, as if it
was already a part of the same organism! There, too, the power was
passing from the many to one: first from many ruling families to one
family, then from all the individual members of that family to a
supreme and permanent head--the Tsar.

There were many revolutions in Russia from the time when the Dolgorukis
turned the life-currents from Kief to the North; many centers of
volcanic energy in fearful state of activity, and many times when ruin
threatened from every side. But in the midst of all this there was one
steady process--one end being always approached--a consolidation and a
centralization of authority before which European monarchies would