Before seeing foreign countries, according to the wish of Nicholas, he travelled all over Russia. When he approached manhood, the prince de Lieven, formerly Russian ambassador in London, was made his tutor, principally to acquaint him with the diplomacy of Europe, its routine and etiquette, and to accompany him in his travels in England, Germany, and Italy. His father's antipathy to Louis Philippe, however, prevented him from visiting France during the reign of that king. On April 28, 1841, he married Maria Alexandrovna, daughter of the grand duke of Hesse-Darmstadt, born in 1824. It was wholly a love match, the young prince having made his own choice among a host of German princesses. His majority was declared on May 8, 1834, and from the age of 18 he was admitted by his father to study the diffi-cult task of governing the empire, by attendance at all the sittings of ministers with the emperor; and when in 1846 Nicholas resided for several months in Italy, he delegated to his son all his vast powers. Indeed, to the end of his father's life the relations of the two were most confidential and affectionate.

On March 2, 1855, he mounted the throne, at a most critical moment for Russia. Nicholas had left the country engaged single-handed in a war against England, France, Turkey, and Sardinia, with Austria as a passive enemy. For a year Alexander unflinchingly continued the strife. Sebastopol was taken in September, 1855; but the allies Avon nothing more, and the Russian resistance continued. During the ensuing winter the neutral German states, especially Prussia and Saxony, finding Louis Napoleon not averse to peace, offered mediation. An armistice was agreed upon in March, 1856, a conference convoked at Paris, and a final treaty concluded there on the 30th of that month. On Sept. 7, 1856, Alexander was solemnly crowned at Moscow. Since then he has relaxed the lines drawn to the utmost tension by his predecessor. He began with emancipating the nation from the military routine which permeated every branch of the administration, He reorganized the army, dissolved the greater part of the military colonies, freed public instruction from military discipline, and, instead of placing discharged officers as tutors and professors at the head of the educational establishments, appointed men fitted by special studies for these positions.

The censorship was considerably relaxed and limited, and for the first time genuine publicity was introduced into Russia. He prohibited espionage, and instituted measures against official corruption, allowing it to be ferreted out and exposed. He advanced young men in the different branches of the public service, superseding those whose only merit was long routine. He gave a new impulse to internal industry and trade, at the same time that he sought to develop the national commercial marine, and to induce native merchants to extend their relations with foreign countries. He annulled the impediments which prevented Russians from visiting foreign lands; granted a general amnesty for political offenders, Poles and Russians, recalling the exiles from Siberia, and allowing fugitives to return; and inaugurated that vast system of internal communication which is to cover his immense empire with nets of railroads. His greatest measure of reform, however, is the emancipation of the serfs. He had conceived from his earliest youth the idea of this measure, and was assisted by Nicholas Milutin and Gen. Bostoftzoff in the preliminary steps.

He silenced the opposition of the serf-owners by intimating to them that if there was to be revolution, it had better begin at the summit than at the bottom of society. Their emancipation was decreed March 3, 1861, and carried out within the following two years. His reformatory activity, however, was in-terrupted, and to a degree checked, by the Polish insurrection of January, 1863, which was finally crushed in the spring of 1864, and punished by the most rigorous measures against Polish nationality, followed by restrictions of a milder kind imposed upon other non-Russian provinces of the empire. In 1865 the czar rejected the demand of the old Moscow nobility for a representative government. An attempt upon his life, April 16, 1866, by Dimitri Karakozoff, was frustrated by the interposition of the peasant Komisaroff, who was ennobled as a reward for his action. A second attempt upon his life was made at the Paris exhibition of 1867, by Berezowski, a Pole. The work of reform was resumed in 1870, when the surprising successes of the Germans startled the Russian nation. The hereditary character of the priesthood was abolished, the army system was reorganized on the Prussian model, and vast measures for education were inaugurated.

While persevering in his steady progress of annexation in central Asia, the czar in 1867 divested himself of his foothold on the American continent by the sale of Alaska. During the Franco-German war he secured at the London conference of 1870, by a modification of the treaty of Paris of 1850, the deneutralization of the Black sea. - Alexander Alex-androvitch, son of the preceding, and, since the death of his elder brother Nicholas in 1865, cezarevitch or heir apparent to the throne, was born March 10, 1815. In 1866 he married the Danish princess Dagmar, who had been engaged to his elder brother. Their eldest child, Nicholas Alexandrovitch, was horn May 18, 1868. The cezarevitch is noted for his sympathies with the old Russian party, who are prejudiced against the Germans, and against all foreigners. His younger brother, the grand duke Alexis, visited the United States in 1871-'2.

1814, he visited London, where he was brilliantly received. In July of the same year he made a short visit to St. Petersburg. The senate proffered to him the title of " God-sent," which he refused. At the congress of Vienna, of which he was the most influential member, he gave to his newly conquered subjects, the Poles, a constitution, of which Car-not said that it was too good to be observed. - Napoleon's escape from Elba now shook Europe anew. On March 13, 1815, Alexander signed the proclamation by which the great soldier was outlawed. Waterloo soon followed, and for the second time Alexander entered Paris victoriously, July 11, 1815. His religious excitement now increased, and with it his indifference first, and then his hostility to liberty. In Paris, in 1815, under the inspirations of the celebrated Mme, Krudener, he formed the holy alliance, which was to base the political order of the world on the principles of Christianity, or, as it came to be understood, of despotism. The czar now took the lead in European affairs. In Russia trade and industry revived, and efforts were made to expand the national resources. Alexander was inspired with the best intentions, but lacked the energy to carry them out.