Herzen lived to see his ideas bearing fruit in the one way which of all others he would have sought to avoid, namely in "militancy" and terrorism. When in 1866, an attempt was made by Karakozov to assassinate Alexander II, and Herzen wrote an article repudiating all political assassinations as barbarous, the revolutionary parties solemnly denounced him and his newspaper. _The Bell_, which had already lost its popularity owing to Herzen's pro-Polish sympathies in 1863, ceased to have any circulation. Thus he lived to see his vast hopes shattered, the seed he had sown bearing a fruit he distrusted, his dreams of regeneration burst like a bubble, his ideals exploited by unscrupulous criminals. He died in 1870, leaving a name which is as great in Russian literature as it is remarkable in Russian history.
Turning now to the _Slavophiles_, their idea was that Russia was already in possession of the best possible institutions,--orthodoxy, autocracy, and communal ownership, and that the West had everything to learn from Russia. They pointed to the evils arising from the feudal and aristocratic state, the system of primogeniture in the West, the higher legal status of women in Russia, and the superiority of a communal system, which leads naturally to a Consultative National Assembly with unanimous decisions, over the parliaments and party systems of the West.
The leader of the Slavophiles was HOMYAKOV, a man of great culture; a dialectician, a poet, and an impassioned defender of orthodoxy. The best of his lyrics, which are inspired by a profound love of his country and belief in it, have great depth of feeling. Besides Homyakov, there were other poets, such as TYUTCHEV and IVAN AKSAKOV. Just as the camp of Reform produced in Herzen a supreme writer of memoirs, that of the Slavophiles also produced a unique memoir writer in the SERGE AKSAKOV, the father of the poet (1791-1859), who published his _Family Chronicle_ in 1856, and who describes the life of the end of the eighteenth century, and the age of Alexander. This book, one of the most valuable historical documents in Russian, and a priceless collection of biographical portraits, is also a gem of Russian prose, exact in its observation, picturesque and perfectly balanced in its diction.