Author: MILNER, Thomas.
Title: Russia: its rise and progress, tragedies and revolutions.
Description: London: Longman, Brown, Green, and Longmans, 1856. 8vo. xv, 500p. Engraved frontispiece portrait of Vassali V, with partial offsetting onto title-page. Full light brown calf (in very good condition), covers decorated with double gold fillets and with a small fleuron at each corner; gold-tooled spine; marbled endpapers; marbled-edged leaves; fly leaves spotted. Inscription on front free endpaper: "Frank Cecil with the best wishes of Lewis Cochran on his leaving Eton Xmas 1864". ***** A history of Russia beginning with the legend that St. Andrew had introduced Christianity to the Slavs, and ending with the accession of Nicholas I in 1825. The author is critical of Catherine the Great - "an infidel to all forms of faith" who "publicly squandered ... no less a sum than 88,820,000 roubles" and who in her Code of Laws committed literary larceny by pillaging the writings of Montesquieu and Beccaria. "To have submitted to the rule of a foreign woman, like Catherine, without the shadow of a title to the throne, stamps Russia at the time as the most debased of nations." Milner, a Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society, also wrote works on the Baltic, the Crimea, and the Ottoman Empire.

Keywords: Russia, travel, antiquarian


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