and political questions would have been regarded in America, or even in western Europe, as very moderate, and he had never taken any part in Russian revolutionary agitation. He was, however, a man of impetuous temperament, high standard of honor, and great frankness and directness of speech; and these characteristics were perhaps enough to attract to him the suspicious attention of the Russian police.
"I am not a nihilist nor a revolutionist," he once said to me indignantly, "and I never have been. I was exiled simply because I dared to think, and to say what I thought, about the things that happened around me, and because I was the brother of a man whom the Russian Government hated."
Prince Kropótkin was arrested the first time in 1858, while a student in the St. Petersburg University, for having in his possession a copy in English of Emerson's "Self-Reliance" and refusing to say where he obtained it. The book had been lent to him by one of the faculty, Professor Tikhonrávof, and Kropótkin might perhaps have justified himself and escaped unpleasant consequences by simply stating the fact; but this would not have been in accordance with his high standard of personal honor. He did not think it a crime to read Emerson, but he did regard it as cowardly and dishonorable to shelter himself from the consequences of any action behind the person of an instructor. He preferred to go to prison. When Professor Tikhonrávof heard of Kropótkin's arrest he went at once to the rector of the university, and admitted that he was the owner of the incendiary volume, and the young student was thereupon released.
After his graduation from the university Kropótkin went abroad, studied science, particularly astronomy, and upon his return to Russia made a number of important translations of French and English scientific works into his native language. Finally he entered the Government service, and
