GEOGRAPHY IN RUSSIAN HISTORY 15 



Moscow, Kiev, Petersburg and other places still have the appearance 

 of ecclesiastical cities. 



But there is another important factor underl3dng the slow develop- 

 ment of Eussia, It is the tremendous size of the Eussian plain when 

 considered in connection with the sparseness of the population. The 

 average density of population for the Eussian Empire is about 8 per- 

 sons per square verst. In comparison with western Europe it is 20 

 times less than in England, 15 times less than in Germany and 10 times 

 less than in France. This adds local isolation to national isolation 

 for even to-day only about 14 per cent, of the population live in towns 

 or near enough to be seriously influenced by the civilizing agencies of 

 modern city life. At least four fifths of Eussia is untouched by those 

 powerful engines for progress in the western world, the public press 

 and education. What this means especially during t'he long Eussian 

 winter with its enforced change of employment and relaxation of effort 

 is manifest. There is sound geographic basis for the joy so constantly 

 found in Eussian literature at tke return of spring after the prolonged 

 winter : 



Spring, beautiful Spring! Come O Spring with joy! 



"With great goodness, With tall flax, 



With deep roots, With abundant corn. 



These lines have an element of strength that is born of the soil. In- 

 deed they recall the fact that the immense size of the Eussian plain re- 

 veals its influence in quite another and subtler way ; in a certain largeness 

 of character and outlook that can not be judged by the standard test of 

 illiteracy. One feels it in one's associations, not only with the educated 

 but with the people at large. Nor need one go to Eussia for this; no 

 one can read the Eussian novel and not be impressed by a quality that 

 is the very essence of the country's immensity. Gogol's Homeric 

 romance of Eussian history, " Taras Bulba," is crammed with it. It 

 is a story of the old Cossacks in all their barbarous love of fighting, 

 eating and drinking, their giant physical strength and vitality, their 

 intense patriotism, and as W. L. Phelps puts it, 



their blazing devotion to their religious faith. . . . These Cossacks are veritable 

 children of the steppes, and their vast passions, their Homeric laughter, their 

 absolute recklessness in battle, are simply an expression of the boundless range 

 of the mighty landscape. 



Turgeniev's " Sketches of a Huntsman " though in a setting nearer 

 Moscow and therefore totally different, has it just as does " War and 

 Peace" by the greatest of all Eussians, Leo Tolstoi. There is plenty 

 of local color, of boundless steppes and forest, broad rivers, illimitable 

 snow and long winter nights, but it all has an atmosphere of vastness 

 that is wide as the world in its reach. The characters are cast in a large 

 mould and the problems, though national in setting, are worldwide in 

 their appeal. There is in Tolstoi a quality that is bred of the vicissi- 



