THE AWAKENING OF RUSSIA. 17 



but the drama which is being played to-day is the 

 evolution of the curtain - raiser which heralded the 

 entrance of modern players on an ancient stage, and 

 the stage, albeit adapted somewhat to the requirements 

 of altered conditions, is the same stage upon which 

 the grandees of Portugal rang up the curtain to an 

 applauding and astonished world four centuries ago. 



The actors, I have said, are not the same. Not 

 even the innate inertia and lethargy of the Slav 

 proved proof against the ambitious spirit of unrest 

 awaked in Europe, and slowly, though for this very 

 reason perhaps the more surely, the growing Power 

 of Moscow bestirred itself, and looked out with inquir- 

 ing gaze across the vast and unknown lands that rolled 

 away from the threshold of its own domain into the 

 dim distance of the mysterious East. Less than a 

 century after the first exploits of the Portuguese 

 discoverers, Eussia had set out upon that path 

 which has since led her the length of a continent. 

 The trail of the Slav across Asia from the west is the 

 natural complement of the fiery invasions of Jengis 

 Khan and Timur from the East ; the results of the 

 former are likely to prove equal, if not to surpass, in 

 importance — certainly in permanency — those of the 

 latter, though the methods employed to obtain them 

 have been different. For while the thundering tread 

 of armies and the smell of battle and of fire, the wail 

 of the widow and the cry of anguish of the vanquished, 

 are the dominating features of the one, the slow and 

 irresistible advance of a j^^oj^le is the leading aspect 

 of the other. Episodes of violence there have been, 

 as the records of the holocaust of Geok Teppe, or of 

 the frenzied garrison who rang a bloody tocsin so 

 lately as 1900 at Blagoveschensk, proclaim ; but 

 episodes such as these, though casting a lurid light 



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