382 EUSSIA IN EUEOPE. 



communes and various unions the Great Russian enjoys as much, possibly even 

 more equality than the other Slavs. Bat in his conception of political unity 

 he is the most logical of monarchists. In the words of the national proverbs, 

 " The earth is mother, but the Czar is father;" "Without the Czar the earth 

 is widowed." Even the religious sects formed since the end of the seventeenth 

 century, and which regard the present State as the " kingdom of the beast," and 

 Antichrist as its head, restricted their anathemas to the heretical and foreign 

 " emperor." But they are none the less fanatical in their worship of Czar- 

 dom, and their Messiah they look for in the high places. In the West, so 

 often the scene of revolutionary throes, even the blind adherents of the old 

 regime can form no idea of the ardent love mino-led with awe which animates 

 all loval Hussian subjects when they think of their master, who to them is also a 

 god. They had formerly good reason to dread their Czar, whose name was 

 never uttered without a feeling of terror. If he was capricious and cruel, they 

 bowed down before him all the more devotedly, for he then appeared in their eyes 

 all the more sublime. And the guide of their own actions they sought not in 

 themselves, but in their sovereign's inflexible or changeful will. Hence no 

 prince was more popular than Ivan the Terrible, who seemed to his subjects 

 awful as Destiny itself. The people, unmindful of so many other heroes, still 

 remember him, and the Vladimir of their songs is ever the " merciful and dread 

 prince." 



The Veliko-Russian speech has Decome, to the exclusion of all other Slav 

 dialects, the official language of the empire, and the Moscow accent is that which 

 prevails in good society. The preponderance is thus definitely secured to the Slavonic 

 form of speech, which is at once that of the majority of the people and of the heirs 

 to the Muscovite throne. Hence all the Eastern Slav nationalities are obliged to 

 adopt it either altogether or partially. Some, like the Poles, the Germans of the 

 Baltic Provinces, the Esthonians, Letts, and Lithuanians, acquire it either in the 

 school, the army, or in social intercourse ; others, like the White and Little 

 Russians, are naturally led to converse in a language closely akin to their own, 

 which is spoken by the majority of their fellow-citizens, and which is at the same 

 time the most highly cultivated and the richest in literary productions. Even 

 for the Finns, Mongolians, and Tatars, Russian is the language of civilisation 

 itself, while the Jews, although still clinging to their own German patois, are 

 necessarily conversant with the current speech of the bazaars and market-places. 



Owing to its vast political importance, Russian cannot fail to become some day 

 one of the most influential in the development of human culture. Hence all the 

 more strenuously should the nation itself strive by social progress to take the place 

 to which it is entitled. Meantime, however, the present social condition of the 

 Great Russians, as well as of their kinsmen in Little and White Russia, is still one 

 of the most wretched in the civilised world. 



In winter the peasant's hovel is filled with a foul, almost intolerable atmosphere. 

 For greater warmth it is surrounded by a rampart of dunghills. The sashes, 

 thickly lined with putty, or covered with straw, are kept perfectly air-tight, while 



