The universal geography : earth and its inhabitants

880 RUSSIA IN EUEOPE.imperial race, imposing their political forms on the rest of the empire, their speechacquiring corresponding predominance as the official language and literarystandard. Compared with the other nationalities of Eastern Slavdom, the GreatRussians Lave the advantages flowing from material cohesion and compactsolidarity. Throughout their domain they everywhere present the same uniformaspect as Nature herself. Towns, hamlets, cultivated lands, are everywhere alike ;the people have everywhere nearly the same appearance, and even the same costume,except amongst the women. Their habits of life are also the same, and theirspeech offers but slight dialectic variations, so that the provinces are nowheremarked by any decided contrasts.The Veliko-Russians are, on the whole, somewhat shorter, but also more thickset,than the Little and White Russians. The greatest percentage of youthsrejected as unfit for military service occurs in the Central Muscovite provinces,though this may possibly be due to a partial deterioration of the race in thespinning factories and other workshops of Central Russia. Wherever the bloodhas not been impoverished by squalor, foul air, and enforced labour, the niujiksare remarkable for their broad shoulders, open features, and massive brow. Theydelight in long and thick beards, which they have succeeded in preserving in spiteof Peter the Great, who wanted to shave his subjects in order to make them looklike Dutchmen. Hence they still continue to deserve the sobriquet of katsapr,or " buck-goats," applied to them by the Little Russians. But these largebearded faces often beam with a lively expression, and are lit up with apleasant smile, while many are of a strikingly noble type. Under the influenceof education the peasantry are soon softened, their features becoming refined andanimated. "The Russians," says Michelet, speaking especially of the civilised.Slavs, " are not a northern race. They have neither the savage energy nor therobust gravity of that type. Their quick and wiry action at once betrays theirsouthern nature." They are gifted with an astonishing natural eloquence not onlyof words, but of gesture, and their mimicry is so far superior to that of the Italiansthat it is readily understood by all.Although extremely gentle, and loving their own after their own fashion, theGreat Russians are still worshippers of brute force, and amongst the peasantrythe authority of the father and husband is never questioned. In their familiesbrutality and real kindliness are often found strangely allied. So recently as theseventeenth century the father would still buy a new whip, wherewith to inflict onhis daughter the last stripes permitted to the paternal authority, then passing iton to her new master, with the advice to use it often and unsparingly. Onentering the nuptial chamber the bridegroom used it accordingly, accompanyingthe blows rained down on back and shoulders with the words, " Forget thyfather's will, and now do my pleasure." Yet the song recommends him " asilken lash." Love matches, common in Little Russia, are the exception amongstthe Great Russians. All the terms of the contract are arranged beforehand by theheads of the families interested, independently of the bride and bridegroom, norwould the elders ever su far forget their dignity as to consult the young couple on