The universal geography : earth and its inhabitants

3S2RUSSIA IN EUROPE.communes and various unions the Great Russian enjoys as mucli, possibly evenmore equality than the other Slavs. But in his concej)tion of political unityhe 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 earthis widowed." Even the religious sects formed since the end of the seventeenthcentury, and which regard the present State as the " kingdom of the beast," andAntichrist as its head, restricted their anathemas to the heretical and foreign" emperor." But they are none the less fanatical in their worship of Czardom,and their Messiah they look for in the high places. In the West, sooften the scene of revolutionary throes, even the blind adherents of the oldregime can form no idea of the ardent love mingled with awe which animatesall loyal Russian subjects when they think of their master, who to them is also agod. They had formerly good reason to dread their Czar, whose name wasnever uttered without a feeling of terror. If he was capricious and cruel, theybowed down before him all the more devotedly, for he then appeared in their eyesall the more sublime. And the guide of their own actions they sought not inthemselves, but in their sovereign's inflexible or changefid will. Hence noprince was more popular than Ivan the Terrible, who seemed to his subjectsawful as Destiny itself. The people, unmindful of so many other heroes, stillremember him, and the Vladimir of their songs is ever the " merciful and dreadprince."The Veliko-Russian speech has become, to the exclusion of all other Slavdialects, the official language of the empire, and the Moscow accent is that whichprevails in good society.The preponderance is thus definitely secured to the Slavonicform of speech, which is at once that of the majority of the people and of the heirsto the Muscovite throne. Hence all the Eastern Slav nationalities are obliged toadopt it either altogether or partially. Some, like the Poles, the Germans of theBaltic Provinces, the Esthonians, Letts, and Lithuanians, acquire it either in theschool, the army, or in social intercourse ; others, like the White and LittleRussians, 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 sametime the most highly cultivated and the richest in literary productions. Evenfor the Finns, Mongolians, and Tatars, Russian is the language of civilisationitself, while the Jews, although still clinging to their own German patois, arenecessarily conversant with the current speech of the bazaars and market-places.Owing to its vast political importance, Russian cannot fail tobecome some dayone of the most influential in the development of human culture. Hence all themore strenuously should the nation itself strive by social progress to take the placeto which it is entitled. Meantime, however, the present social condition of theGreat Russians, as well as of their kinsmen in Little and White Russia, is still oneof 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