ART. V.-1. L'Empire des Tsars et les Russes. Par Anatole Leroy-Beaulieu. Paris, 1881 and 1886.

2. Peres et Enfans. Terres Vierges. Par Ivan Tourgéneff. 3. Journal de Marie Baskkirtsheff. Paris, 1890.

4. Open Letter to the Head of the Russian Synod, Privy Councillor Constantine Pobiedonosieff. By Hermann Dalton. Leipzig, 1890.

HERE is no subject, outside our own country and its belongings, which can be said to occupy, puzzle, and distress the English public more than what is heard of Russia at the present day. We hear of ever-recurring tales of injustice, dishonesty, and inhumanity; of the worst scandals, so far as we can learn, unrectified; of the worst corruptions regularly organized and recognized; of a nation with no backbone in the shape of a middle class; with an enormous army of soldiers, and an only lesser army of spies; with an automaton officialism which goes like clock-work, but marks only fraud and wrong; with a vicious and depraved noblesse, and an Imperial family guarded by double relays of police; and lastly, with an unrelenting body of conspirators-respecting nothing and fearing nothing-two stepping into the place where one has fallen. Russia, according to all this testimony, has reached a stage where it is impossible to foresee what she will do next. Nor is there ancient spirit of gentleness and nobleness to appeal to, or hope to revive. Russia has no youthful Past. She has known no Crusades, no reign of Chivalry; and grand and generous traditions are as much wanting to her history as the Gulf Stream to her climate.

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Curious is the present contrast between the two largest States in the world. A stranger will not be three days in the United States before he is asked on all sides what he thinks of America; he may live in Russia twenty years before he is asked the same question about her. Were he to start the subject at a dinner table, he would silence all present. And this from no invariable or distinct fear of consequences, but from ignorance, and habitual banishment of a topic which only the thinking few think about at all. Between these two facts of American inquisitiveness and Russian indifference, will be found that cause which all will immediately guess, and which consists simply in the far from unmixed good of freedom on the American part, and in the entirely unmixed evil of the reverse on the Russian.

No one has entered more profoundly into the causes and effects which are operating in Russia than M. Leroy-Beaulieu, Vol. 172.-No. 343.

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well known as a distinguished journalist in the world of political enquiry. We announce nothing new in saying that Russia is cold, flat, and immense-three causes to begin with, from which the author deduces effects historical and national, alike novel and logical. Yet, enormous as is the territory, ninetenths of which are still so slenderly inhabited that it cannot be called peopled, the inhabitants presenting an amalgam of races unexampled in any other European country-there is a unity of climate, soil, aspect, and language, which no European State one-tenth the size can show, and which marks her emphatically for the home of one people. Nor is there any natural frontier or line of demarcation to limit her boundaries Two great divisions of soil, and two great contrasts of climate, are the features which break the dead monotony of Russia The northern half is almost unbroken forest, the southern half almost unbroken steppe; each strengthening the unity of the whole by being indispensable to the other; the north supply ing the fuel, and the south the corn; both being alike, an un broken flat. The forest zone commences from above Archangel, and extends in ever-widening breadth below Moscow to the neighbourhood of Kief; the tree-the larch-that can easiest bear the high latitude leading the way; followed in an increasing scale of variety by other members of the fir tribeespecially by the spruce; by the birch, the logs of which supply the chief firewood in St. Petersburg; by the aspen, the alder, and so gradually by the elm, the lime, and finally by the oak and beech of our latitude. Some portions of this forest region to the north and east hardly know the foot of man; for when the long terra firma of winter breaks up, summer converts it into a dismal swamp, through which the rivers find no current, and stagnate into myriads of boggy islands and myriads of shallow lakes. In the government of Archangel alone there are above eleven hundred of such lakes.

The steppe zone lends itself more to the use of man, though from its immensity just as little to his control. The great character of the steppe is that it is dry and treeless-the dryness unfavourable to the growth of wood, and the absence of wood increasing the dryness. Still, the fertility of the soil is such as in great measure to compensate for the want of water. If ever there was a paradise on earth for an indolent race, the region of black earth-the Tchernoziom-in latitude 53° to 46, is that for the Russian peasant. No manure has yet been wanted to make it produce corn enough for the relatively large population which its conditions have attracted; with the increase of the one implement needed, Man, and he with fitting tools, this region

region could be made to produce corn enough for the whole bread-eating world. (And even where the black earth ends, a fertility continues for thousands of miles, covering the earth with various grasses of rampant luxuriance and height, through which the calf, born at one extremity, eats its way leisurely, and emerges the full-grown cow at the other. And this region again could produce meat enough for the whole meat-eating world.

The immense extent of Russia tells its compass in the fact, that its animal life comprehends the two quadrupeds best adapted for cold and for heat-the reindeer and the camel; while between the extremes of heat and cold thus evidenced, the climate by no means agrees with those standards of latitude to which the other countries of Europe have habituated us. Heat and cold here overlap each other to an extent only approximately seen in North and South America. In January the greater part of Russia endures cold, and in July, heat; the regions which lie immediately to the north of the Black Sea having the temperature of Stockholm in the one month, and that of Madeira in the other; while spring and autumn are both too brief to soften such transitions. The same winter accordingly places north and south alike under the same snow. In January you may sledge from Archangel to Astrakan. The Sea of Azoff freezes as hard as the White Sea, and the Caspian as the Gulf of Finland. Russia has summers, but she cannot be said to have a southern climate, and a temperate one is unknown. These phenomena are owing to what M. LeroyBeaulieu calls its huge "Continental size." The ocean is too distant to act, as in our little land, in tempering both extremes of cold and heat; while the configuration of the enormous mass deprives her of that moisture which we obtain from the Atlantic, and detain by the Alps and other minor hills. The flatness of the soil, only partly broken by the Ourals, derives no real shelter from them, while the fact that the same fauna and flora flourish on each side of them precludes the idea of any division of climate. Not till Russia reaches the Caucasian range is she defended alike from the cutting blasts from the Polar circle, and from the scorching winds from Central Africa. The author says cogently that with these extremes of heat and cold, and her illimitable size, Russia is too rude and untractable to have been the cradle of civilization, though admirably fitted to welcome and diffuse it. For, like North America and Australia, Russia, except in her extreme portions, offers a home acceptable to Europeans, where the activity of man can be exercised on the largest scale. Knowing how

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much the external conditions of our small island contribute to form the English character, M. Leroy-Beaulieu's arguments, drawn from the enormous extent of Russia, form one of his most interesting chapters.

That Russia should present such uniformity in her external features and yet offer a varied field for the ethnologist is again traceable to her configuration. The absence of all defined. frontier has laid her open to every comer, and nowhere have the alluvial human beds been more mixed and broken up, nowhere is the human zoology more puzzling. For while the entry into her dominions has stood open for all invaders, her structure has prevented their settling into separate States. Where all alike is flat and accessible, no part could be isolated, no corner. cut off, no recess appropriated; and so the invader melted soon into the native. The result has been a conglomeration of races in Russia proper, commenced before historical record, which has formed a substance, compounded, like granite, of various particles, but all contributing to its solidity. The Tartar, who conquered and overran the land six centuries ago, was the principal ingredient, and still forms a prominent element, as the proverbial character of Russian diplomacy still exemplifies. M. Leroy-Beaulieu asks whether the Russian people are capable of civilization. We can only answer, Under conditions of freedom and good government, why not?' The outward man, in build, carriage, and manner, is prophetic of fine destinies. The Russian peasant is a tall, manly, and even grand-looking fellow-graceful and picturesque; speaks out like a man, and expresses himself like a gentleman,—that is, in the purest Russian, garnished with many a courteous and humorous, though obsequious phrase; stands upright, walks like a prince, beats his wife like many of our own countrymen; and if he gets drunk as a lord,' or as lords used to get, it is because in his hopeless life he has had no other choice of excitement. Once practically free-he is only, like Holy Russia' herself, theoretically so as yet-there are no insurmountable obstacles to his progress. If the country be too vast for its present population, time, as with the defect of youth (but always with better government), will cure that. The soil, as M. Leroy-Beaulieu significantly adds, is peculiarly fitted for free labour. No crueller or stupider blunder than that of the institution of serfdom was ever committed, for, unlike that of slavery in the West Indies, it was never needed. It be that the peasant is as indolent as he is reported, but what slave ever worked harder than he could help? There is another view to be taken of his indolence. We must remember

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that for a man whose land is under deep snow above two hundred days in the year, agricultural labour does not exist for more than four months. But the peasant, with his gift of imitation, is clever with his hands. By nature and choice he is a petty merchant, and many a one fills up his long and dark evenings, under the light of his resinous and luminous splinter stuck into the wall above him, with half-a-dozen trades at which he is an humble adept-the long winter supplying the manufactures for the short summer's frequent fairs. The Russian people are children as yet, bearded children' as they have been called, and the longer they remain so under present circumstances the better. All example, whether for good or for evil, flows from above downwards, and cannot, by the law of political gravity, flow otherwise. The lower classes must therefore wait until those above them, 'spoilt savages' as they in their time have been termed, have become wiser and better, before they are exposed to the contamination of their example; and this, alas! presupposes no moderate lapse of time. Let them rather remain barbarous. It is an honest and vigorous barbarism, like that of the ancient Goth before the fall of Rome. The real barbarism resides in the composition and acts of his government, for as yet the people are an inert mass, unmoved by Nihilists or revolutionists, but with a pathetic inertness which points to past centuries of endurance. For notwithstanding the manly externals we have described, poor 'Ivan' is a gentle, submissive creature, with the virtues and vices of an oppressed race, and with the patient and resigned expression of such a race imprinted on him.

We demur, however, to M. Leroy-Beaulieu's interpretation of that expression; namely, that it is owing to the depressing nature of his struggle with the climate. On the contrary it may be doubted whether his climate be so depressing in certain respects as our own. However contradictory it may sound, it is nevertheless true that no one suffers from the cold in Russia; and for the simple reason that no one can do so with impunityto suffer actually would be to perish. No struggle, therefore, can be attempted where the combatants are so unequally matched. The proof lies in the hygienic result. The Russian people know little of rheumatism, and all that numerous train to which we are heirs; they are not decimated by consumption-die Englische Krankheit, as it is called par excellence ;they catch no colds, and contract nochills; have no conception what a chilblain means; while longevity, the best proof, though consistent with frightful mortality, is well ascertained to be greater in the Czar's dominions than elsewhere. A couple of

winters