now glories in its present commercial prosperity, and looks forward with confidence to the future.  Even the Slavophils, the obstinate champions of the ultra-Muscovite spirit, have changed with the times, and descended to the level of ordinary prosaic life.  These men, who formerly spent years in seeking to determine the place of Moscow in the past and future history of humanity, have—­to their honour be it said—­become in these latter days town-counsellors, and have devoted much of their time to devising ways and means of improving the drainage and the street-paving!  But I am anticipating in a most unjustifiable way.  I ought first to tell the reader who these Slavophils were, and why they sought to correct the commonly received conceptions of universal history.

     * According to the census of 1897 it was 988,610.

The reader may have heard of the Slavophils as a set of fanatics who, about half a century ago, were wont to go about in what they considered the ancient Russian costume, who wore beards in defiance of Peter the Great’s celebrated ukaz and Nicholas’s clearly-expressed wish anent shaving, who gloried in Muscovite barbarism, and had solemnly “sworn a feud” against European civilisation and enlightenment.  By the tourists of the time who visited Moscow they were regarded as among the most noteworthy lions of the place, and were commonly depicted in not very flattering colours.  At the beginning of the Crimean War they were among the extreme Chauvinists who urged the necessity of planting the Greek cross on the desecrated dome of St. Sophia in Constantinople, and hoped to see the Emperor proclaimed “Panslavonic Tsar”; and after the termination of the war they were frequently accused of inventing Turkish atrocities, stirring up discontent among the Slavonic subjects of the Sultan, and secretly plotting for the overthrow of the Ottoman Empire.  All this was known to me before I went to Russia, and I had consequently invested the Slavophils with a halo of romance.  Shortly after my arrival in St. Petersburg I heard something more which tended to increase my interest in them—­they had caused, I was told, great trepidation among the highest official circles by petitioning the Emperor to resuscitate a certain ancient institution, called Zemskiye Sobory, which might be made to serve the purposes of a parliament!  This threw a new light upon them—­under the disguise of archaeological conservatives they were evidently aiming at important liberal reforms.

As a foreigner and a heretic, I expected a very cold and distant reception from these uncompromising champions of Russian nationality and the Orthodox faith; but in this I was agreeably disappointed.  By all of them I was received in the most amiable and friendly way, and I soon discovered that my preconceived ideas of them were very far from the truth.  Instead of wild fanatics I found quiet, extremely intelligent, highly educated gentlemen, speaking foreign languages