itself unchecked.  The religious boldness and extravagance which in the one country is the direct consequence of the state of society is in the other rather a reaction against it.  Russia’s advantage over America lies in the fact that there the excesses of fancy and zeal prevail in a more primitive, unsophisticated and childlike race.  Some diseases are best passed through early in life, before the time of full development.  It is no less true of some moral maladies:  childhood suffers from them less than youth or maturity.  Russia is still in that stage of civilization which is naturally subject to attacks of feverish and mystical religion, but one day it will emerge from it; and the precocious skepticism of a large portion of its educated classes shows plainly that no inexorable fate condemns the national character to credulity and superstition.

The Raskol is more than a morbid symptom or a sign of weakness.  If it does little credit to the sense or cultivation of the people, it does much to its heart, its conscience and its will.  Independence and individuality are often said to be lacking in it, but the Old Believers show that firmness and conception of duty which are as needful as intelligence to a nation’s strength.  Beneath the dull, monotonous surface of political society these sects give us a glimpse of the hard rock which is the groundwork of this seemingly inert race:  its originality and stern individuality are what are dear to it.  One day Russia will display in other spheres the originality and patient, sturdy energy which these religious struggles have called forth.  That a considerable portion of the people have revolted against the liturgic reform shows that it is not the stupid, sluggish herd Europe has so long imagined.  On one ground at least its conscience has displayed sufficient independence, and told despotism that it is not all-powerful.  And if mere ritual alterations have aroused such opposition, what would result from a change of religion—­from the transition to Catholicism or Protestantism so often dreamed of and advised by Western theologians?  So far from being always docile and void of will and determination, the Russian people, even in their religious vagaries, have displayed a singular power of organization and combination.

ELEANOR’S CAREER.

I first met Eleanor Vachy at a boarding-school in the city of R——­, where we soon became intimate friends.  Eleanor was the result of a system.  When but a few months old, and an orphan, she had been left to the care of her aunt, Miss Willmanson, a reformer, a progressionist, advanced both in life and opinions, who had spared nothing to make her niece an example to her sex.  No pugilist ever believed more fully in training than did Miss Willmanson:  she looked upon institutions of learning as forcing-houses, where nipping, budding and improving the natural growth was the constant occupation, and where the various