From Russian novels I derived a clear idea of certain types of men who drank tea out of a samovar and drove forty versts in a vehicle called a _Tarantass_. I made the acquaintance of all kinds of people, who were as real to me as living acquaintances; of Natascha and Levine, and Pierre and Anna Karenine, and Basaroff, and Dolly, and many others. But I never saw their setting clearly, I never realised their background, and I used to see them move before a French or German background. Then I saw the real thing, and it was utterly and totally different from my imaginations and my expectations. But now when I try to give the slightest sketch of what the country is really like the old difficulty presents itself; the difficulty which arises from talking of a thing of which one has a clear idea to people who have a vague and probably false idea of the reality. The first thing one can safely say is this: eliminate all notions of castles, Rhine country, feudal keeps, and stone houses in general. Think of an endless plain, a sheet of dazzling snow in winter, an ocean of golden corn in summer, a tract of brown earth in autumn, and now in the earliest days of spring an expanse of white melting snow, with great patches of brown earth and sometimes green grass appearing at intervals, and further patches of half-melted snow of a steely-grey colour, sometimes blue as they catch the reflection of the dazzling sky in the sunlight. In the distance on one side the plain stretches to infinity, on the other you may see the delicate shapes of a brown, leafless wood, the outlines soft in the haze. If I had to describe Russia in three words I should say a plain, a windmill, and a church. The church is made of wood, and is built in Byzantine style, with a small cupola and a minaret. It is painted red and white, or white and pale-green. Sometimes the cupola is gilt.