That from such peaceful surroundings there should issue fierce dissensions, that a people trained to mutual love and forbearance should be inflamed by the worst passions of an opposite nature, and turn the hand which they had been unwilling to lift against their fellow-men upon the brothers of their own creed, is a melancholy example of the failure of purely emotional methods to elevate permanently the nature of man. It seems there are no short cuts to virtue; the standards attained under the impulse of religious enthusiasm have but an ephemeral life. With the death of Lukeria was removed the personality and visible example for which simple natures crave; and the exaggeration of sentiment, of which she had been the object, brought with it its own revenge. Although cut off at the early age of forty-three years, the queen was already a widow when she died. Her marriage had been childless, and, even had she possessed a natural successor, the place which she occupied in the imagination of her people would perhaps have been impossible to fill. Yet scarcely a year had elapsed from the time of her death when a pretended successor arose--a boy, who, I believe, claimed relationship with her, and who presumed to be worthy to wear the mantle which had hitherto descended on none. The inhabitants of Gorelovka, whose version of the story I am giving, were emphatic in their statement that this youth was an impostor. "He told lies," was the expression which they used. His authority had never been acknowledged by them, and he had stirred up their own brethren against them. I gathered that they had not stopped short of actual violence in the ardour of religious and partisan zeal. Gorelovka, it appears, had been solid against the usurper; but opinions had been divided in the neighbouring villages and throughout the community settled in Transcaucasia of the Dukhobortsy sect. The Russian Government, as was natural, surveyed the situation from the standpoint of hard-headed prudence; they were not anxious to see installed a successor to Lukeria and a revival of the old religious flame. The weight of their authority was thrown in the scale against the pretender; he was suppressed without delay and banished from the country to a remote exile in the north.