It seems necessary here to give a special warning against putting any trust in the epigram which has long done duty as a piece of politico-ethnological wisdom: "Scratch a Russian and you will find a Tartar." It would be quite as correct to say, "Scratch an American and you will find an Indian." The simple fact is that the Russian officials with whom foreigners have to do are men of experience, and, as a rule, much like those whom one finds in similar positions in other parts of Europe. A foreign representative has to meet on business, not merely the Russian minister of foreign affairs and the heads of departments in the Foreign Office, but various other members of the imperial cabinet, especially the ministers of finance, of war, of the navy, of the interior, of justice, as well as the chief municipal authorities of St. Petersburg; and I can say that many of these gentlemen, both as men and as officials, are the peers of men in similar positions in most other countries which I have known. Though they were at times tenacious in questions between their own people and ours, and though they held political doctrines very different from those we cherish, I am bound to say that most of them did so in a way which disarmed criticism. At the same time I must confess a conviction which has more and more grown upon me, that the popular view regarding the power, vigor, and foresight of Russian statesmen is ill-founded. And it must be added that Russian officials and their families are very susceptible to social influences: a foreign representative who entertains them frequently and well can secure far more for his country than one who trusts to argument alone. In no part of the world will a diplomatist more surely realize the truth embedded in Oxenstiern's famous utterance, "Go forth, my son, and see with how little wisdom the world is governed." When one sees what really strong men might do in Russia, what vast possibilities there are which year after year are utterly neglected, one cannot but think that the popular impression regarding the superiority of Russian statesmen is badly based. As a matter of fact, there has not been a statesman of the first class, of Russian birth, since Catherine the Great, and none of the second class unless Nesselrode and the Emperor Nicholas are to be excepted. To consider Prince Gortchakoff a great chancellor on account of his elaborate despatches is absurd. The noted epigram regarding him is doubtless just: "C'est un Narcisse qui se mire dans son encrier." To call him a great statesman in the time of Cavour Bismarck, Lincoln, and Seward is preposterous. Whatever growth in civilization Russia has made in the last forty years has been mainly in spite of the men who have posed as her statesmen; the atmosphere of Russian autocracy is fatal to greatness in any form.