[Illustration: A GREEK BRIGAND.] [Illustration: A GREEK PRIEST.] Departing from the classical severity of palla and peplum, the dress of modern Greece has nothing in common with that of a people who scaled the heights of immortality in the simplest of garbs. Peasant women wear spangled petticoats of blue or pink silk, a long-waisted costume of purple velvet embroidered in gold, high-heeled shoes which display silver buckles, and a kerchief draped on the plaited hair. The men resemble the typical stage brigand, in a double-breasted waistcoat of blue or maroon velvet edged with gold lace, a row of gold or silver buttons running from either shoulder to meet at the waist, which is encircled by a brilliantly coloured sash. A distinguishing note is given by the thoraki, a characteristic garment of blue cotton, suggesting in form a stiff sack wider at the bottom than the top, with holes at the corners for the legs to pass through. A substitute for this is a white petticoat to the knees, and other accessories are white stockings and black shoes with large silver buckles. Some resemblance to the costume of ancient Greece may be traced in the dress of the shepherds, who wear cloaks of sheep's wool or goat's hair, with bare feet encased in sandals of untanned leather strapped across the instep and up the lower portion of the leg. Thus attired, might the Pyrrhian have climbed those mountains which looked on Marathon, as Marathon looked on the sea. CHAPTER XII OF SOME FOREIGN PEASANTS (_continued_) In Russia the convention of dress may not serve as an index to the mind of the country, for the peasant is allowed to share with the prince a fancy for gold, coloured embroidery, and silk and jewels, and it has not yet become necessary for the Duma to include an advocate in the cause of costume. The history of Russia is inscribed upon the dress of its people. Travelling from north to south and from east to west, the costumes of the peasantry everywhere bear the impress of the political vicissitudes through which the particular locality has passed. This, coupled with the fact that no empire in the world is made up of such an agglomeration of vastly different races, accounts for the immense diversity of styles. To gain some idea of the ingredients which go to make up the sartorial _pot-pourri_, one has but to pay a visit to the great annual fair at Nijni Novgorod. There Cossack rubs shoulders with Finn, Jew with Laplander, Tartar with Slav, Persian, Siberian, Bulgarian, and Circassian adding to the interest of the scene and the Babel of tongues. As everything Russian leads up to the one forbidden, and therefore burning, question, politics, it is impossible even to treat of the national costume without touching lightly upon those crises which determined the ultimate cut of a sleeve or the shape of a head-dress.