After the Treaty of Berlin, when Count Ignatieff, who had been Russia's Ambassador in Constantinople, became at first Minister of the Interior and then President of the Slavonic Society, he, Komaroff, and a number of other Slavophiles inaugurated a movement in favour of altering those German names to their Russian equivalents, or to the original Slav appellations wherever there were any such. Before making the suggestion public Count Ignatieff asked me to draw up a list of those towns and cities, and to open a Press campaign in favour of the movement in the columns of the Press organ of the Imperial Russian Academy, the _Peterburgskya Vedomosti_, on the staff of which I was then a leader writer. I did so. But this attempt to Russify geographical names met with little support and encountered fierce opposition. The comic papers in particular made fun of it, and asked whether we would not include Oranienbaum--a summer residence near St. Petersburg--in our list, and call it Apelsinsk, or, say, in English "Orange-insk," and a number of other absurd translations were suggested for the benefit of the Slavophile reformers. But the campaign was not wholly unsuccessful. The Emperor Alexander III., when he heard of it, is said to have remarked: "There is no need of going to extremes. But the cities which played a part in Russian history and had purely Russian names ought to have those names restored to them. And in this list we should include the university city of Dorpat and the city of Dunaburg. Henceforth they shall be known as Yurevo and Dvinsk." Among Russian Germans there was a great outcry at this "profanation," and most German prints and books--even those published in the Russian Empire--continued to refer to those towns as Dorpat and Dunaburg. But to-day they are known only as Yurevo and Dvinsk. And now St. Petersburg has been added to the list. In time, no doubt, Peterhof, Oranienbaum, Yekaterinburg, Orenburg, and a host of other places will also be rechristened, and Count Ignatieff's proposal will be fully carried out. _Wyman & Sons Ltd., Printers, London and Reading._