His religion, his country, and the Tsar. Those, fifty years ago, were the three sacred objects of the Russian’s worship, and their influence was so interwoven that it would be difficult to say which should be placed first. In no people could the feeling of nationality be more strongly developed; it was fed by a feeling of proprietorship absolutely unique. Every man, however humble his position in the world might be, conceived himself as having a share in the soil equal to that of the richest: it was a relic of the old nomad habits of the Aryan people, who wandered over Europe from the Pamirs: where they pitched their tent, there they were free to dwell, and from the ground which they tilled theirs was the harvest. With the march of time the custom had long since faded away, but the idea, handed down by the remote ancestors, was still dimly alive in their posterity, and it was, moreover, a flicker which the recent emancipation of the serfs had in a measure rekindled. The Russian loves his country as something peculiarly his own, and he loves it, moreover, believing it to be the home of God and of the true religion. There is a country adage which says, “Our kingdom is invincible for God is in the midst of it.” It must not be supposed that this high and patriotic feeling is confined to the peasants. The mighty in the land are just as ardent in this passionate devotion to the fatherland as their humbler fellow-countrymen, nor are they less strict in their religious observances. A very false impression is created abroad by a certain class of Russians who haunt the boulevards and any places where dissipation and gambling are fast and furious—only going home from time to time to collect more roubles to throw into the swine-yards of Europe. These are the men who cast a cloud upon their country and tarnish the good name of their fellows. So strong is the inborn love of home among the Slavonic races that it is a hard matter to persuade the _mujik_ to emigrate: and this is no misfortune, for in Russia the population has never been adequate to the vast area of its territory or to the wants of the country. Emigration, as we understand it—this is to say, forming an establishment and founding a family in some new land for prosperity’s sake—must be an idea utterly foreign to the Russian character, which has been moulded for centuries in the idea that only one home is possible. There is one form of superstition which the Russians share with the ancient Greeks. They delight in euphemisms and altogether object to the use of unlucky words. Brutally to announce the death even of a dog, a horse, a cow, or some favourite animal would be intolerable. The awkward corner is turned by a pretty phrase: “Sir, your dog bids you live a long life”—that is the orthodox announcement.