He who says Russia says a great deal: for the expression denotes a vast empire, consisting of many nationalities and races, held together by a strong pressure, which seems, like the gravitation of huge heavenly bodies, to be determined by the size of the body from which it emanates. The inclusion of so many elements does not prevent Russia from remaining a great and powerful State, provided its Government soon becomes to some extent rational. The predominant nationality is made up of genuine Russians, whose characteristics are such as to render them capable of being, according to their rulers in the immediate future, an imminent danger to Europe, or a model nation to be followed by the rest of the world. The Russian is good-tempered, patient, loyal, generous, kind-hearted, and superstitiously religious. He is extremely emotional and dangerous when aroused. His easy-going manners, his immense self-esteem, and his intense vitality render him an easy victim to the numerous temptations which aliens are not slow to hold out to him. He is straightforward and strongly averse to hypocrisy, and when he is convinced that duty demands from him that he should assist in filling a trench with his dead body for the artillery to pass over, or to throw a bomb at the Czar, he will do it without a murmur. His passiveness, his loyalty, and long-suffering have been cruelly taken advantage of by a long succession of Governments, chiefly consisting of aliens. In Russia the most powerful bureaucracy in the world, composed chiefly of a German element, has taken possession of the power, and holds to it in a quasi-unconscious fashion, like a bull-dog unable to relax his hold. The Government, with such legislation as exists, has gone on for centuries with scarcely any regard for the well-being of the people, and the inevitable results are slowly but surely manifesting themselves, and point to some terrible catastrophe. The emancipation of the serfs, from which sanguine people, unacquainted with Russian circumstances, hoped so much, shook the old institutions to their very foundations, but brought only momentary relief to the suffering people. The _mir_-eaters, or village usurers, have swallowed up the land of the peasants, their cattle, and their implements, and compelled large hordes of people to move about the country in search of work. Employment is scarce and labour ill paid. The tax-collectors are as implacable and the Government officials as corrupt as ever. The tendency—to be observed all over the civilized world—of dividing humanity into two classes, the wealthy and the poor, has nowhere developed to the same extent as in Russia. The rich, comparatively few in number, are becoming extremely rich, but the great mass of the people miserably poor.