Let us, then, cross the Russian frontier and enter her colossal expanse, without being too much abashed by its size, which, says Humboldt, is greater than that of the disk of the full moon. Really, when we cast our eyes upon the map, fancy refuses to believe or to conceive that so large an extent of territory can form but one nation and obey but one man. We are amazed by its geographical bigness, and a sentiment of respect involuntarily enters the mind, together with the instinctive conviction that God has not modelled the body of this Titan without having in view for it some admirable historical destiny to be achieved by the fine diplomacy of Providence. Truly it is God's handiwork, as is proved by its solid unity,--geographical as well as ethnographical,--and its duration as an independent empire. Russia is no artificial conglomeration, nor a federation of States,--each with distinct internal life and traditions,--the result of conquest or of the necessity of resistance to a common enemy; for while the strife against the nomadic Asiatics may have contributed to solidify her union, it was Nature that predisposed her to a community of aspirations and political existence. There are islands like Sicily, peninsulas like Spain, whose territory, though so small, is far more easily subdivided than Russia, which is intersected by no mountain chains, and which is everywhere connected by rivers,--water-ways of communication. The vast surface of Russia is like a piece of cloth which unfolds everywhere alike, seamless and level. The northern regions, which produce lumber, cannot exist without the southern regions, which produce cereals; the two halves of Russia are complementary; there is nowhere any conception of the provincialisms which honeycomb the Spanish peninsula; and in spite of the imposing magnitude of the nation, which at first glance would seem necessarily divided into different if not inimical provinces, especially those most distant, the cohesion is so strong that all Russia considers herself, not so much a state as a family, subject to the law of a father; and Father they call, with tender familiarity, the Autocrat of all the Russias. Even to-day the name of the famous Mazeppa, who tried to separate Ukrania from Russia, is a term of insult in the Ukranian dialect, and his name is cursed in their temples. To this sublime sentiment Russia owes that national independence which the other Sclavonic peoples have lost. III. The Russian Race.