In a small wooden house at the edge of a large wood, and within a stone’s-throw of a river which floods the whole of the neighbouring meadows in the spring-time, lives Feodor Petrovitch X----. He is what is called in Russia a small landowner. He is a Moderate Liberal. That is to say, for twenty years he has groaned and lamented at the foolish proceedings of the Russian Government, which he used to accuse of criminal levity. He is in favour of a policy of common sense. Therefore, in the rapid course of recent events he has veered, like many others, slightly to the Right; although he still calls himself a Constitutional Democrat. And this is not because his faith in the existing Government has increased or that his ideal, which consists in the carrying out of certain drastic reforms, has diminished, but because he is dissatisfied with the conduct of the Opposition. Nevertheless, he means to vote for the Constitutional Democrats at the coming election. He is a short, dark, middle-aged man, not scrupulously shaven, with a brown glittering eye and a great flow of talk. He has immense practical knowledge of farming, machinery, and manufactories. At the same time he likes talking literature and politics, and his opinions are worth listening to except when he tells shooting stories; in this region he is given to such gross exaggeration that many people cease to pay attention to what he says on other subjects which excite his interest but not his imagination. I was drinking tea with him the other afternoon and talking over the Anglo-Russian Agreement. “This is the only sensible thing,” he said, “which the Russian Government has done for the last forty years.” And then the conversation veered on to the plays in Moscow and the latest productions in the world of literature.