Incidentally let me remark the growing friendliness towards Russia which is noticeable in the work of Carlyle at that time. A tendency towards friendship came thus into the air far back in the Victorian era. {3} Another most intimate friendship was that of Kinglake and Madame Novikoff, where again was real appreciation of a fine woman. Anthony Froude worshipped at the same shrine, and W. T. Stead with many another in whose heart and hand was the making of modern England. A marvellously generous and unselfish nature, incapacity to be dull or feel dull or think that life is dull--a delicious sense of the humorous, an ingenious mind, a courtliness, and with all this something of the goddess. She had a presence into which people came. And then she had a visible Russian soul. There was in her features that unfamiliar gleam which we are all pursuing now, through opera, literature and art--the Russian genius. Madame Novikoff was useful to Russia, it has been reproachfully said. Yes, she was useful in promoting peace between the two Empires, she was worth an army in the field to Russia. Yes, and now it may be said she has been worth an army in the field to us. When Stead went down on the _Titanic_ one of the last of the great men who worshipped at her shrine had died. Be it remarked how great was Stead's faith in Russia, and especially in the Russia of the Tsar and the Church. And it is well to remember that Madame Novikoff belongs to orthodox Russia and has never had any sympathy whatever with revolutionary Russia. This has obtained for her not a few enemies. There are many Russians with strong political views, estimable but misguided men, who have issued in the past such harmful rubbish as _Darkest Russia_, journals and pamphlets wherein {4} systematically everything to the discredit of the Tsar and his Government, every ugly scandal or enigmatical happening in Russian contemporary life was written up and then sent post free to our clergy, etc. To them Madame Novikoff is naturally distasteful. But as English people we ask, who has helped us to understand "Brightest Russia"--the Russia in arms to-day? And the praise and the thanks are to her. STEPHEN GRAHAM. Moscow, 27_th August_, 1916. {5} EDITOR'S PREFACE The late W. T. Stead in saying to Madame Novikoff, "When you die, what an obituary I will write of you," was paying her a great compliment; just as was Disraeli, although unconsciously, in referring to her as "the M.P. for Russia in England." With that consummate tact which never fails her, Madame Novikoff has evaded the compliment and justified the sarcasm. Disraeli might with justice have added that she was also "M.P. for England in Russia"; for if she has appeared pro-Russian in England, she has many times been reproached in Russia as pro-English.