The Russian folk-songs, as rich in variety and intensity as those of any country on earth, present more preliminary difficulties to the foreign music-lover than any others. As in most other countries, the real appreciation of folk-music in Russia is a matter of the last half century. The Russian songs which were best known before then bore the same relation to the genuine article that the popular English songs of the eighteenth century bore to the Somerset songs of which we have spoken--that is, they were rather civilized, perhaps consciously composed, and contained far more of the conventional than of the national. Such a song is ‘The Red Sarafan,’ a fine melody, but far removed from the genuine peasant folk-song. Glinka, founder of the modern Russian school of composition, recognized the distinctive qualities of the Russian popular music, and introduced some of its effects very tentatively into his operas and songs. Rubinstein hazarded the statement that the Russian folk-song was more varied and profound than that of any other land. But Rubinstein, being all German in his training, did not follow the obvious moral. It remained for the great group of ‘neo-Russian’ composers, under the inspiring leadership of Balakireff, to make the Russian folk-song the source and standard of Russian composition. Several of this group made researches among folk-songs or collections of them and studied them in what we have called the modern spirit, which is equally scientific, scholarly, and artistic. More recently the Russian government has spent considerable sums on scientific investigation among the peasants, and the results of these researches, especially in the great work of Mme. Lineva, have served as a standard in folk-research the world over. The earlier collections of Balakireff, Rimsky-Korsakoff, and others, though as yet untranslated, are sources of deep delight for the student who will take a little trouble among dusty libraries.