voice of the prophets does not penetrate to the ears of the rulers, or, if it does, it is drowned by the whispers of parasites who know how to protect their own interests, or it finds no echo in the too weak or too hardened hearts of the rulers. I had the same sensation when, in the course of my conversations with leading persons in the service of the state, and with members of the "Intelligence," I was more and more struck with the fact that in Russia there is an unusually strong public opinion, which in its criticisms far transcends anything that can be said in foreign papers about Russian conditions, and that this criticism makes no impression whatever upon the authorities. I was, of course, interested next in the problem as to how it could be possible without newspapers--the Russian press is under the most barbarous censorship--to disseminate from St. Petersburg to Odessa with a truly uncanny rapidity, an almost monotonously uniform idea of all the events and personalities of the day. I confess I have not yet solved the riddle. It is only a hypothesis of mine to suppose that there are three or four centres for the formation of opinion in Russia, one of which is undoubtedly to be found in the ministry itself, and another, perhaps, in the Noblemen's Club, or in other clubs of the intelligent classes in Moscow, and that through the abundance of time which every Russian allows himself for recreation, every newly coined saying or opinion is spread throughout the whole realm by letters or by word of mouth. I have heard from the lips of statesmen high in office literally the same words I have heard at the table of Leo Tolstoï, in Yasnaya Polyana, or in the study of the lawyer who gave me an interview. After I had come to terms with this fact of the absolute uniformity of public opinion, a fact not altogether gratifying to the collector of information, it was no longer possible to ignore the question as to how it is possible that such a unison of wishes and opinions meets only deaf ears in the highest circles, although it has already become a historic legend that Alexander II. was forced into the war with Turkey against his will by public opinion. If public opinion at that time had so much power for evil, why does it not have power now, and power for good?