It was the same, too, in the families with which I spent my evenings. If anything, only the heartiness with which one is received is gratefully at variance with our habits of careful reserve towards strangers. But these hearty and hospitable people who at once lead us to the samovar are by no means backwoodsmen, but are most intimately in touch with all the advantages of the world, and they have uncommonly keen powers of observation. The visiting European who might think himself in a position to act among them would quickly become aware that the Russian writers, who astonish us by their deep psychological insight, have not picked up their art by the wayside. It is hidden in the most charming little formalities, which in Moscow, in particular, simply charmed me. Nowhere the slightest cant, nowhere the slightest false display, nowhere the forced enthusiasm for culture which makes certain circles of our great cities so repulsive to us. Naturalness is the pervading note in Moscow social life. But literary and art interests are a matter of course in a society which is scarcely paralleled by the English in its demand for reviews. To-day, of course, every other interest is forced to the wall by politics. I have been present at gatherings in the best circles of people of culture at which even the young had scarcely any interest save in political questions. Even little declamations with which the individual guests distinguished themselves were spiced with political allusions, and were enjoyed by young and old just because of this spice. Yet Moscowism has, in a sense, a bad reputation. It is held to be the embodiment of the Russian reaction against every attempt of a civilizing nature which emanates from St. Petersburg. Of the lesser citizens, or the old-fashioned merchants at times, this may even to-day be true. The nobility in the Moscow government, however, the university, and the members of the few professions such as medicine and the law, are much less circumspect and free-minded in their political criticism than their contemporaries in St. Petersburg, for instance. Such an opposition organ as the _Russkiya Vyedomosti_ does not exist in St. Petersburg. There is also, to be sure, a sharp contrast between the intelligence of Moscow and that of official St. Petersburg; but this contrast is anything but one between reaction and progress. It is worth while to examine it more closely.