associations which have recently sprung up in his neighborhood. Nor is it only in agricultural affairs that the peasants have manifested a progressive spirit. If you should happen to pass through the industrial districts around Moscow, you will see many gigantic factories, which employ thousands of hands. Incredible as it may seem, not a few of these were founded by unlettered peasants, whose sons and grandsons have become millionaires. Let us now go up a step in the social scale and inquire whether those born in the mercantile class are as progressive as the peasantry. Formerly they were regarded, and not without reason, as extremely conservative, and certainly they used to show little sympathy with education or culture; but in recent years their character has been profoundly modified by the ever-increasing influx of foreign capital and foreign enterprise. The upper ranks at least are now being Europeanized in the best sense of the term, not only in their methods of doing business, but also in many other respects. Their homes are becoming more comfortable and elegant according to modern ideas, refinement is gradually permeating their daily life, and the sons of not a few of them are being sent abroad to complete their education in universities or technical colleges. Compared with the peasantry and the mercantile community, the clergy as a class do not show signs of great progress, but I must do them the justice to say that they do not obstruct. Toward science and culture the Russian Church has always maintained an attitude of neutrality, and it has rarely troubled the adherents of other confessions by aggressive missionary propaganda, while among its own flock it has systematically fostered a spirit of humility and resignation to the Divine will. This helps to explain the wonderful tolerance habitually shown by all classes toward people of another faith. I remember once asking a common laborer what he thought of the Mussulman Tartars among whom he happened to be living, and his reply, given with evident sincerity, was: "Not a bad sort of people." "And what about their religion?" I inquired. "Not at all a bad sort of faith; you see, they received it, like the color of their skins, from God." He assumed, of course, in his simple piety, that whatever comes from God must be good.