to discard every formality, thrust aside every obstacle, and _bite_ into it as if it were a sunflower seed. If you abuse him roundly and “have it out” with him, he suddenly shows himself in his true colours, the best and kindliest of souls; but if you handle him with kid gloves you will never get a glimpse of his inner nature. As an acquaintance the charm of the Great Russian consists chiefly in his sudden transition from sharp resistance to an unexpected exhibition of gentle, unaffected loveableness. The Great Russian has a strong natural talent for philosophy, but, metaphorically speaking, his philosophy is as vegetarian as his cooking has largely remained to this day. There is a scent of dried herbs, new-mown hay, and southern-wood about it; it recalls dark forests where the sunlight, piercing the rifts between the tree-tops, shines with golden-blue, unearthly splendour—a ray of the light Divine. His philosophy is innocent of blood like the saints of the old ikons. This Great Russian people is the flower of Russia, the Sunflower, whose golden petals point the way for the future of the whole Russian nation. * * * * * The problem of Russian culture has its roots in the Russian _people_, and not in the educated classes. The desire for culture has emanated from the people themselves, and the spirit they evinced has pointed the way for the educated classes in the great struggle for national culture within recent years. The educated man is the interpreter of the popular demand for culture, and of the intellectual wealth dwelling in the soul and mind of the Russian people. Almost the whole of Russian art and literature is derived from this source, and it has never shown the world so much the genius of the poet, painter, or the sculptor in question, as the genius of the Russian people that produced him; and the best that is revealed in Russian art is the face of the Russian soul with its manifold aspects of thinker, philosopher, and purely human being. Dostoievski, Tolstoi, Gogol, Gontsharoff, Tshekhoff, Gorki and Andreeff in poetry; Repin, Vasnetsoff, Tsukoff, Troubetzkoy and many others in the pictorial arts;—all have learnt what they had to tell from the soul of the people and the _wisdom_ of this soul; and the Great Russian musicians have used the voice of the people throughout for the expression of their art. They are all of them merely interpreters of the rich fund of culture, the latent culture of the Russian people. This latent culture, in conjunction with the holy Russian faith, has advanced towards the highest development of human dignity and nobility, towards peace founded not upon blood, but upon love. The abuse the Germans have heaped upon Russian barbarism is merely the outcome of envious rage on the part of an inferior, who sees his artificial pseudo-culture endangered by another culture which blossoms from the depths of the human heart.