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 A RUN THROUGH RUSSIA 
 
 THE STORY OF A VISIT 
 
 TO 
 
 Count olstoi 
 
 BY 
 
 WM. WILBERFORCE NEWTON 
 
 AUTHOR OF 
 
 Priest and Man," " Life of Dr. Muhlenbergr," " Summer Sermons, 
 " Essays of To-day," etc. 
 
 HARTFORD 
 
 THE STUDENT PUBLISHING CO. 
 1894
 
 COPYRIGHTED BY 
 
 THE STUDENT PUBLISHING CO. 
 1894.
 
 PREFACE 
 
 MY thanks are due for help in the compilation 
 of Tolstoi's works and those of the Russian 
 authors mentioned in this book to Mr. J. E. A. 
 Smith of Pittsfield and the Rev. Preston Burr of 
 Tacoma, Washington. 
 
 I am also greatly indebted to my young friend 
 the Rev. Edwin Stanley Welles for the help and 
 interest he has taken in the matter of proof-read- 
 ing and in other ways assisting the much-em- 
 barrassed third member in this group known to 
 his fellow travellers as 
 
 THE RECORDING ANGEL. 
 
 Pittsfield, 
 June ist, 1894.
 
 COUNT TOLSTOI IN PEASANT COSTUME.
 
 A RUN THROUGH RUSSIA; 
 
 -OR 
 
 The Story of a Visit to Count Tolstoi. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 FROM DRESDEN TO ST. PETERSBURG. 
 
 A HAPPY thought in church-time is always, if it 
 leads to practical results, a pre-eminently happy 
 thought. The time and place and environment 
 of feeling help to make us emphasize the thought 
 in the days which come afterward, and in this 
 way the good resolution born upon a Sunday 
 becomes a fruitful child during the week which 
 follows. 
 
 One Sunday, in the Russian church in the city 
 of Dresden, in the winter of 1889, the thought 
 came very forcibly into my mind that the next 
 country to be visited when the true impulse of 
 the tourist-fit came upon me, was the myste- 
 rious, half-awakened, half-developed empire of 
 Russia. 
 
 The choir of men's voices in this Russian
 
 2 A RUN THROUGH RUSSIA. 
 
 temple were chanting in their rich and polysyl- 
 labic way one of the endless liturgies of the Greek 
 Church and in some strange manner the words 
 of the CIII. Psalm seemed to resound through 
 these Russian cadences " As far as the east is 
 from the west, so far hath he put our transgres- 
 sions from us." 
 
 At that very moment, while these worshippers 
 in the Greek Church were prostrating themselves 
 at rhythmic intervals and were touching the floor 
 with their foreheads, along with the undertone of 
 chant and the aroma of incense, within an easy 
 bowshot the familiar worship of the American 
 Episcopal Church was being rendered by the 
 faithful clergyman who cares for the spiritual 
 wants of the American colony, the rector of St. 
 John's Church, Dresden. 
 
 The chant in the Russian church, with its oft- 
 repeated refrain, " Gospodi pomilioui," found its 
 translated equivalent a few rods off in the well- 
 known petition of the Ancient Litany used by 
 Anglican and American Church alike " Lord 
 have mercy upon us ; '' and in this symbolic act of 
 worship, the East and the West seemed to come 
 together that which was oldest being repre- 
 sented by the Greek service, and that which was 
 newest in the evolution of Christianity being em- 
 phasized by the practical and vigorous graft of 
 our American religious life in the English-speak- 
 ing colony in the beautiful capital of the kingdom
 
 FROM DRESDEN TO ST. PETERSBURG. 3 
 
 of Saxony. Thus, in the very heart of Luther's 
 land, a clear, bright, vivid spectacle of our Ameri- 
 can religious life stood side by side with the 
 Russian temple, the symbol of all that is Eastern 
 and Oriental ; and thus, as the nearness of the 
 East with the West made itself manifest in that 
 spot where these two religious worlds seemed to 
 come together, the happy thought took possession 
 of the awakened mind, to visit Russia for one's 
 self and realize personally all that Dean Stanley 
 has so graphically described in his fascinating 
 and instructive work, " The History of the East- 
 ern Church.'' 
 
 There was also another motive which had its 
 share in deciding the journey to Russia. A piece 
 of literary work had just been brought to a close, 
 and the writer of the finished volume felt that a 
 little outing was his due reward for some months 
 of steady labor in Dresden. But it is, after all, a 
 personality which gives interest to a place like 
 the memory of Robertson at Brighton, or Arnold at 
 Rugby, or Dean Stanley at Westminster, or Words- 
 worth at the Windermere lake country. And it 
 was the personality of Count Leo Tolstoi which 
 seemed to hang over the Russian situation of to- 
 day, and to draw the mind toward that far-off 
 land as the spot which had evolved his interest- 
 ing character and strange career.- 
 
 And i-n this way, as the door of the Greek 
 Church closed and we waited for our friends to
 
 4 A RUN THROUGH RUSSIA. 
 
 come out of St. John's Church that Sunday, the 
 fixed determination took possession of the writer's 
 breast that he would go and see Count Tolstoi 
 somewhat after Stanley's story of " The Way I 
 Found Livingstone." 
 
 The Rev. Mr. Caskey, rector of St. John's 
 Church, Dresden, kindly loaned the note-book of 
 his journey through the Czar's dominions, little 
 realizing then, that the mendicant inquirer who 
 asked for his wisdom and experience would be 
 base enough to purloin the title of his diary 
 which base act the writer acknowledges most 
 humbly, and makes the present thorough confes- 
 sion in the opening chapter of these articles " A 
 Run Through Russia." 
 
 A happy thought plus another happy thought is 
 always the sequence which leads to pleasure and 
 profit and ultimate success. The second happy 
 thought in this series was to go and talk to the 
 Russian priest in Dresden about this proposed 
 journey. 
 
 But the priest was not at home, and though his 
 interesting young wife, who spoke English re- 
 markably well, did her best to supply her hus- 
 band's place, it was thought best to appoint a 
 time when we could talk the matter over in all its 
 bearings. Accordingly, the Greek priest, a typi- 
 cal Russian of the fair-haired, blonde type, came 
 to the hotel where our party was staying, and to- 
 gether we held a polyglot interview which lasted
 
 FROM DRESDEN TO ST. PETERSBURG 5 
 
 a couple of hours, in which the German, French, 
 Latin and Greek languages were used with an 
 easy eclecticism which defied all conventional 
 rules and usages. 
 
 This patchwork counterpane of conversation 
 was very successful, however, in its practical 
 results, for my friend, the Russian priest, was 
 affable, helpful and agreeable, though it became 
 quite evident that he was more anxious that we 
 should rightly understand the character of the 
 Greek Church than that we should see Tolstoi, 
 who, as the shrug of the shoulder indicated, was 
 considered a good deal of a heretic in the eyes 
 of the orthodox people of Russia, of whom this 
 priest was a fair representative. 
 
 Through his kindness, an interview was ob- 
 tained with a certain Countess in Dresden, a sis- 
 ter of the Countess who is a lady-in-waiting to 
 the Grand Duchess Constantine in the Marble 
 Palace in St. Petersburg. This lady was most 
 kind and sympathetic, and entered heartily into 
 the plan of helping us to find Tolstoi. She very 
 kindly sent letters in advance to her friends and 
 relatives in St. Petersburg and to the Countess 
 Alexandrine Tolstoi, who is a lady-in-waiting in 
 the Winter Palace to the Empress. 
 
 In due time word came back from St. Peters- 
 burg to send on the American pilgrims to the 
 shrine of Tolstoi without further delay ; that they 
 would be well received and would be forwarded
 
 6 A RUN THROUGH RUSSIA. 
 
 to Moscow or to Tula if Court Tolstoi should be 
 at his home in either of these places. 
 
 The next step was to make sure that our pass- 
 ports were vised properly, for Russia is most 
 carefully guarded to-day, and ever since Mr. 
 George Kennan's visit to Siberia, the American 
 tourist is looked upon with the eagle eye of the 
 Russian detective. 
 
 The Russian charge in Dresden shook his head 
 over the passports of two of the party; for, alas ; 
 they were "geistlicher" " clergymen " and clergy- 
 men to-day are looked upon with suspicion by the 
 all-powerful Pobedonestzeff, the celebrated pro- 
 cureur of the Holy Synod. But a kind letter 
 from the Countess and a telegram to St. Peters- 
 burg set the matter straight, and a precious little 
 bit of extra parchment riveted onto the original 
 passport made everything right for us ; and thus, 
 with our characters given to us in writing, we 
 heeded the advice of St. Paul to his companion 
 Timothy : 
 
 " The cloak that I left, bring with thee when 
 thou comest, and the books, but especially the parch- 
 ment" 
 
 And here we may as well introduce the party 
 who were setting out on this " Run Through 
 Russia" and were about to enter upon their 
 search after Tolstoi. 
 
 Two of the party were clergymen and the other 
 was a wise layman of the "Judicious Hooker"
 
 FROM DRESDEN TO ST. PETERSBURG. *J 
 
 type of mind and together they formed the most 
 agreeable companions it was ever the lot of a sol- 
 itary traveller to find. 
 
 It does not do in books, as it is not good man- 
 ners in sermons, to mention names, or to be too 
 personal in one's description; suffice it then to 
 say, that one of these gentlemen, owing to his 
 marked resemblance to the celebrated English 
 novelist, shall be known as " Mr. Thackeray," 
 while the other, because of his resemblance to the 
 illustrious poet, will henceforth bear the proud 
 title of " Lord Byron." 
 
 Mr. Thackeray and Lord Byron had warmed 
 themselves to the work in an inverse ratio to the 
 difficulties to be overcome and in a sort of geo- 
 metrical progression from the kind patronage of 
 the nobility at St. Petersburg. Together this 
 trio of pilgrims went to that busy bee-hive of 
 American tourists, Thode & Co., Bankers, Dres- 
 den, where we received our money which had been 
 exchanged into roubles and copecks and where our 
 obliging young friend, Mr. Hans Bjorn Graesse, 
 arranged our letters of credit for us and gave us 
 the necessary handsome brown rouble notes of 
 the Russian Empire, bearing on them the dashing 
 portrait of the Empress Catherine the Second. 
 
 The ride from Dresden to Berlin is uneventful, 
 and Berlin itself is too markedly one of the five 
 or six great cities of the world to bear other than 
 a merely passing description.
 
 8 A RUN THROUGH RUSSIA. 
 
 The only circumstance of interest which hap- 
 pened on this visit to Berlin was the fact that, 
 while Lord Byron and Mr. Thackeray were busy 
 with some money-changers of Jewish extraction, 
 the other member of the party, who was standing 
 on the curbstone patiently waiting for his com- 
 panions to return, had the pleasure of seeing face 
 to face the celebrated Prince Bismarck as he 
 drove along the Unter den Linden on his way to 
 the Emperor's palace, and was more impressed 
 than ever with the strong resemblance he bore to 
 that well-known Berkshire manufacturer, the late 
 Hon. Zenas Marshall Crane of Dalton, who for 
 years before had been spoken of as the Berkshire 
 Bismarck by his many admiring friends. 
 
 At 11:09 o'clock that night, April 2, 1889, the 
 train came along that was to take this party to 
 St. Petersburg ; so the three tourists took their 
 places in the sleeping-car, which places had been 
 telegraphed for in advance. The sleeping-cars in 
 Europe are very luxurious, built as they are upon 
 the European plan of providing an extra dressing- 
 room for each two compartments. A very com- 
 fortable night was passed and the next morning 
 found us bowling our way very smoothly and 
 evenly across that long stretch of country known 
 as Northeastern Germany, where once a portion 
 of the ill-starred kingdom of Poland had been. 
 
 About 3 o'clock in the afternoon, while Mr. 
 Thackeray was absorbed in a deep and profound
 
 FROM DRESDEN TO ST. PETERSBURG- 9 
 
 study of the Russian language with its complex 
 alphabet of thirty-eight letters, the invention of 
 the Monk Cyrenius of the ninth century, Lord 
 Byron exclaimed, " I wish we could see some- 
 thing which is distinctively Russian I am tired 
 with this familiar German scenery." 
 
 The words were scarcely out of the mouth of 
 our poetical friend before the train passed over 
 the little bridge of stone spanning the brook 
 which divides Russia from Germany, and having 
 left Eydt Kuhnen, the last stopping-place on the 
 German line, we drew up at Wirballen, the first 
 town on the Russian frontier. 
 
 At last we were in Russia, divided from the 
 familiar land and language of Germany by a nar- 
 row little stream, and the wish of Lord Byron was 
 gratified in an " augenblick," while Mr. Thacke- 
 ray laid down his Russian primer and proceeded 
 to stand the examination of the gray-coated 
 military gentlemen who swarmed about the sta- 
 tion like bees around a hive. 
 
 Here, at last, everything was distinctively 
 Muscovitish ; it was but the transition of a few 
 seconds, but it was not necessary to be officially 
 informed that Germany was behind us, and that 
 we had at last reached the confines of that vast 
 country toward which we had been so long in 
 coming. Here were veritable Cossacks, Tartar- 
 eyed officers with double dangling swords at their 
 sides, sadly impeding their daily walk, even if
 
 IO A RUN THROUGH RUSSIA. 
 
 they did not interfere with their professional con- 
 versation ; and these military-looking men with 
 their long, gray overcoats and flat, gray caps, 
 together with the astrakhan helmets of the 
 armed police with their breasts embroidered with 
 a double row of cartridges and with cross daggers 
 forming a St. Andrew's cross over their breasts, 
 impressed upon the peaceful strangers the stern 
 and sinister fact that they were in a land in 
 which the old motto was inverted, a land where 
 the sword was, indeed, mightier than the pen. 
 
 The effect of this sudden and unexpected 
 transition from the familiar surroundings of the 
 Fatherland to the strange surprise of this land of 
 absolute monarchy was quite overwhelming. It 
 seemed to be the work of an instant like the 
 shifting of scenes at the well-known Opera House 
 at Dresden. Everything was changed as at the 
 nod of the director on the stage. The quaint old 
 German cottages, the green fields of the old land- 
 scape, the familiar German tongue, the uniforms 
 of the German Imperial army, and the running 
 gear of the railroad cars, were all a thing of the 
 past now, and gave place, as by the magician's 
 wand, to white snow, gray overcoats, a conun- 
 drum-like sign language, ubiquitous soldiers, and a 
 distinct odor of sheepskin that smell of leather 
 which seemed to haunt the tourist and hover for- 
 ever under his nostrils throughout all the land of 
 Russia.
 
 FROM DRESDEN TO ST. PETERSBURG. \ I 
 
 We were soon given to understand that the 
 next thing to be done was to produce our pass- 
 ports, and not to be long about it either, since 
 these almond-eyed Tartar gentlemen, with an 
 embarrassment of riches in the way of pistols and 
 swords, had everything in their own hands in 
 case of any unwillingness to comply with their 
 commands. 
 
 As good luck would have it, the writer was the 
 first man to graduate from this examination in 
 the dark room, and, on hearing something which 
 sounded like his name as it might have been pro- 
 nounced in the Coptic or Sanscrit tongues, passed 
 through a small iron gate which opened into the 
 kingdom of the Czar's elect, and secured once 
 more his precious passport, while his friends, 
 Lord Byron and Mr. Thackeray, were farther 
 down the file. 
 
 While engaged in the work of trying to deci- 
 pher some of the signs in the shops of this queer 
 little town on the Russian border Wirballen by 
 name a stranger approached, with hands in 
 pocket and Derby hat far back upon the head, 
 whereupon the following conversation ensued : 
 
 " Fellow-countryman, I believe." 
 
 " Yes, I am an American." 
 
 "Stranger, it does me good to see you. I want 
 to get out of this land of secret police and queer 
 language, where the letters are all drunk and run 
 the wrong way, like lopsided crabs. I'd give my
 
 1 2 A RUN THROUGH RUSSIA. 
 
 bottom dollar if I was on the other side of that 
 brook." 
 
 "Well, why don't you cross over?" 
 " I can't do it, stranger. I'm travelling with 
 eight elephants and my passport has been sent 
 back to the Crimea to get vised there." 
 
 " You mean that you are in a party of eight ? " 
 " No, not that. I am agent for Barnum, and 
 have bought eight elephants for him out beyond 
 the Crimea. There they are ; out there, eating 
 their heads off. It's no joke keeping eight ele- 
 phants upon one's hands ! Why, stranger, they 
 eat a barnful of hay every twenty-four hours, and 
 here I am anchored to this spot until my passport 
 comes back from the Crimea. You see I happened 
 to forget to have it signed out there, and here I 
 am with only that little brook yonder keeping me 
 from touching German soil, and yet I cannot 
 cross over, all because of that miserable passport 
 system. Stranger, I'd give a hundred dollars if I 
 only had them eight elephants across that brook 
 and safely on board the Hamburg steamer ! 
 Just look at them eating ! " 
 
 A view out of the station window, which, since 
 the name of Barnum had been mentioned, in some 
 strange way seemed to take on a resemblance 
 to the railway station at Bridgeport, Conn., on the 
 N. Y. & N. H. R. R. revealed the sight of the 
 eight elephants tossing hay over their heads in a 
 freakish sort of play, while the four keepers strove
 
 FROM DRESDEN TO ST. PETERSBURG. 13 
 
 in vain to keep the littered place in some sort of 
 order. 
 
 The " stranger," having expressed his sym- 
 pathy with his disconsolate fellow-countryman 
 inasmuch as he himself had been lately conduct- 
 ing a party of eight tourists through Europe 
 and having judiciously admonished his fellow 
 " keeper " upon the sinfulness of appending a 
 pack of firecracker oaths at the end of every 
 sentence, turned from the picture of the playful 
 elephants tossing to and fro their evening allow- 
 ance of hay by the banks of the dividing river 
 which separates the domain of the Russian Czar 
 from that of the German Kaiser, to look for his 
 lost friends and discovered by their happy faces, 
 like schoolboys who had passed their examination, 
 that Lord Byron and Mr. Thackeray had gradu- 
 ated from the Russian Custom House at Wirballen. 
 
 The important work of becoming accustomed 
 to this strange Cossack environment was not a 
 little helped by the judicious use of copper 
 copecks thrown around to the assorted variety of 
 military officials, who, with swords and daggers 
 and carbines hanging at their sides and cartridges 
 embroidered in rows of dozens across the breast, 
 proved the truthfulness of the English school- 
 boy's prime article of belief, " Never scorn the 
 humble brown " the humble brown being an 
 equivalent term for the copper penny. 
 
 Silence is golden always in Russia, especially
 
 14 A RUN THROUGH RUSSIA. 
 
 when preceded and followed by the distribution 
 of copecks, which, like charity, are found to 
 cover a multitude of sins ! 
 
 At 4 o'clock in the afternoon of this same day 
 the train started for St. Petersburg. 
 
 The first impression in these Russian cars was 
 a decidedly American impression. The smoke 
 that came from the locomotive revealed the fact 
 that the fuel used was pine wood, and it seemed 
 at first as if one were travelling through the upper 
 portion of New Hampshire or in the Sunny South, 
 while the scenery was like that through the scrub- 
 oak section of the Michigan Central road through 
 Canada. 
 
 On every side was observed the distinct type of 
 the Tartar face in the soldiers, the peasants and 
 the police. So much impressed was one of the 
 party with the Orientalism of the scene that he 
 broke at once into the opening strain of the 
 " Mikado," 
 
 " We are gentlemen of Japan," 
 
 but the Cossack conductor, not understanding 
 English, took no notice of this apparent act of 
 indiscretion. 
 
 The next thing to be done was the mastering 
 of the Russian language. These tourists began 
 at this in reading and deciphering signs. Lord 
 Byron was in an ecstasy of joy when he found 
 that he had been able to spell " buffet," which
 
 MOM DRESDEN TO ST. PETERSBURG. I 5 
 
 had the Greek letter " Phi " in the middle of it ; 
 whereas Mr. Thackeray, the teacher of the lan- 
 guage in this class, took great delight that he had 
 mastered the word " scholchoi " (" How much 
 does it cost ?") With regret, however, it must be 
 confessed that this word appears to be reserved 
 for some classical use ; as the natives along the 
 road never seemed to reply to it, but carefully 
 took the money that was offered to them and 
 never made any change, whether they were 
 offered rouble notes or a handful of copecks. 
 
 All the afternoon and evening the class in the 
 Russian language continued their studies, every 
 now and then missing their vowels and getting 
 their consonants in the wrong place, but in every 
 other respect being most excellent linguists. 
 
 The train for St. Petersburg was upon a single 
 track and stopped every twenty-five or thirty 
 minutes in order that the passengers might take 
 refreshments at the wayside eating-houses, while 
 the engine at the same time took wood and water. 
 At all of these stations the peculiar Russian 
 shrine, or " Icon," an image which is exposed for 
 worship, was to be seen. 
 
 The Cossack conductor was a wily-looking 
 character, who spoke only in Russian. However, 
 he did his best to explain the nature of the coun- 
 try through which we were passing, which con- 
 sisted of a long and weary stretch across the 
 snow-covered fields. No towns or villages were
 
 1 6 A RUN THROUGH RUSSIA. 
 
 in sight, and the only signs of life which were 
 obtained were the little rude peasants' huts as 
 they were clustered together in these small ham- 
 lets. 
 
 The following morning, while at breakfast at 
 one of these eating-stations by the side of the 
 railway, we were surprised at discovering a group 
 of beggars men, women and children clad in 
 sheepskins, with hides bound about their legs 
 with thongs. These wretched creatures began a 
 series of ritualistic bowing to us, the women act- 
 ually going down on their knees to us and putting 
 their heads to the ground. It was a novel sight, 
 but before we got through with our journey we 
 saw many specimens of the mendicant. He is on 
 every hand in Russia and swarms like the locust 
 in that land. This group of beggars performed 
 their antics, all the time we were at breakfast, 
 with the same feeling that actuated Felix when 
 he sent for the Apostle Paul, of whom we read : 
 " He hoped also that money should have been 
 given him of Paul ; wherefore he sent for him 
 that he might commune with him." 
 
 The miserable children were experts at this 
 ritualistic performance, and they all seemed to 
 express a great sense of relief when they reached 
 the main element of their worship in the passing 
 of the contribution-box. It was made of tin, so 
 that every copeck sounded well in it ; for while 
 these beggars believe in charity, they do not at
 
 FROM DRESDEN TO ST. PETERSBURG. \J 
 
 all despise the " sounding brass and tinkling cym- 
 bals." 
 
 That which strikes the traveller in passing 
 through this long stretch of country is the fact 
 that there seems to be no middle class. There 
 are no towns or villages, only hamlets, with 
 ^tables for sheep and other animals directly 
 among the dwellings of the people. 
 
 At 6 o'clock in the evening of the second day 
 from Dresden the sun set in sight, directly over 
 St. Petersburg. We could see the smoke arising 
 from the great city, which in some strange way 
 reminds one of Cleveland with its clouds of 
 smoke over Lake Erie. 
 
 The river Neva flows from the dark waters of 
 Lake Olga directly to St. Petersburg. The train 
 passed by the town of Gatchina, the Czar's coun- . 
 try residence, and his royal train, which was in 
 readiness to take him the next day to St. Peters- 
 burg, was standing upon a side track, 
 
 As we neared the city of St. Petersburg, the 
 heavy smoke which hung over it seemed like a 
 huge pall, gray and leaden ; and at every turn, 
 wherever there was a road to the city, at the 
 crossing of the railroad track, the ubiquitous 
 Russian soldier could be seen with his flat, gray 
 cap and red band, and long, gray overcoat, Set- 
 ing as sentinel at the gates. 
 
 All the horses were harnessed to sledges ; the 
 three-horse sledge or " tritska " seems to be the
 
 1 8 A RUN THROUGH RUSSIA. 
 
 favorite vehicle, and the universal hoop or arch 
 over the horses' heads is a distinctive feature of 
 all Russian harness. 
 
 As our train went whirling into St. Petersburg 
 the smoke from the resinous wood enveloped it 
 in a cloud, and as we looked out of the window 
 on the left, past the Emperor's palace at Gat- 
 china, we saw a lonely Russian peasant driving 
 his sledge toward the west as the sun was going 
 down. He was going home, we were hurrying to 
 St. Petersburg to the welcome of a great hotel ; 
 the Czar was coming on behind us in his special 
 royal train ; what was the peasant driving home 
 to'?
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 ST. PETERSBURG. 
 
 THE unknown author of the Book of Kings in 
 the Old Testament, had a very ingenuous method 
 of referring all readers who are desirous of 
 ascertaining further facts concerning the history 
 of the heroes whom he mentions, to the compan- 
 ion book of Chronicles for obscure points con- 
 nected with their lives. " Now the rest of the 
 acts of King Hezekiah and all that he did, are 
 they not written in the books of the Chronicles 
 of the Kings of Judah ?" 
 
 In like manner, the writer of this story begs to 
 refer all readers who are desirous of statistical 
 information, to Murray's and Baedeker's guide- 
 books, and to the recent magazine articles in the 
 Century and Harper s, as well as to the different 
 books upon Russia, which have so recently been 
 published in that lavish abundance which clearly 
 indicates a popular interest in this vast and slowly 
 developing country.* 
 
 by W. H. Dixon ; " England and Russia," by Madame Olga Novikoff; 
 ".Skobeleff and the Slavonic Cause," by O. K.; "Impressions of 
 Russia," by George Brandes.
 
 2O A RUN THROUGH RUSSIA. 
 
 The philosophy of the baker, who related his 
 adventures in the well-known poem, "The Hunt- 
 ing of the Snark," comes home to one who, in the 
 presence of all this lavish display of information 
 and research, attempts to describe his impressions 
 of Russia after the didactic method of the 
 average guide-book. 
 
 "'My Father and Mother were honest though poor ' 
 ' Skip all that,' cried the Bellman in haste. 
 ' If it once becomes dark we've no chance of a snark 
 We have hardly a minute to wait.' 
 ' I skip forty years,' said the Baker in tears, 
 ' And proceed without further remark 
 To the day when you took me aboard of your ship 
 To help you in hunting the snark. 
 A dear uncle of mine, after whom I was named, 
 Remarked, when I bade him farewell ' 
 ' O, skip your dear uncle ! ' the Bellman exclaimed 
 As he angrily tinkled his bell." 
 
 Mark Twain has declared in one of his stories 
 that he was always willing to write obituary 
 notices or deliver funeral orations about strangers, 
 as in this way he was not embarrassed by facts 
 since it is the facts of friendship which impede 
 and hinder the eloquent oration. Facts are some- 
 times extremely in the way. Let us try to be as 
 little incommoded as possible by their presence, 
 while truthfully giving our impressions in this 
 story of a " Run Through Russia." 
 
 The first distinct impression of St. Petersburg 
 on arriving is that it is, like Nineveh, "a very
 
 ST. PETERSBURG. 21 
 
 great city," and very far away from the rest of 
 mankind. When one has travelled for forty-eight 
 hours along a narrow line of single-track railroad 
 without coming to towns or villages or junctions 
 or cross-roads, one begins to doubt whether there 
 be any St. Petersburg, after all, at the other end 
 of this long run, so far away does it seem ; and 
 the disturbing doubts which beset the crew of 
 Columbus begin to make their presence felt as the 
 endless stretch of perspective rails run on and on 
 towards the ever-receding North Pole. 
 
 On arriving at St. Petersburg one is impressed 
 at once with the haste and business activity of the 
 place. It seems the most like an American city 
 of any of the great cities of Europe, with its ele- 
 gant palaces and open lots and small wooden and 
 brick tenements crowded together. Something 
 about it reminds one at once of Washington, and 
 of North Broad Street, Philadelphia, and of cer- 
 tain parts of New York, namely, Sixth, Seventh 
 and Eighth Avenues. 
 
 We drove at once in an omnibus along the 
 celebrated Nevskoi Prospekt, with its four lines 
 of carriages, racing, driving, tearing up and down 
 in alternate rows, like a four deep chariot-race in 
 the Coliseum of Ancient Rome. Droskies, sedate 
 carriages with liveried footmen and coachmen, 
 troitskas, or three-horse sledges, with the universal 
 hoop over the horses' necks, and long lumbering 
 wagons with peculiar and oriental harnessing, and
 
 22 A RUN THROUGH RUSSIA. 
 
 yet withal with a semi-western look of newness 
 and familiarity, make this famous street seem very 
 natural and very American in the sense of nervous 
 haste which it imparts to all who enter it. In his 
 article on palatial Petersburg, in the July number 
 of Harper's Magazine, 1889, Mr. Theodore Child 
 says : 
 
 " With a last glance at the Nevskoi Prospekt 
 the pride of every patriotic Russian we will con- 
 clude our observations on palatial Petersburg. 
 This famous street is remarkable first of all for its 
 dimensions ; it is more than a hundred feet broad 
 and three miles long. 
 
 " In this framework, admirably called a Prospect 
 for the whole street is calculated to produce its 
 effect when looked at in perspective and not when 
 examined in detail the whole characteristic 
 movement of St. Petersburg may be seen ; the 
 tramways ; the strings of telegas, laden with 
 goods ; the clouds of common droskies, looking 
 like toy carriages ; the finer private droskies, 
 drawn by -splendid, long-stepping trotters, har- 
 nessed so lightly that the beauty of their form is 
 nowhere concealed ; the troitskas with their team 
 harnessed fanwise, three abreast ; the throngs of 
 silent foot-passengers mujiks, civil servants, 
 officers in long gray overcoats ; worsen of the 
 lower classes, wearing short dresses of pale green, 
 unaesthetic blues, with gaudily embroidered ker- 
 chiefs on their heads ; ladies in Parisian toilettes :
 
 ST. PETERSBURG. 23 
 
 here and there queer old women, who seem to have 
 seen better days, and who now console themselves 
 by smoking cigarettes as they lounge in the sun ; 
 mujiks, who, in spite of the warmth, still remain 
 faithful to their sheepskin touloupes, and who 
 loaf along, dreamily cracking sunflower seeds, the 
 chewing of which is a favorite, popular distraction; 
 street-hawkers who sell ' kvas ' and other drinks, 
 cakes, sweets, fruit and flowers ; nursemaids 
 wearing the national costume, and coiffure a sort 
 of tiara of blue or red velvet, embroidered with 
 big pearl beads ; priests in long flowing black 
 gowns and tall brimless hats, sometimes covered 
 with a veil ; Circassians with their long coats and 
 their breasts stiff with cartridges ; a patrol of 
 Cossacks ambling along on their small, nervous 
 little horses, with their hay-nets slung from the 
 saddles. Horsemen are rare in St. Petersburg, 
 for the Russians do not appreciate riding as a 
 pleasure. The great means of locomotion is that 
 foolish vehicle the drosky which is the most 
 universal and characteristic feature in Russian 
 street landscape." 
 
 Arriving at our destination, the Hotel de 
 Europe, we were cordially met and welcomed by 
 a stranger who seemed to be expecting us, and 
 when we asked his name our friend replied, " I 
 am James Pilley, gentlemen." Whereupon Mr. 
 Thackeray informed us that before starting from 
 Dresden he had written to engage rooms for us
 
 24 A RUN THROUGH RUSSIA. 
 
 and to secure the services of that eminent guide 
 on our visit to St. Petersburg. 
 
 James Pilley was the most remarkable guide 
 that it was ever our good fortune to meet. 
 Whether in professional or in private life, Pilley 
 was always most interesting. His method of hir- 
 ing a drosky was always unique. He would go 
 forth into the streets and call out in loud, lusty 
 tones to the assembled congregation of drosky 
 drivers, who would rush up to demand his favor. 
 At first, we thought it was a Nihilist uprising, but 
 later on we discovered that it was only his original 
 method of securing the best drosky in the vicinity. 
 We regret to state that the custom in vogue 
 whereby the drosky driver was to consider himself 
 rejected, was the familiar American method of 
 spitting on the rejected candidate. The hereto- 
 fore noisy, loud-spoken Russian " cabby," who up 
 to this point considered himself a candidate for 
 Pilley's favor, hereupon would take a back seat, if 
 such a thing could be possible in one who always 
 sits on the front seat of the drosky ; and Pilley 
 was henceforth in command of the drosky which 
 had made the cheapest fare for the trip. This 
 alarming performance was repeated every time we 
 wanted a conveyance. In whatever light we con- 
 sidered Pilley, he was always an enigma. You 
 might see him sleeping, like a seal on an iceberg, 
 among the " Dienstmen " or commissionaires in 
 the hotel lobby ; for Pilley's method of recruiting
 
 ST. PETERSBURG. 25 
 
 his wasted energies was like that of the great 
 Napoleon, who had the rare faculty of instantly 
 dropping to sleep when off duty. 
 
 When Pilley was describing churches, palaces, 
 shrines, cathedrals or the works of art therein to 
 be found, there was no trifling with him on duty. 
 He had about him the most unique faculty of 
 making men and things go. " Stretch your necks, 
 gentlemen," he would say when we were called 
 upon to look at some far-off fresco in the ceiling 
 of palace or cathedral, " Stretch your necks, gen- 
 tlemen, there's nothing in Europe which comes 
 
 near it ! " 
 
 In remonstrating with him on one occasion 
 while threading our way through St. Isaac's Ca- 
 thedral, where the worshippers, as thick as black- 
 berries in September, were devoting themselves 
 before a certain shrine, and where we were carried 
 along in a careless Irish jaunting-car style he 
 simply replied, "Why gentlemen, this is all right, 
 I am James Pilley." 
 
 The sights of St. Petersburg are many and-were 
 seen by the party under the direction of Mr. James 
 Pilley in something like this manner : 
 
 " Firetpwer, gentlemen 1674 (or something like 
 it) feet high ; belt rings whenever there is a fire- 
 quite American-like, I am told ! " 
 
 "Tea in camels' skins, gentlemen look 'ere sir 
 'ere in this window not over there sir 'ere sir ;
 
 26 A RUN THROUGH RUSSIA. 
 
 tea brought over the plains all the way from 
 China." 
 
 " Where do they get the camels' skins, Mr. 
 Pilley ? " inquired Lord Byron. 
 
 " They call them camels' skins," replied Mr. 
 Pilley, " but then, sir, we know that they are other 
 skins besides camel skins, but they bring them 
 over on the camels' backs, sir, all the same, all 
 the way over from China." 
 
 "funeral, gentlemen, very poor person, wish 
 I could show you a regular rich funeral, one 
 horse and two mourners you perceive, very poor 
 funeral ! " 
 
 This remark of Mr. Pilley's was called forth by 
 the sudden appearance of a horse with a black 
 pall upon it, covering head and ears, like the 
 covering of a knight's horse in days of heraldry 
 and tournament. A long wooden wagon, likewise 
 covered with a pall, followed, on which was 
 placed the coffin, in plain board, while two peasant 
 women, in peculiar garb, walked behind. 
 
 " Here comes a wet nurse, gentlemen," observed 
 the irrepressible Pilley, " she comes from the 
 Foundling Hospital established by the Empress 
 Catherine II., to stop the prevailing national crime 
 of infanticide. They have as many as eight new 
 babies every day and can accommodate eight 
 hundred babies at one time." 
 
 As we turned our gaze from the funeral to the 
 nurse, we observed a huge peasant woman with a
 
 ST. PETERSBURG. 2J 
 
 peculiar arrangement of red head-gear and petti- 
 coat, and white puffs and flaps around the neck 
 and shoulders, who came walking along toward us 
 as if she were a metal doll who had been wound 
 up to walk, or a stuffed pin-cushion after the 
 familiar pattern seen at the average church fair. 
 
 St. Petersburg was dull without Pilley to enliven 
 it. In fact, life seemed dull after being cared for 
 and carried along by Pilley. He it was who laid 
 out for us our daily work. He consummated the 
 difficult and laborious work of rightly seeing the 
 sights of St. Petersburg. When remonstrated 
 with on one occasion, while he was showing us a 
 number of saints' bones which we thought we had 
 seen in other countries, he explained it by saying, 
 " Good gracious, gentlemen, there is no country in 
 the world as rich in holy bones as Russia ! " 
 And to say the least, this bone-factory method of 
 canonizing the anatomy of the saints was striking 
 and interesting. 
 
 After seeing the shrines and the icons in the 
 streets, the place where the late Czar was killed, 
 with the new chapel which is placed upon it, the 
 bazaars and gin-shops, the horse-cars, and the 
 cattle market, which in some way has a strange 
 resemblance to a Chicago or St. Louis drove-yard, 
 the School of Mines, and the various columns and 
 statues and palaces of the city, the great objects 
 of interest in St. Petersburg are found to be the 
 Winter Palace and the Hermitage, the Nevski
 
 28 A RUN THROUGH RUSSIA. 
 
 Monastery and Convent of St. John Nevski, the 
 Fortress and the Church of St. Peter and St. Paul, 
 and the Cathedrals of St. Isaac and of Our Lady 
 of Kazan, and the hut and boat of Peter the Great, 
 in both of which he lived, while he, like immortal 
 cyclops, worked at the creation of St. Petersburg. 
 
 The cathedrals and the monastery we will con- 
 sider in a later chapter ; the Winter Palace and 
 the Hermitage deserve a chapter in this story for 
 themselves alone. Let us, in the remainder of 
 this chapter, go round about this wonderful city 
 of his taste this creation of the will and the 
 genius of Russia's most potent personality Peter 
 the Great palatial Petersburg. 
 
 There is no such striking personality in the 
 history of any country of Europe as that of the 
 illustrious Peter the Great. In St. Petersburg at 
 every turn, in the famous Hermitage Gallery, in 
 the celebrated fortress of Peter and Paul (the 
 Westminster Abbey of Russia), by picture, statue 
 and public work at every turn his memory is pre- 
 served and honored as the great founder of this 
 young empire. To the American visitor there is 
 much about Peter the Great which reminds one of 
 our own Benjamin Franklin. He strikes us as a 
 Franklin who, by some wave of fate, happened to 
 be born the heir to a throne. He has the same 
 broad forehead, indicative of the faculty of me- 
 chanical invention. How this man could have 
 accomplished so much in fifty years is an everlast-
 
 ST. PETERSBURG. 29 
 
 ing cause of wonder. His work-room, his lathes 
 and machines, the boat he built, the travelling car- 
 riage he invented strangely like our ' modern 
 American buck-board his tools, trunks, book- 
 cases, hampers, furniture and inventions of all 
 kinds remind the American visitor very markedly 
 of the handicraft tendency of Benjamin Franklin, 
 who lightened the hours of his anxious days of 
 statesmanship with the muscular delights of 
 physical exercise. 
 
 In " The Story of Russia," by W. R. Morfill, 
 the latest volume in " The Story of the Nations " 
 series, his work and character are thus described : 
 " It is difficult to estimate accurately the Titanic 
 figure of Peter. He was a strange mixture of 
 virtues and vices. Inheriting all the traditions of 
 despotism, we must not feel surprised if, like our 
 own Edward I. he had no scruple in removing any 
 obstacles which appeared in his path. To the 
 same source must be traced his lack of self-rule and 
 physical restraint. He was descended, we must 
 remember, from a long line of semi-Asiatic bar- 
 barians, and if he had not been a man of power- 
 ful genius, would have been content, as they were, 
 with the idleness and luxury of a palace 
 
 1 Like one of nature's fools who feed on praise.' 
 
 He was willing to abandon all these pleasures, so 
 captivating to the ordinary mind, to put himself, 
 as it were, to school, to endure privations and
 
 30 A RUN THROUGH RUSSIA. 
 
 labor, in order to break with a system against 
 which his intellect rebelled. There was genius 
 in his sense of the dignity of labor and his un- 
 quenchable thirst for knowledge. The active 
 brain was ever at work ; all persons who came in 
 contact with him were struck with the vigor and 
 originality of his mind and not the least, William 
 III-., one of the wisest sovereigns of his day. The 
 reverse of the medal is less pleasing his reckless- 
 ness of human life, his intemperance, and the 
 brutality shown to his miserable son. Had he 
 been a Turkish Sultan this last-mentioned crime 
 would have been according to the natural order 
 of things ; but the strong European side of Peter 
 makes us forget his Asiatic training. 
 
 "Many have challenged the utility of the inno- 
 vations which he introduced into Russia. Would 
 it not have been better, they say, to have allowed 
 the country to develop itself gradually and not to 
 force upon it a premature ripeness ? But to this 
 it may be answered that all the best men who 
 had written on Russia, under the old order of 
 things saw that amelioration could only result 
 from without. Such was the opinion of Krizhan- 
 ich and Kotishikhin two shrewd observers of the 
 seventeenth century. At the beginning of his 
 reign Peter found Russia Asiatic, he left her 
 European. He created a navy and gave her an 
 outlet on the Baltic, the attempt to force a pas- 
 sage by the embouchure of the Don at Azov hav-
 
 ST. PETERSBURG. 31 
 
 ing failed. Instead of the disorderly, badly-ac- 
 coutered regiments of the Streltsi, he gave to 
 Russia an army clothed and disciplined on the 
 European model. He added many provinces to 
 the empire, constructed canals, developed many 
 industries, and caused serviceable books to be 
 translated into Russian, so that his ignorant sub- 
 jects might be instructed. He gave Russia libra- 
 ries and museums, galleries of painting and of 
 sculpture/, and, finally, from an obscure barbaric 
 power, isolated from her European sister king- 
 doms, he created a powerful empire, recognized 
 as one of the most important states and able to 
 make its voice heard in the councils of Europe. 
 Many volumes of anecdotes about this remarka- 
 ble man have been published. They show him 
 abounding in lively sallies, quick-witted and 
 shrewd, simple in his tastes and with the natural 
 contempt of a man of genius for pomp and milli- 
 nery. No man enjoyed more perhaps even in a 
 boyish manner scandalizing the proprieties of 
 conventional persons, immersed in ignorance and 
 conceit, such as those with whom Russia 
 abounded. For the pompous boyars to see their 
 Tsar sometimes going about without an attendant 
 and wearing an old shabby blue coat or showing 
 them a pair of horse-shoes which he had made 
 or sitting smoking a pipe with a newly-arrived 
 Dutch or English skipper, must indeed have been 
 an indescribable shock. He honors now and then
 
 32 A RUN THROUGH RUSSIA. 
 
 heretics like Gordon and Lefort, by accepting an 
 invitation to dine at their houses, and standing 
 godfather to their children. But again we think 
 of the reverse of the medal, the paroxysms of rage 
 and the ruthlessly cruel punishments. The man 
 is from beginning to end an enigma ; but it is im- 
 possible to deny his claims to genius, or to the 
 title which has been ungrudgingly assigned him 
 Peter the Great." 
 
 The foundation-stone of the Cathedral of St. 
 Peter and St. Paul was laid by Peter the Great, 
 on the i6th of May, 1703, and the edifice was con- 
 secrated in the year 1733. Every one knows the 
 story of its triple strokes by lightning and of the 
 adventurous exploit of the Russian peasant who, 
 in the year 1803, with simply a repe and a nail, 
 climbed up the tall, thin tapering spire, 158 feet 
 high, to replace the damaged globe and cross. 
 " All the sovereigns of Russia," says Murray, lie 
 buried in the Cathedral, excepting only Peter II., 
 who died and was interred at Moscow. The 
 bodies are deposited under the floor of the Cathe- 
 dral, the marble tombs above only marking the 
 sites of the grave. The tomb of Peter the Great 
 should be visited first. It lies near the south door, 
 opposite the image of St. Peter. The image, with 
 its rich gold frame, gives Peter's stature at his 
 birth, viz. : 19^ inches, as well as his breadth 5^ 
 inches. His consort, Catherine I., lies buried in 
 the same vault. The tomb of Catherine II., is the
 
 ST. PETERSBURG. 33 
 
 third to the right of the altar-screen. The row 
 of tombs on the north side of the Cathedral be- 
 gins with that of the Emperor Paul. The image 
 of St. Paul opposite to it gives the height and 
 breadth of that sovereign at birth. 
 
 The diamond wedding-ring of the Emperor 
 Alexander is attached to the image near his tomb. 
 The sarcophagus of the Grand Duke Constantine, 
 brother of Nicholas I., will be recognized by the 
 keys of the fortress of Modlin and Zamoscz, in 
 Poland, which lie on it. The Emperor Nicholas 
 lies in the aisle opposite the tomb of Peter the 
 Great, while the grave of his grandson and name- 
 sake the deeply lamented Tsesarevitch, who 
 died at Nice in 1865 will easily be recognized in 
 the same aisle by the palm-branches and garland 
 of roses deposited upon it by those who so deeply 
 mourn his loss. 
 
 The walls are almost concealed by military 
 trophies, standards, flags, keys of fortresses, 
 shields and battle-axes taken from the Swedes, 
 Turks, Persians, Poles and French. The devices 
 on the flags will be a sufficient indication of their 
 origin. 
 
 The fortress is used as a state prison. Alexis, 
 the eldest son of Peter the Great, having been 
 persuaded to return from Germany, was arraigned 
 for treason and imprisoned in the dreary case- 
 mates of this dungeon, where his father visited 
 him immediately previous to his sudden death.
 
 34 A RUN THROUGH RUSSIA. 
 
 The conspirators of 1825 were confined and tried, 
 and some executed within its walls. The cells 
 are not shown to visitors, but the Cathedral is 
 open all day. The Imperial Mint stands within 
 the walls and may be viewed by visitors on appli- 
 cation. 
 
 There is no more impressive sight in all Russia 
 than the tombs of the Czars and Grand Dukes in 
 this famous fortress church, with the keys of the 
 towers and fortresses which they have conquered 
 reposing, with the dust of ages upon them, on the 
 broad surface of the sarcophagus or monument. 
 
 " The keys of Death and Hell," held by the 
 Master of life, seemed fittingly symbolized by 
 these heavy, dusty fortress keys only the con- 
 queror, Death, being in turn conquered by Him 
 who had destroyed death. 
 
 On one of the marshy islands, upon which 
 Peter the Great built his " window looking out 
 toward Europe" is situated his cottage this 
 being the first house built by Peter on the banks 
 of the Neva, in the year 1703. It is not very far 
 from the fortress and is situated on the same 
 island. There are two rooms and a kitchen in 
 this wooden cottage and what was formerly 
 Peter's bedroom is now used as a chapel. 
 
 The famous image of the Saviour, endowed 
 with miraculous properties, which was always the 
 companion of Peter the Great in his battles and 
 succored his hard-pushed forces so remarkably (as
 
 ST. PETERSBURG. 35 
 
 he believed) at the battle of Poltava, is suspended 
 to the wall and is the object of the most pro- 
 found adoration on the part of faithful devotees. 
 
 Peter's famous boat, the remains of its canvas 
 and the rude workman's bench on which he sat 
 at his door like old Caspar at Blenheim, when 
 his long day's work was done are all shown to 
 the curious visitor with an interest on the part 
 of the custodian which shows how strong and 
 living is the effect of Peter the Great's personal- 
 ity to-day. 
 
 In fact, the most wonderful object seen in all 
 Russia was this famous boat. Whether he 
 obtained those wonderful lines of bow and stern 
 from the Dutch boat-builders at Zaandam or the 
 English mechanics at the dockyards of Deptford, 
 it is difficult to find out. 
 
 The long sharp cutter-like lines of this famous 
 boat, made by Peter's own hands, are a lasting 
 monument to his wonderful prevision of the age 
 which was to come afterward; so that, while with 
 one hand this famous Czar touched the old Mus- 
 covite world and life of Asia, with the other hand 
 he touched the marvellous developments of the 
 present age in which our lot is cast. 
 
 It was this wonderful dockyard experience of 
 his at the little Dutch town of Zaandam which, 
 after all, immortalizes this barbaric Czar and 
 gives him a place in the hearts of all young and 
 enthusiastic readers of history, as they remember
 
 36 A RUN THROUGH RUSSIA. 
 
 that pathetic German song in Lortzing's Opera 
 of " Czar and Zimmerman." 
 
 " Selig, O selig, ein Kind noch zu sein ! " 
 
 In childhood I dallied with sceptre and crown, 
 
 And warred with my playmates, who shrank at my frown 
 
 The sword from its scabbard how proudly' I drew, 
 
 Then back to the arms of my father I flew, 
 
 And as he caressed me " My boy," thus quoth he, 
 
 " How happy, how happy a child still to be ; 
 
 How happy, how happy a child still to be ! " 
 
 In manhood I'm wearing that crown on my brow, 
 The weal of my Russians stamps care on it now ; 
 In peace or in war for their glory I strive, 
 Though little they love me, who cause them to thrive. 
 In purple robes shrouded, all's lonely for me 
 How happy, how happy a child still to be ! 
 
 When ended each struggle, the Czar's life has flown, 
 
 His subjects will raise him a tablet of stone ; 
 
 But scarce in their hearts will his name live a day, 
 
 For all earthly greatness is doomed to decay ; 
 
 Yet Thou sayest, Almighty, " In peace come to Me " 
 
 And happy in heaven Thy child shall I be ! 
 
 But still to the minds of these tourists in St. 
 Petersburg, like the burden of the prophets of 
 old, there hung over us the burden of our mission 
 to Russia. As the burden of Nineveh pressed
 
 ST. PETERSBURG, 37 
 
 heavily upon the soul of the wayward Jonah, so 
 the burden of Tolstoi pressed down our keen and 
 inquisitive spirits. 
 
 We who had started forth to find out the great 
 prophet of the Slavic race, ought not to be tri- 
 fling away our time amid the art beauties of the 
 Hermitage or the historic sights of St. Peters- 
 burg. So it came to pass that on a Friday even- 
 ing Mr. Thackeray and the writer found the.ir 
 way to the Marble Palace, with their letters of 
 introduction from their friend the Russian Count- 
 ess in Dresden. 
 
 A great elegance, in gorgeous red and yellow 
 small clothes and draperies, who was found after- 
 wards designated in our note-book as " The 
 Tiger Lily " with black cockade hat and silver 
 mace, ushered us into the interior of the palace 
 courtyard, between a couple of grenadiers armed 
 with muskets and bayonets, while another ele- 
 gance led the way into the presence of the 
 Countess, who was lady-in-waiting to the Grand 
 Duchess Constantine. 
 
 In the presence of these Russian grenadiers 
 Mr. Thackeray looked as if his last hour had 
 come, and had the air generally of a Nihilist spy 
 about to be led to immediate execution. But a 
 delightful cup of tea from the smoking samovar 
 in the boudoir of the Countess soon revived him ; 
 while the very bright and sparkling conversation 
 of the gifted Madame Novikoff, the friend of the
 
 38 A RUN THROUGH RUSSIA. 
 
 Countess, soon made the guests feel very much at 
 home. 
 
 Madame Novikoff is the sister of Lieutenant- 
 General Alexander Kireff (of whom mention will 
 be made later on), and resides a part of the year 
 in London, where she has written a number of 
 striking works on Russia and the Russian situa- 
 tion. 
 
 She has written the books entitled " England 
 and Russia," " Skobeleff and the Slavonic Cause," 
 and a number of war articles on the Russian 
 campaigns in the Nineteenth Century magazine. 
 Her norn-de-plume in these recent articles is " O. 
 K." for Olga Kireff, her maiden name ; and when 
 the Countess assured us that Madame Novikoff 
 was " O. K." we smiled blandly while inwardly 
 wondering how a bit of American schoolboy slang 
 ever came to find a domicile for itself in the 
 palace of a Russian Grand Duke. 
 
 Our friend the Countess K , assured us that 
 
 the Countess Tolstoi was waiting for us to pre- 
 sent ourselves at the Winter Palace, and reminded 
 us that while we might at a safe distance be 
 enthusiastic over Count Leo Tolstoi, there was a 
 nearer view which was not all glitter, since after 
 the manner of a one-sided fanatic, he had dared 
 to set himself against society, government, and 
 the Holy Orthodox Eastern Church. 
 
 Upon inquiring when we could best see the 
 Countess Tolstoi, our hostess remarked to
 
 MADAME OLGA NEVIKOFF, 
 (the Russian War Correspondent " O. K.")
 
 ST. PETERSBURG. 39 
 
 Madame Novikoff, " Let me see ; the Emperor 
 came up from Gatchina the day before yesterday 
 well, there will be lunch at one o'clock to-mor- 
 row but by three you will find the Countess dis- 
 engaged." 
 
 This sounded just as if it was Cousin John 
 who had come up from Cape Cod to Boston, while 
 it occurred to us that we, too, came up from 
 Gatchina that same day. But as our thought re- 
 mained unexpressed we failed to receive an invi- 
 tation to meet the Czar a calamity he has never 
 dreamed of to this day. 
 
 Pilley, at the door, covered us up in his usual 
 nurserymaid manner with a couple of shawls, and 
 gave us quite another view of the literature on 
 Russia and the distinguished authoress of whom 
 mention has been made. But, as Mr. Pilley has a 
 lucrative position at present, and is useful to 
 strangers in Russia, we refrain from quoting his 
 brief but impressive remark. 
 
 On the following day we paid our respects to 
 the Countess Tolstoi at the Winter Palace. This 
 lady was most kind and gracious in her reception, 
 and gave us letters to the Tolstoi family in Mos- 
 cow which were most helpful. Indeed all the 
 letters given during our visit to Russia were a 
 great help to us in preparing the way, step by 
 step, for the far-off object of our search. 
 
 The servant in livery ushered us into a cozy 
 parlor, where a fire was burning on the hearth,
 
 40 A RUN THROUGH RUSSIA. 
 
 and where we discovered the Countess Tolstoi at 
 work with a lady friend, embroidering an immense 
 sampler which was rolled over a long cylinder, so 
 that it resembled very much a huge musical box 
 or orchestra cylinder, or a reel- of woolen fabric 
 just from the loom. 
 
 The ubiquitous samovar upon the table fur- 
 nished us our indispensable cup of tea, without 
 which, in Russia, it would seem that no conversa- 
 tion can be attempted. 
 
 Another elegance in blue daisies and white 
 stockings, similar to the gentleman already de- 
 scribed at the Marble Palace, served us at lunch, 
 so that, altogether, it seemed very much like a 
 parish call or a lunch preparatory to a parish 
 guild or parochial fair. 
 
 The Countess Tolstoi, like her companions in 
 the other palace, uttered a warning, Cassandra- 
 like cry of regret over the distinguished object of 
 our journey to Moscow. "Ah!" she said, "if 
 Leo would only let his reforms alone and keep to 
 his novels, how much better it would be for us 
 all." 
 
 This, of course, was her sentiment before the 
 publication of " The Kreutzer Sonata " what her 
 views upon the subject may be now we cannot, of 
 course, know. 
 
 As we met the faithful, but unsearchable and 
 inscrutable Pilley at the door, he remarked, 
 " Stretch your necks, gentlemen, look up the
 
 ST. PETERSBURG. 41 
 
 staircase ! That is the Grand Duke Vladimir, 
 brother of the Czar, he is going to a state dinner 
 at the Winter Palace the Czar is upstairs on the 
 second landing." 
 
 But even this hint to the Grand Duke Vladimir 
 failed to secure for us an invitation to the impe- 
 *rial dinner party and so we returned to the 
 Hotel de Europe, to the lonely and envious Lord 
 Byron, who had been playing the part of Cinder- 
 ella, left by her more fortunate sister, who had 
 gone to the ball. 
 
 We told him of our American republican sim- 
 plicity, like that of Franklin at the court of 
 Versailles, and how we had enjoyed ourselves at 
 the lunch so kindly given, but we refrained from 
 communicating the fact that Mr. Pilley's hint 
 made no effect upon the mind of Vladimir, as he 
 ascended the staircase of the famous Winter 
 Palace.
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 THE WINTER PALACE AND THE HERMITAGE. 
 
 THE two great sights of St. Petersburg are the 
 Winter Palace and the Hermitage. There are 
 churches and statues and columns and palaces 
 and shrines and monasteries at every turn ; but 
 the Winter Palace and the Hermitage are, after 
 all, the two most important objects of interest in 
 the great capital of Russia. 
 
 We were dragooned through these two buildings 
 under the marching orders of Mr. James Pilley ; 
 the two cardinal doctrines which have been 
 preached by Tolstoi, of passive obedience and 
 non-resistance, being the foundation truths of all 
 peaceful relationship with our omniscient guide 
 and all-powerful dictator. 
 
 And now while Pilley is securing the droskies 
 in which to carry these visitors to the palace and 
 the museum, let a word or two of description be 
 given, and let it be in the words of one whose 
 graphic pen has made Palatial Petersburg familiar 
 to our American magazine readers. 
 
 " The initiative of the Russians in art and in 
 civilization is limited. Hitherto they have dis- 
 played greater aptitude for copying than for orig-
 
 WINTER PALACE AND HERMITAGE. 43 
 
 inal conception, and even for their copies they 
 have had recourse to Western artists, particularly 
 to Italian architects like Quarenghi, Rossi, and 
 Count Rastrelli. The last is responsible both for 
 the outside and the inside of the Winter Palace. 
 This enormous structure was begun in 1732, 
 finished in 1762, partly burned in 1837, but rebuilt 
 in 1839 from the original drawings. It is a broad 
 rectangular block, four stories, or about eighty 
 feet high, with a frontage 455 feet in length and a 
 breadth of 350 feet, one fagade parallel with the 
 Neva, another looking toward the Admiralty, 
 the third facing the vast Alexander Place, and the 
 fourth (blind) fagade backing up to the adjoining 
 Hermitage Palace, with which it communicates 
 by means of a covered bridge. 
 
 " The proportions of this palace are not com- 
 mendable ; the style of architecture is very bom- 
 bastic rococo ; the decoration is overcharged with 
 statues, caryatides, flower-pots, grenades, and 
 trumpery accessories. The cheap stucco surface 
 of its facades mercilessly broken up by pilasters, 
 water-spouts, and windows, so that the eye no- 
 where finds repose is washed with a brownish 
 red, terra-cotta color, picked out with a lighter 
 tone of yellow. The iron roof is painted red. 
 
 " The outside of this palace is absolutely with- 
 out charm or merit of any kind, its only claim to 
 notice is its immensity, which, by the way, accord- 
 ing to Russian notions, is a very considerable claim.
 
 44 A RUN THROUGH RUSSSA. 
 
 " The interior is a saddening example of the 
 bad taste which seems to characterize crowned 
 heads of all nations, whether the Russian Czar, 
 the Turkish Sultan, the German Emperor, or 
 the British sovereign. The ornamentation is for 
 the most part in rampageous rocaille style, bright 
 burnished gold on whitewash, or imitation white 
 marble. 
 
 " Our pen absolutely refuses to describe the 
 sham splendor of the imperial apartments, with 
 their modern French polished furniture and vile 
 wood-carving, their massive screens glazed with 
 purple glass, their wall-hangings of yellow and 
 white, or rose and green satin. The malachite 
 room, the Pompeiian room, the Mauresque bath- 
 room, likewise failed to transport us with admira- 
 tion. 
 
 " The corner that pleased us best was Peter the 
 Great's throne-room, whose walls were hung with 
 soft, red velvet, embroidered with golden eagles. 
 The St. George's Hall, a parallelogram, 140 feet 
 by 60 feet, adorned with Corinthian columns of real 
 white marble, with gilt bases and capitals, is also 
 a fine room, perhaps the finest in the whole palace. 
 The White Hall, the Golden Hall, and the Nicholas 
 Hall are chillingly white show-rooms, which 
 require the animation of the court ceremonies and 
 balls and the glitter of lights and diamonds, in 
 order to give them a picturesque interest. 
 
 " Finally we may notice the state entrance to
 
 WINTER PALACE AND HERMITAGE. 45 
 
 the palace from the Neva Quay, called the Am- 
 bassadors' Stairs, of white Carrara marble, and 
 the vestibule, richly decorated and gilded with 
 Renaissance ornaments and statuary. This stair- 
 case and the St. George's Hall are the only two 
 parts of the Winter Palace that present an aspect 
 of real grandeur and majesty. 
 
 " The adjoining Palace of the Hermitage, like- 
 wise of stucco, colored in two shades of cafe-au- 
 lait, was built between 1840 and 1850 by a Munich 
 architect, Leopold von Klenze, in a sort of Greek 
 style. 
 
 " It forms an immense parallelogram, 512 feet 
 by 375 feet, with two large courts. One main 
 faade fronts along the street called the Million- 
 naja, where is the entrance, under an imposing 
 vestibule, supported by ten colossal Atlas figures, 
 twenty-two feet high, carved out of dark gray 
 granite. In niches along this faade, which is 
 colored to imitate stone, are statues of eminent 
 artists, cast in zinc, to imitate bronze. 
 
 " Entering the palace, we find ourselves in a 
 noble hall, the roof of which is supported by six- 
 teen monolithic columns of Finland granite, ter- 
 minating in capitals of Carrara marble. The stairs, 
 in three flights, are of real marble, but the walls 
 on either side are of yellow imitation marble. 
 
 " The rooms of the Hermitage in which the 
 pictures and other collections are lodged, are for 
 the most part sumptuously decorated and adorned
 
 46 A RUN THROUGH RUSSIA. 
 
 with gigantic candelabra, vases and tables of 
 malachite, porphyry, or jasper, and many splendid 
 pieces of French furniture of the eighteenth 
 century."* 
 
 In the matter of art treasures, some of the most 
 interesting and attractive objects in the Winter 
 Palace were as follows : the emperor's great 
 jubilee room ; the dining-room where the famous 
 bomb explosion took place ; the malachite draw- 
 ing-room ; the cabinet of the Emperor Nicholas 
 I., like that of Sir Walter Scott at Abbotsford ; 
 the stairway up to the Nicholas Hall, of which 
 Mr. Pilley remarked " Look at it, gentlemen, 
 look at it ! the greatest stairway in Europe 
 nothing on earth to touch it, gentlemen ! " 
 
 Then follows the St. George's Hall, the famous 
 Throne Room and the Memorabilia of Russia's two 
 illustrious Czars Peter the Great and Nicholas I. 
 
 The iron death-bed of Nicholas I., when he 
 returned from the Crimea a broken-hearted man, 
 is a striking souvenir, resembling, as it does, the 
 small iron bedstead on which Napoleon I. died at 
 St. Helena. The room where the late Emperor 
 died after the explosion ; the dying bed-chamber 
 of the Empress ; the broken bits of furniture in 
 the doomed dining-room and the shattered car- 
 riage of Alexander II. are striking and suggestive 
 objects of interest, showing as they do the thorny 
 
 * " Palatial Petersburg," by Theodore Child, Harpers Magazine, 
 July, 1889.
 
 WINTER PALACE AND HERMITAGE. 47 
 
 path of the crowned and kingly Russian autocrats. 
 The impression left upon the tired brain, after 
 a day spent among the art treasures of the 
 Hermitage, is that of the wild phantasmagoria of 
 an ever-changing kaleidoscope. 
 
 We have had a glimpse of Russian art in the 
 wonderful collection of the painter Vasseli Ver- 
 estchagin, and the teaching by his brush in the 
 pictures of the " Siege of Plevna," " After the 
 Battle," " Jesus on the Lake of Gennesaret," and 
 "The Execution of the Nihilists," is as powerful 
 in its way as Tolstoi's preaching is by pen.* 
 
 * Since writing the above, the following letter from Count Tolstoi's 
 daughter has been received, which shows the religious development 
 of the latest Russian art. 
 
 YASNAYA POLIANA, June n, 1800. 
 
 DEAR MR. NEWTON : My father thanks you very much for send- 
 ing yours and your brother's excellent books, which he has read with 
 great pleasure. He now begs a favor of you, which he hopes you will 
 grant him. At the picture exhibition of this year in St. Petersburg, 
 there has been exposed a work of one of our renowned professors of 
 painting. Mr. Gay, a friend of my father's and also a fellow-believer 
 of his. One of his Mr. Gay's early pictures, " The Last Supper," 
 produced a great sensation, not only in Russia, but also in Europe. 
 The subject of this new picture is " Christ Before Pilate," or " What 
 is Truth?" The picture excited quite contradictory feelings of 
 applause and denigration, and was taken off the exhibition by the 
 authorities. The chief value of the picture consists in its quite new 
 realistic and deeply religious understanding of Christ's personality. 
 This picture is now being taken to America. My father thinks that 
 the American public is more able than any other to judge and appre- 
 ciate the merit of it. My father hopes that you will not refuse to 
 explain to the public the meaning and the importance of the picture. 
 He thinks that by its deep religious truth, this picture of Mr. Gay's 
 can serve the aim which you pursue, of uniting in one all the different 
 Christian confessions. 
 
 Believe me, sir. yours truly, 
 
 TATIANA TOLSTOI.
 
 48 A RUN THROUGH RUSSIA. 
 
 But the Hermitage is an ever increasing won- 
 der as one goes deeper and deeper in. Arvazof- 
 sky's painting of " Sunset on the Black Sea " is a 
 picture which can never be effaced from the 
 mind. His painting of " The Deluge " is wild 
 and awful, but not so impressive as the former 
 picture. " The Creation of the World " is 
 another of his remarkable efforts. " The 
 Nymphs in Water," by Neff, is remarkable for its 
 flesh-tints. " The Brazen Serpent," by Bruni, 
 and " The Last Day of Pompeii " are also strik- 
 ing and important specimens of the Russian 
 School. 
 
 But Mr. James Pilley preferred the classical 
 pictures of the old masters to these new Russian 
 paintings, and so we were hurried along " stretch- 
 ing our necks " and " looking at this " and " look- 
 ing at that," with the oft-repeated reminder 
 snapping in our ears like the crack of the whip in 
 the ears of a blinded and obstinate mule, " Noth- 
 ing in Europe to touch it nothing, gentlemen ! 
 Look at it ! LOOK AT IT ! " This second com- 
 mand being always given with tremendous and 
 Czar-like emphasis. 
 
 " Twenty-four Murillos, gentlemen think of it 
 twenty-four in one collection ! " 
 
 "Statue of Nicholas I. handsomest man in all 
 Europe. Nothing to touch him, gentlemen ! A 
 Van Dyck look at it. Hangels and Hinglish 
 partridges hangels in the foreground, partridges
 
 WINTER PALACE AND HERMITAGE. 49 
 
 on the fly. ' Dead Boy and Dolphin/ by Ralph- 
 fyal only sculpture he ever made. Look 'ere 
 sir, close by this 'ot hair flue, 'ere you have six 
 Rembrandts ! Look at this one, sir Flemish 
 hangels a-flopping ; " this being the interpreta- 
 tion of a picture by Rembrandt of some angels, 
 with distinctly Flemish faces, engaged at prayer. 
 
 But enough. Here were Steens, and Snyders, 
 and Guido Reni's, and Teniers, and Paul Potter, 
 and Quentin Matsys, and Titian, and Domeni- 
 chino, and Wouverman, with his delightful and 
 executive war pictures, in every one of which was 
 found the irrepressible white horse on a gallop, 
 and Leonardo da Vinci, and Raphael, and Fra 
 Angelico, and Correggio, and Luti's famous 
 " Flageolet Boy," and Michael Angelo's " Tour de 
 Force." 
 
 Lord Byron wanted to be put to bed on arriv- 
 ing at the hotel, while Mr. Thackeray vainly 
 strove to write out in his diary his impressions of 
 the Winter Palace and the Hermitage. 
 
 " One more such victory and we are undone ! " 
 remarked Lord Byron. 
 
 " I hope you are satisfied," inquired James 
 Pilley. 
 
 "Oh, more than satisfied!" replied all three 
 in a breath, " but no more sight-seeing for 
 twenty-four hours, Mr. Pilley." 
 
 Hereupon Pilley descended in the elevator and 
 was found among the dientsmen in the hotel
 
 50 A RUN THROUGH RUSSIA. 
 
 lobby, sleeping sideways on his chair like a fat 
 sleek seal on a cool and congenial iceberg. 
 
 NOTE TO CHAPTER III. 
 
 It was the intention of the writer to include in the present 
 chapter a brief account of Russian Art and Artists, as sug- 
 gested by the pictures in the Hermitage collection of the 
 Russian artists there. But there is no such definite and 
 technical thing as Russian Art, and the history of Russian 
 Art is only, after all, the history of the individual artists who 
 have from time to time appeared upon the stage of history. 
 
 Vasseli Verestchagm's pictures, as exhibited in our Ameri- 
 can cities, with his descriptions and his essays on realism, 
 have made the public familiar with this great apostle of 
 realistic art, and any further description of these now familiar 
 works of art is therefore omitted from this story of a " Run 
 Through Russia."
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 SUNDAY IN ST. PETERSBURG. 
 
 THE interesting events of Saturday evening at 
 the Winter Palace were forgotten by the trav- 
 ellers upon the next day, which proved to be 
 a bright and auspicious Sunday, bringing with it, 
 even in the crowded streets of St. Petersburg, 
 that distinctly Sunday feeling which always hems 
 in the life of those who have kept Sunday in the 
 past. There is a distinctly Saturday feeling and 
 a distinctly Sunday feeling and a distinctly Mon- 
 day feeling, go where we will and stay where we 
 may. It is the influence of the past life making 
 itself felt in the life of the present, whatever the 
 present may be. 
 
 On this beautiful Sunday in St. Petersburg, 
 church after church was visited. Along the 
 Nevskoi Prospekt, and under the somewhat sub- 
 dued guidance of the ever adequate Pilley, a 
 famous monastery was visited, with its chapels 
 and attending houses making quite a village in 
 itself ; while through the corridors of this building 
 and along the walks of its consecrated gardens, 
 groups of monks of all ages could be seen. Sun- 
 day also brought us to the celebrated convent of
 
 52 A RUA T THROUGH RUSSIA. 
 
 the Cistercians, situated upon a street where 
 the famous Russian abattoir is built, which, 
 with its bison's horns as a sign over the entrance, 
 strangely reminded us of a similar place in 
 the city of Chicago. Back to the Cathedral of 
 St. Peter and St. Paul, along the Nevskoi Pros- 
 pekt, near the Admiralty spire and gardens, into 
 the Smolni Cathedral, to the chapel building upon 
 the spot where the late Emperor received his 
 death-wound, into the magnificent spaciousness 
 of St. Isaac's Cathedral, and into the grand inte- 
 rior of Our Lady of Kazan, these travellers 
 threaded their way like the detectives of Wilkie 
 Collins' story, who mingled with the busy throngs 
 in the great cities of Europe, that they might 
 bring back again to their temple the precious 
 moonstone which had been stolen and the fetich 
 they were set to guard. St. Isaac's Church is the 
 grandest temple in St. Petersburg. It was begun 
 about the year 1820 and finished in 1860. Great 
 simplicity marks this cathedral, which is built 
 upon the model of a Greek cross. The cathedral 
 of Our Lady of Kazan in the Nevskoi Prospekt is 
 the second cathedral in St. Petersburg. Leading 
 up to it on either side is a colonnade formed of 
 136 Corinthian columns, said to have been built 
 after the model of the famous colonnade at St. 
 Peter's at Rome. The famous 56 monoliths in 
 the interior of this cathedral, of Finland granite, 
 36 feet high, together with the flags wrested from
 
 SUNDA Y IN ST. PE TERSE UR G. 53 
 
 the Turks in many battle-fields, and the keys of 
 Polish fortresses, make the interior peculiarly in- 
 teresting. Over every Russian place of worship, 
 and crowning the subdued murmur of the prayers 
 of the worshippers, there rise at rhythmic inter- 
 vals the rich and mellifluous voices of the male 
 singers, who are unaccompanied by organ or any 
 instrument of music. Strangely effective are the 
 minor cadences of these mixed choirs of men and 
 boys, inclining every now and then to the low 
 wail of Eastern and barbaric people. Like a rich 
 resonont echo again and again from the sanctuary 
 at St. Isaac's and at Our Lady of Kazan, that day 
 we heard coming to us, borne over that flood of 
 many voices the old but by this time familiar 
 refrain " Gospidi Pomilon, Gospidi Pomilon " 
 " Lord have mercy upon us." * The prostrations 
 on the floor, the incessant genuflections, the kiss- 
 ing of the icons and the lifting-up of little chil- 
 dren all over the church to kiss these sacred 
 pictures and to see the priests in the distance, 
 the handing of lighted tapers from those in the 
 rear of the assemblage to their friends who were 
 nearer the great candelabra, the rich voices of the 
 priests who seemed by the sequence of their tones 
 to be going through a never-ending liturgy, 
 
 * " As Eastern Christians will recite the ' Kyrie Eleison,' the ' Gos- 
 pidi Pomilon' in a hundred-fold repetition . . . so the four hundred 
 and fifty prophets of Baal performed their wild dances round their 
 altar.' DEAN STANLEY, "History of the Jewish Church" second se- 
 ries, page 333.
 
 54 A RUN THROUGH RUSSIA. 
 
 are elements which make the Russian place of 
 worship something that can never be forgotten 
 through all after-time. 
 
 When the morning's work was over, the writer 
 and Mr. Thackeray entered the one Roman Cath- 
 olic church in St. Petersburg, situated not far 
 from the Hotel de Europe upon the Nevskoi 
 Prospekt. It is strange to think of the Roman 
 Catholic as being a dissenter in Russia, where 
 this Church holds its place among the other 
 churches only on suffrance, so long as its preach- 
 ing is in no wise aggressive towards the Holy 
 Orthodox Eastern Church. When we entered 
 this Roman Catholic church we found a tonsured 
 friar preaching from the mediaeval pulpit with a 
 warmth and fire which seemed truly Western and 
 familiar. The foolishness of preaching never 
 seemed such wisdom as it did upon that memora- 
 ble Sunday at St. Petersburg, when throughout 
 the entire length and breadth of the Russian 
 churches in that great metropolis not a sound or 
 word of preaching was heard. Mr. Thackeray 
 and his companion glowed inwardly upon hearing 
 the voice of a preacher again, and felt with 
 Simon Peter on the Mount of Transfiguration, 
 that it was indeed good for them to be there. 
 
 It is very evident to any who look deeply into 
 this subject, that the upper classes in Russia have 
 a conventional faith in the Christian religion, and 
 look upon the Church and clergy as an arm of
 
 SUNDA Y IN ST. PE TERSE UR G. 5 5 
 
 power, side by side with the army and the secret 
 police, which must in any wise be maintained. 
 Nothing stronger with reference to the religious 
 life of Russia has ever been written than Air. W. 
 T. Stead's book entitled "Truth about Russia." 
 For any who would like to pursue this line 
 of thought, his fourth chapter, entitled " The 
 Tribune of all the Russias," is commended as 
 containing a fund of information upon this sub- 
 ject. In one place in this interesting book he 
 says : 
 
 " The first dogma of the Christian religion,' 
 said Count Tolstoi to me as we walked along the 
 chaussee that leads from Toula to KielY, ' is the 
 doctrine of the Trinity. For nine hundred years 
 our Church has had the peasantry absolutely in 
 her own hands ; and how many of the peasants 
 do you think have any notion of what the Trinity 
 is ? ' I did not venture to guess. The Eastern 
 Church lays great stress upon the dogma of the 
 Trinity a difference of opinion as to the precise 
 origin of the third person of the Trinity being an 
 insurmountable obstacle in the way of the re- 
 union of Christendom. If the Church had been a 
 living, teaching force, instead of being a more or 
 less automatic performer of ceremonies, the doc- 
 trine of the Trinity would have been mastered by 
 every peasant ; for it is the special boast of the 
 dominant school that there are no confessionslose 
 people in Russia. Every Orthodox must take the
 
 56 A RUN THROUGH RUSSIA. 
 
 Communion at least once a year. No- one can 
 get married without going to Confession and to 
 Mass. Judge, then, my surprise when Count 
 Tolstoi continued, ' Not one peasant in ten I 
 sometimes think, not one in a hundred has the 
 least idea of what the Church's doctrine of the 
 Trinity is. I have asked them over and over 
 again, and they usually give very extraordinary 
 answers. I must have questioned some hundreds 
 of pilgrims as to their idea of the doctrine of 
 the Trinity, and of these hundreds I do not re- 
 member six who could even name the persons of 
 the Trinity. As a rule, they say that the Trinity 
 consists of Jesus, the Virgin, and St. Nicholas. 
 But we will ask the next pilgrim whom we meet, 
 and you shall hear for yourself.' 
 
 " We had not long to wait. Seated on a little 
 knoll by the side of the road there were three or 
 four pilgrims. Two of them seemed mere tramps, 
 but a mother and son were much above the aver- 
 age, and to her Count Tolstoi addressed himself. 
 She said she was on the road to Kieff ; her son 
 had fallen into the river, and had been rescued 
 from drowning. In gratitude to God she had 
 vowed to make a pilgrimage to Kieff with her boy, 
 and she was on her way thither. She was there- 
 fore a good pilgrim, not a mere tramp, but one 
 who was fulfilling a religious duty. But when 
 asked about the Trinity she replied, ' Oh yes, I 
 know all about the Trinity ; there were three
 
 SUNDA Y IN S T. PE TEKSB UK G. 57 
 
 brothers who were thrust into a cave and set on 
 fire, and in the fire Jesus came and walked with 
 them. I have read all about it in the Gospel ; ' 
 and she was going off into fresh detail when the 
 Count stopped her. ' There/ said he, 'you have 
 a fair sample ; she thinks the three Hebrew 
 children were the Trinity. That is the net result 
 of nine hundred years of dogmatic teaching by a 
 Church which has had exclusive possession of the 
 field.' . . . 
 
 " The best thing that could happen to Russia 
 better even than the sudden determination of the 
 Emperor to shake off the trammels of his entour- 
 age, and to appear among his subjects as a hard- 
 riding Tzar, determined to see with his own eyes, 
 and hear with his own ears, all that is going on 
 in his dominions would be a great spiritual re- 
 vival within the Eastern Church. Here and 
 there the earnest voice of an eloquent priest is 
 heard, amidst the monotonous chant of the un- 
 ending liturgies, pleading for a religious life that 
 will be other than merely formal ; but for the 
 most part these voices find no echo, and some- 
 times, if the accent is at all strange, the preacher 
 is silenced altogether. The Church, with its 
 ecclesiastics, does not, as a rule, concern itself 
 about the mundane affairs of this life. The 
 Service of Man (save as an immortal spirit whose 
 blessedness hereafter can best be secured by the 
 recitation of a certain number of creeds, and the
 
 58 A RUN THROUGH RUSSIA. 
 
 performance of ceremonies) is a matter which it 
 regards too often as beneath its notice. I do not 
 say it would be a monstrous and wicked exag- 
 geration to say that a great spiritual apparatus, 
 designed to furnish these millions with the Water 
 of Life, has gone utterly to rust and ruin. It has 
 reared, and still rears, saints holy and noble as 
 are to be found in any Church ; but regarded 
 solely from a mundane point of view, and looked 
 at with the eye of a purely secular person, who 
 can only judge of religious systems by the extent 
 to which they minister to the wants, stimulate 
 the consciences and satisfy the intellectual needs 
 of men, the Russian Church stands sorely in need 
 of whatever impetus can be given to it from with- 
 out. I do not suppose that any foreign church 
 can ever make much headway in Russia ; the 
 national spirit is too strong; the instinct and tra- 
 ditions of centuries are too deeply rooted. 
 Neither can anyone wish to see the Eastern 
 Church torn by divisions such as those which 
 have rent the Western Church in twain. But 
 until Russia has a priest in every village who is 
 intelligent, pious, and sober, and a Church which 
 recognizes that its duty is to minister to the 
 daily wants and daily needs of humanity, and not 
 merely to say Masses for our souls hereafter is 
 it not suicidal folly to close the door to the widest 
 possible influx of other forms of Christian faith ? 
 Instead of vetoing propaganda, even of mistaken
 
 SUNDA Y IN ST. PE TERSE UR G. 59 
 
 creeds, would it not be better to welcome it as the 
 most efficacious way by which the Orthodox can 
 be roused to make a counter-propaganda ? Bet- 
 ter schism than sleep ; better divisions than 
 death. And the best and the simplest remedy 
 against somnolence and paralysis in religion, as in 
 business, is free and open competition." 
 
 Further on in this book, in speaking about the 
 tyranny of Pobedonestzeff, the procurator of the 
 Russian synod, he says : 
 
 " Against the Catholic Poles, against the Ger- 
 man Lutherans, M. Pobedonestzeff may wage war 
 with some plausible semblance of justification. 
 But against the Stundists, against the Molokani, 
 against the Pashkoffski, against the Evangelicals 
 of every shade, only the incorrigible perversity of 
 the persecutor can find a pretext for prosecuting 
 a campaign of extermination. ' This is a matter 
 far more serious for the Power that persecutes 
 than it is for the remnant who are persecuted. 
 Now, as of old, the blood of the martyrs is the 
 seed of the Church. To-day, as yesterday, suffer- 
 ing alone gives the true faith the key by which 
 it can unlock the hearts of men. It must needs 
 be that offences come, but it is not unto those by 
 whom they come. When Colonel Pashkoff and 
 Count Korff were exiled, they addressed a letter 
 to the Emperor, in which this truth is set forth 
 with much fidelity. They say : 
 
 "'The Lord's work in Russia will not be
 
 60 A RUN THROUGH RUSSIA. 
 
 hindered or stopped by our exile. What are, in 
 such a work, two persons like us ? The Lord has 
 many servants who willingly follow His com- 
 mands, and who are endowed more than we with 
 power and authority from Him. We are punished 
 innocently, but the Kingdom of God will grow 
 with still more power than before, for your good, 
 Sire, and for the good of our dear country. Our 
 undeserved exile will serve to consolidate this 
 work. Such an order from your government has 
 afflicted all the followers of Christ, but it has also 
 stimulated their zeal. The persecution, not only 
 of us, but also of books written with the sole ob- 
 ject of giving men to understand the love of Christ 
 which passes our understanding books which 
 are permitted by the Censure, and by Pobedonest- 
 zeff himself allowed to be spread abroad, when, in 
 the year 1880, they were seized in Nijni by Count 
 Ignatieff such a persecution puts upon all the 
 servants of the Lord the duty of propagating 
 orally the knowledge of Christ more than they 
 did before. They try to persuade your Imperial 
 Majesty that the so-called Evangelical Sectarians 
 and Baptists are apostates who deny their native 
 land and people, who separate themselves from 
 everything Russian, who are rebels against the 
 supreme authority, and are advocates of the uni- 
 versal levelling of ranks. Allow us, Sire, to tell 
 you positively that such an opinion about them is 
 unjust. They are as much children of Russia as
 
 SUNDA Y IN S T. PR TERSE UKG. 6 1 
 
 the Orthodox ones ; they love you as much as 
 those do ; they submit to the Tzar, not from fear, 
 but for conscience's sake and from the desire to 
 fulfil the will of God. Sire, allow us, your loyal 
 subjects, who love you with the love of Christ, and 
 who pray for you and for Russia, to implore you 
 in the name of Christ : grant to Russia the su- 
 preme good which is in your power ; make it law- 
 ful for every one to profess openly, and without 
 hindrance, the hope in the Lord : recognize for 
 us the right to believe as our conscience directs 
 us ; blot out all the punishments which are in- 
 flicted, equally with thieves and murderers, upon 
 us who, for conscience's sake, leave the Orthodox 
 Church ; and then the blessing of the Lord, which 
 is the most precious thing in the world, will be 
 poured upon you, Sire, upon your Imperial family, 
 and upon all Russia.' 
 
 " To that prayer no answer has yet been re- 
 turned. The Orthodox seem to be in fear for the 
 Church of the Living God if the Ispravnik is not 
 ready with pains and penalties for those who, for 
 conscience's sake, leave the Orthodox Church. 
 
 " For all such timorous ones, alike those who 
 persecute from fear and those who dread lest 
 that persecution may extinguish ' the spark of 
 God ' in the Russian Empire, I will conclude with 
 a little apologue of Count Tolstoi's. 
 
 " ' When I hear,' said he, ' that the Church is 
 perishing, or going to perish, because of this, that,
 
 62 A RUN THROUGH RUSSIA. 
 
 or the other, that is being done by men in power, 
 it reminds me of the story of the boy and the 
 eagle. A little boy rushed one day into the 
 parlor to his father, crying excitedly, " Father, an 
 eagle, an eagle in the kitchen ! Come quickly 
 and rescue it, for the woman cook will not let it 
 go ! " And the father said, " Peace, my boy. If 
 it were really an eagle it would fly away, nor 
 could a woman cook stand for a moment in its 
 way. Believe me, it is only a hen." And when I 
 hear that the Church of Christ, which, if it ex- 
 ists at all, is real, eternal, spiritual, and Dwine, is 
 going to perish because of what the government 
 is doing, I think of that eagle caged in the kitchen 
 by the woman cook, and I say to myself, 
 Peace, peace ; it is no eagle, it is only a hen ! ' ' 
 
 On the afternoon of this Sunday in St. Peters- 
 burg by appointment at the Hotel de Europe, we 
 received Lieutenant-General Alexander Kireef, 
 brother of Madame Olga Novikoff, the well-known 
 author upon Russia, of whom mention has already 
 been made when visiting at the Marble Palace. 
 General Kireef had fought all through the Plevna 
 campaign and the war in Bulgaria, and his stories 
 of the trials and difficulties in the ShipkaPass and 
 in the field with Skoboleef were as thrilling and 
 brilliant as Verestschagin's famous pictures upon 
 this subject in his well-known collection. Noth- 
 ing, however, could exceed the modesty and 
 Christian gentleness of this bronzed and weather-
 
 SUNDA Y IN S7\ PETERSBURG. 63 
 
 beaten soldier, who seemed to realize the apostle's 
 description of Cornelius the centurian as one who 
 was " just and devout and who served God with 
 all his house." General Kireef was a firm be- 
 liever in the possibility of Christian unity, by 
 which he meant a union of the Greek with the 
 Latin or Western Church. His lament over the 
 Filioque controversy was most honest and most 
 thorough, and his pious anticipation that the 
 Church of the future would wipe out the wrong 
 which had been done by omitting the disputed 
 expression was most interesting. He himself had 
 been a delegate to the Church conference held at 
 Bonn-upon-the-Rhine, and described to us his im- 
 pressions of Dr. Dollinger of the Old Catholic 
 Church, and Bishop Young, the late Bishop of 
 Florida, who was the representative of the Amer- 
 ican Episcopal Church at this meeting. He had 
 a kind word to say for Pobedonestzeff, the much- 
 abused procurator of the Holy Synod. When we 
 talked with him about the tyrannies he had exer- 
 cised as described by Mr. Stead, he smiled in 
 reply, and gave us to understand that Mr. Stead 
 has on hand an ample command of rhetoric. He 
 was very proud of his sister's books upon Russia, 
 and glowed with the ardor of a true-born soldier 
 over the brilliant but arrested career of the now 
 famous Skoboleef, whose life his sister had just 
 written in a book entitled " Skoboleef and the 
 Slavonic Cause." He gave us, in this afternoon's
 
 64 A RUN THROUGH RUSSIA. 
 
 interview, the Eastern question in a nut-shell. 
 "The Slavs," he said, "will ultimately go to 
 Russia. The Germans will go to Germany. 
 Austria will disappear from among the nations of 
 Europe and a network of dependent kingdoms 
 will become federated around the headship of the 
 Tzar as now in Germany the lesser German king- 
 doms are absorbed in the greater German Empire. 
 Russia," he declared, " is the young giant among 
 the nations. France and Spain and Italy and 
 Germany and England have had their day. Their 
 strength is in their past ; they are at present na- 
 tions of history, but Russia is just beginning to 
 assert her power. A literary, an artistic, a re- 
 ligious revival is each in its way bringing out 
 hidden sources of power, and a process of assim- 
 ilation of peoples will result, in the next century, 
 in the development of a larger national unity than 
 the Russia of to-day ever dreams of. All that 
 has been in Germany and in England will appear 
 in due time in Russia, whose period of reformation 
 or age of renaissance is not as yet begun." Gen- 
 eral Kireef explained to us as it never had been 
 brought home before, how it was that the unity 
 which pervades Russia was a religious rather than 
 a civil or secular unity. In addressing an audi- 
 ence, whether it be in Russia or in Bulgaria or in 
 Servia or Roumania, the speaker would not begin 
 with the expression " Ladies and gentlemen," or 
 " Fellow-citizens," but would always strike deeper
 
 SUNDA Y IN ST. PE TEKSB UR G. 65 
 
 than this to that which was a central bond of unity, 
 and would address the meeting by the well-known 
 expression " My Fellow-Orthodox." General Ki- 
 reef, while admiring Tolstoi, had little faith in 
 his schemes of reform, and thought that Tolstoi 
 in a certain way was extemporizing in his own in- 
 dividual fashion upon the revelation of Jesus 
 Christ, very much as Richard Wagner allegorized 
 the music of his operas from the old legends of 
 the German fatherland. 
 
 We parted from our kind and genial military 
 friend in the evening, and after writing our letters 
 home that night, sent for Pilley and made out our 
 plans for the morrow.
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 CONCERNING MOSCOW. 
 
 THE three American travellers took the night 
 train for Moscow at 8:30 o'clock. Mr. Pilley pro- 
 cured the tickets for the party, and after a fare- 
 well caution about not getting left over at the 
 railway stopping-places, waved his hat, after the 
 manner of Napoleon at Austerlitz, and we saw 
 him no more. 
 
 Hereupon Lord Byron fell into a fit of pro- 
 longed philosophizing about the advantage which 
 would accrue if it were possible to have a James 
 Pilley go through life for one 'making the hard 
 places smooth and the rough places plain ; 
 explaining every thing on the tourist view of life, 
 and overcoming all nascent and expressed diffi- 
 culties by usurping one's own feeble will with his 
 own all-wise dominant determination to bring 
 things through. Lord Byron always talked, while 
 travelling through Russia, in a subdued and hum- 
 ming-bird character of voice, finally ending in a 
 stage whisper, for fear of the secret police force 
 of the third section ; so that much of his valuable 
 conversation became hopelessly lost, and in this 
 way like the explorers of Nineveh and the ruins
 
 CONCERNING MOSCOW. 67 
 
 of Zoan we are able to reconstruct but a portion 
 of his proverbial philosophy. 
 
 But Mr. Pilley's warning was not in vain. A 
 most alarming tendency developed itself on the 
 part of Mr. Thackeray and Lord Byron, to get 
 out at way-stations on the road and proceed with 
 steady tread to the buffet to refresh the inner 
 man exhausted by too much Winter Palace and 
 Hermitage, and lunches with the Russian nobility. 
 
 Warnings being in vain, it became necessary 
 for the third member of the party to learn the 
 Russian word for . " all on board," and having told 
 them in advance just what it was, to sound it in 
 their ears as they sat by the open window of the 
 buffet and, in this way, to enforce a speedy 
 retreat to the train. This train for Moscow 
 moved along on a double track, quite like the 
 heavy movement of a Pullman drawing-room car 
 on the New York Central or Pennsylvania rail- 
 road, and by 10 o'clock the following clay the 
 domes and turrets of the four hundred churches 
 in Moscow came in sight. 
 
 There are three great sights to see in Moscow, 
 viz., the city itself, the Kremlin, and St. Saviour's 
 Church. 
 
 St. Petersburg, with its dashing droskies driv- 
 ing along the Nevskoi Prospekt, seemed like old 
 Rome, with its chariots driving along the stony 
 streets of the Imperial City, where now is the 
 Corso.
 
 68 A RUN THROUGH RUSSIA. 
 
 Moscow, at once, with its Kremlin towers and 
 wall, so strikingly painted in Verestchagin's 
 famous picture in his collection of Russian paint- 
 ings, seemed like Jerusalem in the days of King 
 Her.od, when there came wise men from the East 
 to worship the Infant King of the Jews. 
 
 St. Petersburg seems a Western and a Euro- 
 pean city Moscow is essentially Eastern and 
 Muscovitish. 
 
 The following brief description of the history 
 of Moscow is taken from the interesting pages of 
 Murray: 
 
 " In the fourteenth century Moscow became 
 the capital of Muscovy ; Kief, and afterwards 
 Vladimir, having till then enjoyed that distinc- 
 tion. In the early part of the reign of Basil II. it 
 was taken and ravaged by Tamerlane ; and later 
 it fell again into the hands of the Tartars, who 
 sacked it, and put many of the inhabitants to the 
 sword. In 1536 the town was nearly consumed 
 by fire, in which 2,000 of the inhabitants perished 
 In 1572 the Tartars fired the suburbs and, a 
 furious wind driving the flames into the city, a 
 considerable portion of it was reduced to ashes, 
 and no fewer than 100,000 persons perished in the 
 "flames or by the sword. In 1611 a great portion 
 of the city was again destroyed by fire, when the 
 Poles had taken possession of it, under the pre- 
 tence of defending the inhabitants from the 
 adherents of a pretender to the crown. The
 
 CONCERNING MOSCOW. 69 
 
 plague of 1771 diminished the population by 
 several thousands a decrease from which it has 
 never recovered. And, lastly, in 1812, the Mus- 
 covites gave up their ancient, holy and beautiful 
 city to the devouring element the grandest 
 sacrifice ever made to national feeling. The city 
 was the idol of every Russian's heart, her shrines 
 were to him the holiest in the empire hallowed 
 by seven centuries of historical associations." 
 
 But we have to describe the city as it is, rather 
 than to revert to Russian history. The assertion 
 sometimes made, that no city is so irregularly 
 built as Moscow, is in some respects true ; none 
 of the streets are straight ; houses large and 
 small, public buildings, churches and other edi- 
 fices are mingled confusedly together ; but it 
 gains by this the advantage of being more pict- 
 uresque. The streets undulate continually, and 
 thus offer from time to time points of view 
 whence the eye is able to range over the vast 
 ocean of house-tops, trees and gilded and colored 
 domes. The profusion of churches, 370 in num- 
 ber, is a characteristic feature of the city. But 
 the architecture of Moscow, since the conflagra- 
 tion of 1812, is not quite so bizarre as, according 
 to the accounts of travellers, it was before that 
 event ; nevertheless it is singular enough. In 
 1813 the point chiefly in view was to build, and 
 build quickly, rather than to carry any certain 
 plan into execution ; the houses were replaced
 
 70 A RUN THROUGH RUSSIA. 
 
 with nearly the same irregularity with respect to 
 each other, and the streets became as crooked 
 and tortuous as before. The whole gained, there- 
 fore, little in regularity from the fire, but each 
 individual house was built in much better taste, 
 gardens became more frequent, the majority of 
 roofs were made of iron, painted green, a lavish 
 use was made of pillars, and even those who 
 could not be profuse erected more elegant cot- 
 tages. 
 
 Hence Moscow has all the charms of a new 
 city, with the pleasing negligence and pictur- 
 esque irregularity of an old one. In the streets we 
 come now to a large magnificent palace, with all 
 the pomp of Corinthian pillars, wrought-iron 
 trellis-work and magnificent approaches and gate- 
 ways ; and now to a simple whitewashed house, 
 the abode of a modest citizen's family. Near 
 them stands a small church, with green cupolas 
 and golden stars. Then comes a row of little 
 yellow wooden houses, and these are succeeded 
 by one of the new colossal public institutions. 
 Sometimes the road winds through a number of 
 little streets, and the traveller might fancy himself 
 in a country town ; suddenly it rises, and he is in a 
 wide "place," from which streets branch off on all 
 sides, while the eye wanders over the forest of 
 houses of the great capital ; descending again, he 
 comes in the middle of the town to the banks of 
 the river. The circumvallation of the city is
 
 CONCERNING MOSCOW. ;i 
 
 upwards of twenty English miles in extent, of 
 a most irregular form, more resembling a trape- 
 zium than any other figure ; within this are two 
 nearly concentric circular lines of boulevards, 
 the sites of former fortifications, the one at a 
 distance of about one mile and a half from the 
 Kremlin, completed on both sides of the Moskva ; 
 'the internal one once the moat of the Kremlin 
 and Kitai Gorod with a radius of about a mile, 
 spreading only on the north of the river, and 
 terminating near the stone bridge on the one 
 side, and the Foundling Hospital on the other. 
 The river enters the barrier of the vast city to 
 which it has given a name about the central point 
 of the western side; and after winding around the 
 Devichi convent like a serpent, and from thence 
 flowing beneath the battlements of the Kremlin, 
 and receiving the scanty stream of the Jaousa, 
 issues again into the vast plain, till it meets the 
 Oka, a tributary of the mighty Volga, which it 
 joins at Nijni Novgorod. 
 
 On the north of the Moskva, streets and houses, 
 in regular succession, reach to the very barrier ; 
 and though a vast proportion of ground is left 
 unoccupied, owing to the enormous width of the 
 streets and boulevards, the earthen rampart may 
 truly be said to gird in the city. But in the other 
 quarters, and particularly to the south, Moscow 
 can hardly be said to extend further than the 
 outward boulevard.
 
 72 A RUN THROUGH RUSSIA, 
 
 The centre of this vast collection of buildings 
 is the Kremlin, which forms nearly a triangle of 
 about two English miles in extent. On the east 
 comes the Kitai Gorod (Chinese city), which still 
 preserves its ancient fence of towers and but- 
 tresses. Encircling these two divisions, and itself 
 bounded by the river and inner boulevard, lies 
 the Beloi Gorod (white city). The space enclosed 
 between the two circles to the north of the 
 Moskva, and between the river and the outward 
 boulevard on the south, is called the Zemlianoi 
 Gorod. Beyond the boulevards are the suburbs. 
 
 Before entering the Kremlin it will be well to 
 view it from one or two points on the outside, and 
 the most favorable spot for this purpose, on the 
 south side, is the stone bridge across the Moskva ; 
 from the river that washes its base the hill of the 
 Kremlin rises, picturesquely adorned with turf 
 and shrubs. The buildings appear set in a rich 
 frame of water, verdant foliage, and snowy wall, 
 the majestic column of Ivan Veliki rearing itself 
 high above all, like the axis round which the whole 
 moves. The colors everywhere are most lively 
 red, white, green, gold and silver. Amidst the 
 confusion of the numerous small antique edifices, 
 the Bolshoi Dvorets (the large palace built by 
 Nicholas) has an imposing aspect. 
 
 After visiting the many strange and interesting 
 sights in the Kremlin, this party of three with no 
 Pilley to conduct one's way and manage one's
 
 CONCERNING MOSCOW. 73 
 
 thinking sat for a long time under the spacious 
 dome of St. Saviour's Church and watched the 
 incessant procession of monks, peasant women, 
 soldiers and Russian field laborers, who, with their 
 muskrat faces, sheep-skin coverings, felt boots 
 and all-pervasive smell of leather, filed in and out 
 of this greatest Temple of the Eastern Church. 
 
 And some such train of thought as this forced 
 its way into the writer's mind. Moscow is to 
 the Europe of to-day something like that which 
 Prague was three centuries ago. This wilderness 
 of spires, belonging to four hundred churches, 
 marks it as an Eastern and an Asiatic city. Yet 
 this Eastern religion is thoroughly provincial ; 
 there is nothing large or cosmopolitan about it. 
 The troubled face of St. John the Divine and the 
 grieved look of Peter, in the famous picture of 
 " The Last Supper," behind the Metropolitan's 
 throne in this St. Saviour's Church, are reproduced 
 to-day in the thoughtful minds of all sincere 
 Russian Christians, as they feel in their inmost 
 souls that after all that can be said, their Church 
 has betrayed the simple Jesus of the Gospels for 
 the state Christ of the Orthodox Church, which 
 church is only an arm of the government like the 
 army or the navy or the third section of the secret 
 police. 
 
 Moscow is the border city between Europe and 
 Asia. The East and the West will meet here some 
 day. The American Alaska, with steamer and
 
 74 A RUN THROUGH RUSSIA. 
 
 railroad termination, will force a way into the 
 heart of Europe via the Russian Empire, and then 
 the provincialism of Russia will be a thing of the 
 past.* 
 
 The East will meet the West and will take on 
 at last the stirring active features of its civiliza- 
 tion ; the West will learn from this Eastern em- 
 pire something of its reserve and rugged strength, 
 and the coming man will be the third term in the 
 problem, the product of these two natural forces. 
 
 But our plain and pragmatical guide a mere 
 tertiary deposit or a base Silurian compared with 
 the omniscient Pilley called us from our reveries 
 to see more sights in the way of churches, palaces, 
 museums and untold memorabilia, the accounts of 
 which are written in the prolific pages of " Murray " 
 and " Baedeker." 
 
 In the afternoon of this same day this party 
 hired a carriage, and after driving through the 
 city, brought up at last with a sort of round turn 
 dramatic effect at the house of Count Tolstoi, as 
 the chariot of the Syrian rumbled its wheels to 
 the door of the Prophet Elisha a prophet in each 
 case being the object of search. We found a 
 quiet, old-fashioned stone and plaster house, inside 
 of a walled enclosure, very much like a walled 
 
 *Since this sentence has been penned a graphic and detailed account 
 has gone the rounds ol the American press, describing a proposed plan 
 for a railroad through Alaska to Behring Straits, with a tunnel 
 under the straits connecting with a railway from the Russian coast to 
 Moscow and thence by Moscow to Berlin.
 
 CONCERNING MOSCOW, 75 
 
 French chateau, such as one sees constantly in 
 France and Belgium, in pictures and engravings 
 of the scenes of '93, with the emigre's homes as the 
 base of the story. Our letters from the Tolstoi 
 family, at the Winter Palace in St. Petersburg, 
 secured for us a warm reception, and before we 
 knew it the children and the English governess and 
 some young lady guests were chatting away in 
 excellent English as if we were very much at 
 home. The Count's family had heard of our pro- 
 posed visit and had notified him of our coming. 
 He was away on a visit, fifteen miles beyond the 
 monastery town of Troitsa, which is about forty 
 miles by rail from Moscow. A certain Russian 
 friend, named Prince Ourouzeff, had urged Count 
 Tolstoi to visit him on his farm, and he was at 
 this time making his visit. Still, he had left word 
 that if his unknown American friends should come 
 all this distance to see him, they should be helped 
 on their way for the rest of their journey, and 
 push on until they found him at his hospitable old 
 friend's mansion. 
 
 So the sweet and obliging daughter sent a 
 telegram in that most undecipherable Russian 
 language, to the effect that we would leave at 6 
 o'clock the next morning, and would be at Troitsa 
 at 10 o'clock. And after bidding our friends 
 good-bye, we went home to the hotel, to be pre- 
 pared to leave on the morrow for the visit to 
 Count Tolstoi.
 
 j6 A RUN THROUGH RUSSIA. 
 
 It seemed to us then, on that drosky ride to the 
 hotel, that it was not such a fool's errand after 
 all. We were like soldiers at the front, who were 
 to make the attack upon the morrow. What 
 would the end be ? How would Count Tolstoi 
 meet us ? He looked in his pictures like a fierce 
 sort of Russian Thomas Carlyle. Would he knock 
 us down metaphorically, like Giant Despair with 
 his crab-apple cudgel belaboring his captives in 
 Doubting Castle only on purpose to set us up 
 again for a second playful game of metaphysical 
 ten-pins ? 
 
 " How very far away we are from home," 
 sighed Lord Byron, as the third member of the 
 party went into a Moscow apothecary's to hunt for 
 a Russian Alcock's Porous Plaster to forfend the 
 rumbling threatenings of some rheumatic twinges. 
 
 "Far away from home, did you say ? " replied 
 his friend, on emerging from the store. " Not a 
 bit of it ; look here ! What do you think I have 
 found on the shelf of this Russian drug store ? " 
 and the third term in the party produced from 
 his pocket a bottle of " Mother Siegel's Carmina- 
 tive Syrup," made at the Shaker establishment, 
 on the way to Lebanon Springs six miles from 
 Pittsfield, Massachusetts and decocted in the 
 laboratory of his old friend, Brother Alonzo 
 Hollister, whose photograph the writer had often 
 shown to strangers as a picture of " Emerson upon 
 his farm."
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 HOW WE FOUND COUNT TOLSTOI. 
 
 THE train from Moscow to the famous mon- 
 astery town of Troitsa left the station at 6:30 in 
 the morning, and the day was a Russian day, 
 cold and gray and leaden. 
 
 At 9:30 we found ourselves at Troitsa, where, 
 while the tritska was being made ready, we wan- 
 dered through this ancient and strong-smelling 
 town. Fat and pudgy vegetarian monks abounded 
 on all sides ; we counted nearly four hundred 
 that morning in the refectory and at chapel and 
 in the various apartments of their famous monas- 
 tery. These monks seemed so like soft dough or 
 putty, that one was almost tempted to pull their 
 fat cheeks to twist them into shape, as the boys 
 do with the gutta-percha faces which are pulled 
 and twisted into all sorts of shapes and forms. 
 
 " Troitsa," as Murray says, " is the Canterbury 
 of Russia," and a day may well be devoted to it. 
 St. Sergius, the son of a boyar of Rostof, at the 
 head of twelve disciples, established a monastery 
 on this spot about the year 1342. His piety and 
 the honor conferred upon him by the Patriarch of 
 Constantinople soon rendered him and his brother-
 
 78 A RUN THROUGH RUSSIA. 
 
 hood famous. The princes of Moscow sought his 
 counsel and the oft-mentioned Dimitry of the 
 Don was blessed by him before he set out for the 
 battle of Kulikova. Two monks from this mon- 
 astery, Osliabia and Peresvest, fought by the 
 side of the victorious prince, and one of them 
 fell dead, together with his Tartar adversary in 
 single combat. The intervention of St. Sergius 
 on this memorable occasion was rewarded by 
 large grants of lands, and thenceforth the monas- 
 tery grew rich and powerful ; its abbot, however, 
 the holy Sergius, remaining, as before, simple, 
 self-denying and laborious, and cutting wood and 
 fetching water to the last. His right to canoniza- 
 tion was still further established by the visitation 
 (recorded in the annals of the Russo-Greek 
 Church) of the Holy Virgin, who appeared in his 
 cell, accompanied by the Apostles Peter and 
 John, about the year 1388. He died in 1392. 
 The Tartar hordes of Khan Edigei laid waste 
 this holy habitation in 1408, and it was only 
 re-established, together with the present Cathe- 
 dral of the Holy Trinity, in 1423. Thirty monas- 
 teries were subsequently attached to it, and much 
 land, until, in 1764, St. Sergius was the possessor 
 as well as the patron of more than 106,000 male 
 serfs. The most prominent portion of the his- 
 tory of the monastery is the siege by 30,000 Poles 
 under Sapieha and Lisofski in 1608, which was 
 only raised after sixteen months, on the approach
 
 HOW WE FOUND COUNT TOLSTOI. 79 
 
 of a large Russian force. Later again, after the 
 election of Michael Romanoff, Ladislaus of 
 Poland, styling himself Tzar of Muscovy, be- 
 sieged the Troitsa monastery once more, but he 
 was repulsed by the brotherhood. When the 
 Poles were in possession of Moscow, the monks 
 of St. Sergius rendered considerable assistance to 
 their countrymen in the shape of supplies in 
 bread and money. The most interesting fact, 
 however, in the records of the Troitsa monastery 
 is that it was the place of refuge on two occasions 
 of Peter the Great and his brother John when 
 they fled from the insurgent Streltsi. Since then 
 the repose of the monks has not been disturbed 
 by political events. The French, in 1812, went 
 half-way towards the monastery, but returned 
 without the expected booty. 
 
 The plague and the cholera have never ven- 
 tured within the holy walls, which were founded in 
 1513 and finished in 1547. They extend 4,500 feet 
 and are from thirty to fifty feet high, with a thick- 
 ness of twenty feet. They were put in order by 
 Peter the Great, but their present appearance is 
 due to a later period. Eight towers form the an- 
 gles; one of them, of Gothic architecture, is sur- 
 mounted by an obelisk, terminating in a cluck 
 carved in stone, to commemorate the fact of 
 Peter the Great having practised duck-shooting 
 on a neighboring pond. 
 
 There are ten churches within the monasterv.
 
 8O A RUN THROUGH RUSSIA. 
 
 The most ancient is the Cathedral of Trinity. 
 The shrine of St. Sergius stands within it, weigh- 
 ing 936 pounds of pure silver. The relics of the 
 saint are exposed to view. In the altar-screen, in 
 a glass case, will be seen the staff and other 
 ecclesiastical appurtenances of the patron. Two 
 pictures of the saint, painted on portions of his 
 coffin, are suspended on the walls. That near 
 the shrine was carried into battle by the Tzar 
 Alexis and by Peter the Great ; and the Emperor 
 Alexander I. was blessed with it in 1812. On a 
 silver plate, at the back of the image, are re- 
 corded the several military occasions at which it 
 assisted. The interior of the cathedral is replete 
 with massive silver ornaments, and in the arch- 
 bishop's stalT is a representation of the Last Sup- 
 per, of which the figures are of solid gold, with 
 the exception of Judas, who is of brass. All the 
 images are adorned with precious stones. The 
 small chapel alongside was added in 1552, rebuilt 
 in 1623, and again in 1779 and 1840. Next to 
 this is a small chapel erected over the supposed 
 site of the cell in which the Holy Virgin ap- 
 peared to St. Sergius. The large church, with 
 five cupolas, was consecrated in 1585 and is 
 called the Assumption of the Virgin. The fres- 
 coes were painted in 1681. One of its altars was 
 consecrated in 1609, during the roar of the Polish 
 artillery, and devoted to prayer for deliverance 
 from the scurvy, of which disease three thousand
 
 HOU WE FOUND COUNT TOLSTOI. 8 1 
 
 of the inmates of the monastery had already 
 perished. 
 
 The large two-headed eagle in wood commem- 
 orates the concealment of Peter the Great under 
 the altar during the insurrection of the Streltsi. 
 
 Off the southwest angle of the church is a well 
 dug by St. Sergius and discovered in 1644, at a 
 time when the monastery was in great need of 
 fresh water. Between the Assumption and the 
 belfry stands a monument erected in 1792, on 
 which the principal events in the history of the 
 monastery are recorded. 
 
 The fourth church, " The Descent of the Holy 
 Ghost,'' was founded after the capture of Kazan 
 by the Tzar Ivan Vassilevitch in person. The 
 tomb of Maximus, a learned Greek, stands in a 
 small chapel close by. The next church in 
 importance is that of " Sergius Radonejeski," 
 with an immense refectory and a gallery all 
 round, built in 1692. The iron roof, added in 
 1746 after a fire, is of a very peculiar mechanical 
 construction. Over the church is a depository of 
 nearly four thousand old books and manuscripts, 
 amongst the most remarkable of which is a copy 
 of the Evangelists on parchment, attributed to 
 the early part of the thirteenth century. 
 
 Four hundred monks were surging in and out 
 the buildings of this crov/ded monastery, while all 
 the time the squalor and misery and wretched- 
 ness of the village with dreary-looking hamlets
 
 82 A RUN THROUGH RUSSIA. 
 
 and broken carts and dilapidated-looking chil- 
 dren and cattle told the story of monastic ineffi- 
 ciency to remedy this existing state of misery 
 which a New England town-meeting would regu- 
 late in a week's time. 
 
 After visiting this interesting but very dirty 
 monastery town, a three-horse sledge was ob- 
 tained, and with a guide to accompany us the 
 sledge started forth in the direction of the 
 Russian nobleman's manor house. But how lit- 
 tle does the average man and the average trav- 
 elling man know what is in store for him when 
 he riseth up early and goeth forth cheerily to a 
 day's unforeseen excursion. We had not gone 
 far before there followed a series of accidents. 
 
 The traces broke ; snow-drifts, mud, rivulets of 
 water, and piles of rubbish blocked the way ; and 
 the driver and the guide, after no little consulta- 
 tion, decided that it was impossible to proceed. 
 At this juncture a Muscovite peasant, with a 
 banged head of hair and a typical muskrat face, ap- 
 peared upon the rutty road and informed us that 
 Prince Ourouzeff was expecting a party of Ameri- 
 cans and had sent a couple of sledges to meet 
 them half a verst further on. And thus, in an 
 hour's time from the moment we left the rejected 
 and deserted sledge, we were welcomed at the 
 Russian manor house by two strangers, one a 
 tall and square-faced gentleman, and the other a 
 diminutive and sensitive-looking man.
 
 HOW WE FOUND COUNT TOLSTOI. 83 
 
 The tall stranger with the silvery head was 
 Prince Ourouzeff ; and the gentle-mannered 
 man, more poet than artist or reformer, was the 
 famous Count Leo Tolstoi, soldier, society-man, 
 novelist, religious reformer and radical all in one. 
 
 But the difficulties of this journey to Prince 
 Ourouzeff's can never be rightly detailed. The 
 dreary pathway across a desert which was a 
 prairie with no fences or trees save bushes and 
 scrub-oak ; the war of the elements, when all the 
 powers invoked in the Benedicite seemed to 
 make their appearance that day fire and heat, 
 mist and vapor, ice and snow and all the winds of 
 God ; the broken sledge ; the spiritless horses ; 
 the dejected pedestrians ; the disconsolate guide ; 
 the rebellious and mutinous companions ; the 
 would-be Columbus, not heeding the mutterings 
 and curses of his fellow-voyagers and keeping 
 well in advance out of ear-shot of their revilings 
 all made the appearance of the messenger from 
 the manor house of Prince Ourouzeff seem like 
 the slogan of Havelock's Campbells at Lucknow, 
 or the shrill whistle of the steamer " Thetis " to 
 the Greely survivors at Camp Clay among the 
 Greenland icebergs. 
 
 Mr. Thackeray and Lord Byron were together in 
 one sledge in the rear, while the guide and the 
 other member of the party went on in advance in 
 these Russian semi-canal boats drawn by a 
 stout horse apiece, with a peasant driver in atten-
 
 84 A RUN THROUGH RUSSIA. 
 
 dance. Whenever the writer looked back at his 
 companions coming on behind through the mud 
 and slush of this aqueous route, Lord Byron could 
 be seen with upraised hands after the manner of 
 Buddha under the Bo tree as if the joined 
 thumbs and perpendicular digitals indicated a de- 
 gree of amazement for which no choice of words 
 was adequate. But in an evil moment, as Lord 
 Byron, with closed eyes and upraised hands, was 
 communing with his inward or astral body, his 
 sledge gave a lurch, and our poetical friend was 
 tipped out into a soft, wet, yellow patch of mud, 
 where, in his abject helplessness, he continued 
 sitting with upraised hands and closed eyes, des- 
 pite the fact that his companion, Mr. Thackeray, 
 with rope and stick and a rudimentary vocabulary 
 of the Russian tongue, was vainly suggesting to 
 the stolid Muscovitish driver that the proper thing 
 to be done was to replace the rapt and transcenden- 
 tal poet upon the thwart of their semi-canal boat 
 again. Was it any wonder that, in the subsequent 
 interview with Count Tolstoi and his friend, our 
 host, Lord Byron should find his mind diverted 
 from the object of this pilgrimage to the misera- 
 ble condition of his apparel, and that he should 
 emulate the tactics of the Apostle of old and seek 
 to warm himself by the crackling fire which played 
 upon Prince Ourouzeff's generous hearth ? A 
 lunch followed, and an afternoon and evening 
 were spent together wandering around the Rus-
 
 HOW WE FOUND COUNT TOLSTOI. 85 
 
 sian farm. Our talk was about war, politics, litera- 
 ture, religion, the evils of civilization and the need 
 above everything else of the return of Christianity 
 to the literalism of Jesus. This man is sincere 
 and true ; he is radical and one-sided ; he has 
 been very unwise in his latest story written 
 since this visit in thinking aloud in French and 
 Russian in a vein not allowable in English type 
 and ink. 
 
 Perhaps, by this time, with all the awful con- 
 ditions that are about him, he is a bit crazed in 
 his outlook upon life. But then Tolstoi is the 
 voice in the wilderness in Russia to-day ; and 
 when the new Russia is evolved out of her social, 
 political, literery and religious House of Bondage, 
 the name of Tolstoi not as the author of " Anna 
 Karenina," or the " Kreutzer Sonata," but as the 
 author of " My Confession," and " My Religion " 
 will be remembered as the prophet of this 
 period of Russian renaissance ; just as Dante is 
 remembered to-day in Italy, or Luther is not for- 
 gotten in the German fatherland.* 
 
 * That the teachings of Tolstoi are beginning at last to have a dis- 
 tinct following is seen from the subjoined dispatch to a Boston news- 
 paper of the date of October 29th, 1890 : 
 
 FOLLOWERS OF TOLSTOI. 
 The Theories of the Novelist put in practice by Russian Ladies and 
 
 Gentlemen. 
 
 BERLIN, Oct. 28. A curious experiment is being made at Vishne- 
 volot, Ozmi, in the government of Tver, Russia, by the admirers of 
 Count Tolstoi, who have formed themselves into an association and 
 propose carrying his theories into practice. They are all ladies and 
 gentlemen of the upper classes, but have donned the peasant costume, 
 and live simple, industrious lives.
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 THE STORY OF COUNT TOLSTOl'S LIFE. 
 
 A BOSTON newspaper describes a discussion 
 recently held concerning Count Tolstoi as follows: 
 "At a meeting of the Unitarian Club, at the 
 Hotel Vendome, in Boston, Mr. Joseph Lee made 
 a long and interesting address upon the person- 
 ality and theories of Count Tolstoi. As Mr. Lee 
 had visited the great Russian novelist and phi- 
 losopher at his home, he had had peculiar oppor- 
 tunities for observation and learning the causes 
 which had led to his opinions. Mr. Lee thought 
 that Tolstoi had reached his conclusions rather 
 by instinct than by close reasoning, as it seemed 
 to him that Tolstoi lacked mental training, is im- 
 patient of argument, and does not think system- 
 atically. 
 
 Other speakers followed with an interesting 
 discussion ; Rev. Dr. Peabody taking the ground 
 that it was high time for the country to hear the 
 gospel of simplicity. Prof. Sedgwick, of the Insti- 
 tute of Technology, said, " To adopt Tolstoi's 
 views would reduce all people to the level of the 
 cave-dwellers." He refused to have him set up 
 for a guide.
 
 THE STORY OF COUNT TO LS TOTS LIFE. 87 
 
 There are three things to DC considered when 
 we come to study out the story of Count Tolstoi's 
 life, and these are, what he has written, what he 
 has done, and what he is. The social, religious, 
 artistic, literary, and political forces of the Russia 
 of the present day form a study which taxes the 
 bravest and most enthusiastic enquirer. 
 
 In the midst of barbaric splendor and squalor, 
 in the very presence of imperial autocracy on the 
 one hand, and nihilistic strivings on the other 
 hand, Count Leo Tolstoi soldier, novelist, and 
 social leader returns, as by the preaching of a 
 John the Baptist in the wilderness, to the literal- 
 ism of the words of Christ, and shows the power 
 once more in the world's history of the principle 
 of renunciation, as Buddha showed it in India, 
 and the Divine founder of Christianity showed it 
 in Galilee and Judea, and as George Fox and 
 William Penn have exhibited it in the sensuous 
 and luxurious age of the dissolute Charles II. 
 
 In a notice of Dr. George Brandes' recent 
 work, entitled, " Impressions of Russia," a re- 
 viewer in The New York Churchman writes as fol- 
 lows : " The attention of the age is fixed upon the 
 Russian people and the Russian empire. Not 
 only is the latter the most important factor in 
 European politics, but the former is the most in- 
 teresting study among nationalities. Politi- 
 cally, the Russian empire is the x of the European 
 equation, and the algebriac puzzle is to know
 
 88 A RUN THROUGH RUSSIA. 
 
 what sign, whether plus or minus, is to be prefixed 
 to it. We have used the terms Russian empire 
 and Russian people advisedly, because one great 
 feature in this uncertainty lies in the fact that 
 the empire is a great power imposed upon the 
 people. It sits like Sinbad's old man of the sea, 
 astride the shoulders of the nation. Everywhere 
 else in Europe there is a certain correspondence 
 between government and nation, something of 
 mutuality, if it be but a tradition of growth and 
 development. But in Russia there is nothing of 
 the sort. Even the blood of the Romanoff 
 dynasty is nine-tenths German, and yet the pas- 
 sion of that dynasty has been almost entirely to 
 wage war against Western civilization. In other 
 lands rank is the symbol, somewhat, of separation. 
 The English peer, who looks back to Battle Abbey 
 roll and Doomsday Book ; the French noble, who 
 cherishes the pre-revolutionary memories of a 
 house dating back to the Crusades ; the German, 
 who cherishes his sixteen quarterings as more 
 precious than land or wealth; all these belong to 
 a patrician class and are conscious of a distinction 
 which the roturier cannot attain. But in Russia 
 there is no such feeling. There is no antiquity 
 to which the Russian looks back. Rank is mainly 
 bureaucratic, given or taken away, at the pleasure 
 of the crown. Birth and lineage go for very lit- 
 tle. Wealth and power are all in all. W T hile the 
 Russian obeys with a submission which is Orien-
 
 THE STORY OF COUNT TOLSTOI'S LIFE. 89 
 
 tal, Asiatic in its fond humility, it is simply be- 
 cause such seems to him the order of the universe. 
 He submits as he submits to the sun which warms 
 him or the frost that chills him, because he has no 
 idea that he can change the operation of heat 
 or cold. 
 
 " Yet in this Russian people there is a great 
 power, a vast, undeveloped capacity, and it is this 
 Russian Empire that is striving with the one hand 
 to use, and with the other to repress, the native 
 talent and energy. It is this spectacle which 
 makes Russia a study at once painful and fascinat- 
 ing, and Russian literature, as the true exponent 
 of the various phases and workings of the popular 
 nature, the most deeply interesting literature of 
 the day. Elsewhere, men and women who write, 
 belong, whatever their nationality, to the Catholic 
 Church of the republic of letters ; they owe a 
 certain fealty to literature at large. But the Rus- 
 sian writer is the representative of his people, 
 and all that is of worth in his work comes directly 
 from the thoughts and feelings which are throb- 
 bing in the brain and heart of that people. 
 
 " We have briefly given, in the above statement 
 the impression which this book, which we have 
 read with intense interest, has made upon us. 
 It is the work of a highly-cultured and acute 
 observer and most fair-minded critic. In the 
 first part, Dr. Brandes has told us of the way in 
 which Russia appears to him ; in the second, he
 
 90 A RUN THROUGH RUSSIA. 
 
 has given a brief, but very striking, outline of 
 Russian literature. The two things go together 
 as nowhere else in the world. That hidden 
 future, which so inscrutably broods over the vast 
 Empire stretching from the German frontier to 
 the Pacific shore, is dimly prophesied in the pages 
 of Russia's authors, and the fires which smoulder 
 beneath the surface and are held down by the 
 gigantic forces of the Empire burn the more 
 vividly through the loopholes which a relentless 
 censorship overlooks. No novel we ever read 
 has more of fascination than a well-written book 
 on Russia, because no fiction can approach that 
 strangest medley of power and weakness, which 
 bears the name of Muscovite." 
 
 The story of Count Tolstoi's life is the story of 
 the growth of a soul. There is almost nothing of 
 outward incident in his life that could excite 
 the interest of the reader. His has been a life of 
 thought, of spiritual aspiration, struggle and 
 vision, combined with the most laborious art. It 
 is, therefore, a story incapable of anything 
 approaching to dramatic treatment. It were 
 impossible to give life and movement to a narra- 
 tive constructed out of "My Confession," and 
 " My Religion," and these works contain the 
 account of his own spiritual development, aside 
 from which his life-story is barren of interest. 
 
 Count Lyof Nikolaevitch Tolstoi was born 
 August 28, 1828, in the village of Yasnaya Poly-
 
 THE STORY OF COUNT TOLSTOI'S LIFE. 91 
 
 ana, his mother's estate, in the Department of 
 Tula. He was of aristocratic lineage, his father 
 being a direct descendant of Count Piotr Andree- 
 vitch, an attendant at the Court of Peter the 
 Great. His mother was the only daughter of 
 Prince Nikolai Sergieevitch Volkonsky. 
 
 Thus, like most of his illustrious predecessors in 
 the field of Russian literature Lomonosof and 
 Dostoyevski being notable exceptions he was 
 of noble birth and patrician education. The fact 
 that literature in Russia has been the favorite, 
 almost exclusively, of the aristocratic and edu- 
 cated classes, has contributed not a little to the 
 high standard of literary art and the purity of 
 taste among her writers. Lomonosof had little 
 art and less taste.- Dostoyevski, although a great 
 author, was deficient in artistic skill, and his taste 
 was often bad. It was the high-born writers- 
 Pushkin, Lermontof, Turgenief, Tolstoi who set 
 a standard of taste and artistic achievement 
 unattained in point of purity and power by the 
 literature of any other people. 
 
 Of Tolstoi's childhood we know nothing, 
 except what may be dimly gathered from his first 
 published work, a novel, entitled " Childhood " 
 followed later by " Boyhood " and " Youth " in 
 which the leading incidents and chief characteris- 
 tics of his own early life are doubtless reflected. 
 In 1830, before he had reached the age of two 
 years, his mother died, leaving him and three
 
 92 A RUN THROUGH RUSSIA. 
 
 elder brothers and a younger sister to be educated 
 under the supervision of a distant relative, 
 Tatyna Alexandrovna Yergolskaya by name, 
 whose memory is warmly cherished in the Tolstoi 
 family. 
 
 The education of the young Tolstoi was no 
 small undertaking, even for a woman of character 
 and culture, and seems to have been attended 
 with considerable vexation. The work of in- 
 struction was committed, in the main, to tutors ; 
 some German, some French, some Russian, none 
 of whom were retained through any very length- 
 ened term of service. His love for his German 
 teacher and his hatred for the Frenchman who 
 succeeded him fill a large space in his " Child- 
 hood." So far as can be inferred from the same 
 source, he was at that time a healthy, sensitive 
 and extravagantly imaginative child, with a good 
 deal of pride, and morbidly sensible of his homely 
 flat nose and thick lips. 
 
 The family continued to reside in the country 
 until 1837, when the entrance of the eldest son in 
 the university seemed to render advisable the 
 removal of the entire family to Moscow. Scarcely 
 had they established themselves there when the 
 father suddenly died, leaving his affairs in great 
 confusion. A paternal aunt, the Countess Alex- 
 andra Ilinitchna Osten-Saken, was appointed 
 guardian of the young Tolstois and decided at 
 once, from motives of economy, to leave the two
 
 THE STORY OF COUNT TOLSTOI'S LIFE. 93 
 
 elder children in Moscow and take the other 
 three, together with the ever-devoted Tatyana 
 Yergolskaya, into the country, where their educa- 
 tion was looked after in a desultory and uncer- 
 tain way by various tutors. 
 
 In 1840 the guardian of the Tolstoi children, 
 the Countess Osten-Saken, died, and the guardian- 
 ship devolved upon another paternal aunt, who, 
 with her husband, lived in Kazan. Thither all 
 the young Tolstois were removed in 1841, the 
 eldest being transferred, at his guardian's request, 
 from the university of Moscow to that of Kazan. 
 Here, after two years' preparation, the young 
 Count Lyof Nikolaevitch entered the university 
 in 1843 at tne a e f fifteen. At this point the 
 memoirs contained in " Youth " become less 
 interesting, furnishing the inference that his life 
 as a student was not different from the ordinary 
 monotony of existence in Russian universities 
 before the days of nihilistic plots. His first inter- 
 est in religious questions had begun shortly 
 before, about a year after his first removal to 
 Moscow. Of this he gives the following account 
 in his " Confession " : 
 
 " I remember once in my twelfth year, a boy 
 now long since dead, Vladimir M , a pupil in a 
 gymnasium, spent a Sunday with us and brought 
 us the news of the last discovery in the gymna- 
 sium, namely : that there was no God, and that 
 all we were taught on this subject was a mere
 
 94 A RUN THROUGH RUSSIA. 
 
 invention (this was in 1838). I remember well 
 how interested my elder brothers were in this 
 news. I was admitted to their deliberations, and 
 we all eagerly accepted the theory as something 
 particularly attractive and possibly quite true. 
 I remember, also, that when my elder brother 
 Demetry, then at the university, with the impul- 
 siveness natural to his character, gave himself up 
 to a passionate faith, began to attend the church 
 services regularly, to fast, and to lead a pure and 
 moral life, we all of us, and some older than our- 
 selves, never ceased to hold him up to ridicule, 
 and for some incomprehensible reason gave him 
 the nickname of Noah. I remember that Mous- 
 sin Poushkin, the then curator of the University 
 of Kazan, having invited us to a ball, tried to 
 persuade my brother, who had refused the invita- 
 tion, by the jeering argument that even ' David 
 danced before the Ark.' 
 
 " I sympathized then with these jokes of my 
 elders, and drew from them this conclusion: that 
 I was bound to learn my catechism and to go to 
 church, but that it was not necessary to think of 
 my religious duties more seriously. I also 
 remember that I read Voltaire when I was very 
 young, and that his tone of mockery amused 
 without disgusting me. The gradual estrange- 
 , ment from all belief went on in me as it does and 
 always has done in those of the same social posi- 
 tion and culture."
 
 THE STORY OF COUNT TOLSTOTS LIFE. 95 
 
 The young Tolstoi spent a year in the division 
 of Oriental languages, after which he passed to 
 the department of jurisprudence, where he re- 
 mained two years. At the end of that time he 
 suddenly resolved to leave the university without 
 completing his course. This resolution seems to 
 have been due to a fresh desire for the country 
 life of his childhood, aroused by the preparations 
 of his brother for departure to the country home 
 at Yasnaya Polyana, after having passed the 
 final examinations. 
 
 No entreaties or arguments even when used 
 by the rector and professors of the university 
 were powerful enough to dissuade him from this 
 course, and accordingly to Yasnaya Polyana, 
 which had fallen to him in the division of his 
 father's estates, he went, in the spring of 1846. 
 
 Here, for the next five years, his life furnished 
 no material for the biographer. He lived unin- 
 terruptedly- in the country until 1851. What his 
 mental occupations were, whether he wrote any- 
 thing during this period, or when the instinct of 
 authorship first seized him, is altogether un- 
 known. 
 
 At the age of twenty-three he quitted the 
 estate and accompanied his brother to the Cauca- 
 sus, where the latter had been serving in the 
 Junker's corps. He was entirely captivated by 
 the wild charms of this rugged and picturesque 
 region, as well as by the new type of humanity
 
 g6 A KUN THROUGH RUSSIA. 
 
 which he found there, and resolved to enter the 
 service, and accordingly joined the same battery 
 with his brother. It is probable that the literary 
 impulse first attacked him here, under the inspira- 
 tion of his romantic surroundings, for it is cer- 
 tain that his first published work a novel under 
 the title of " Childhood " was written during 
 this period. Besides, he also wrote at this time 
 " The Cossacks," so much admired by Turgenief, 
 " The Incursion," and " The Felling of the 
 Forest." 
 
 For two years he served in the Caucasus as a 
 common soldier, after which, on the outbreak of 
 the Crimean war, he was transferred, at his own 
 request, to the army of the Danube. Here he 
 served in the campaign of 1854 on the staff of 
 Prince Gortchakoff. Going afterwards to Sevas- 
 topol, he was made commander of a division. 
 During this period he began those wonderfully 
 vivid descriptions of military life which first made 
 him famous as a writer. " Military Tales " was 
 succeeded by " Sevastopol in May " and " Sevas- 
 topol in December." 
 
 In 1855 Count Tolstoi went on the retired list, 
 and entered actively on his renowned and brill- 
 iant career as a writer. " Youth," " Sevastopol in 
 August," " Two Hussars," " Three Deaths," 
 " Family Happiness," and " Polikuschka," 
 appeared in rapid succession, and raised him at 
 once to the foremost rank among authors. Con-
 
 THE STORY OF COUNT TOLSTOI'S LIFE. 97 
 
 earning his life in those years, he speaks as fol- 
 lows in " My Confession " : 
 
 " I cannot now recall those years without a 
 painful feeling of horror and loathing. I put men 
 to death in war, I fought duels to slay others, I 
 lost at cards, wasted my substance wrung from 
 the sweat of peasants, punished the latter cruelly, 
 rioted with loose women, and deceived men. 
 Lying, robbery, adultery of all kinds, drunken- 
 ness, violence, and murder, all committed by me, 
 not one crime omitted, and yet I was not the less 
 considered by my equals a comparatively moral 
 man. Such was my life during ten years. 
 
 " During that time I began to write, out of 
 vanity, love of gain, and pride. I followed as a 
 writer the same path which I had chosen as a 
 man. In order to obtain the fame and the money 
 for which I wrote, I was obliged to hide what 
 was good and bow down before what was evil. 
 How often, while writing, have I cudgeled my 
 brains to conceal under the mask of indifference 
 or pleasantry those yearnings for something 
 better, which formed the real problem of my life ! 
 I succeeded in my object and was praised. At 
 twenty-six years of age, on the close of the war, 
 I came to St. Petersburg and made the acquaint- 
 ance of the authors of the day. I met with a 
 hearty reception and much flattery. 
 
 " Before I had time to look around, the prej- 
 udices and views of life common to the writers
 
 98 A RUN THROUGH RUSSIA. 
 
 of the class with which I associated became my 
 own, and completely put an end to all my former 
 struggles after a better life. These views, under 
 the influence of the dissipation into which I had 
 plunged, issued in a theory of life which justified 
 it. The view of life taken by these my fellow- 
 writers was, that life is a development, and the 
 principal part in that development is played by 
 ourselves, the thinkers, while among the thinkers 
 the chief influence is again due to ourselves, the 
 poets. Our vocation is to teach mankind. 
 
 " In order to avoid answering the very natural 
 question, ' What do I know, and what can I teach ?' 
 the theory in question is made to contain the 
 formula that such is not required to be known, 
 but that the thinker and the poet teach uncon- 
 sciously. I was myself considered a marvellous 
 litterateur and poet, and I, therefore, very natur- 
 ally adopted this theory. Meanwhile, thinker and 
 poet though I was, I wrote and taught I knew 
 not what. For doing this I received large sums 
 of money. I kept a splendid table, had an excel- 
 lent lodging, associated with loose women, and 
 received my friends handsomely ; moreover, I had 
 fame. It would seem, then, that what I taught 
 must have been good ; the faith in poetry and the 
 development of life was a true faith, and I was 
 one of its high priests, a post of great importance 
 and of profit. I long remained in this belief, and 
 never once doubted its truth.
 
 THE STO&Y OF COUNT TO LS TOTS LIFE. 99 
 
 " In the second, however, and especially in the 
 third year of this way of life, I began to doubt 
 the infallibility of the doctrine, and to examine it 
 more closely. The first doubtful fact which 
 attracted my attention was that the apostles of 
 this belief did not agree among themselves. 
 They disputed, quarrelled, abused, deceived and 
 cheated one another. Moreover, there were 
 many among us who, quite indifferent to right or 
 wrong, only cared for their own private interests. 
 All this forced on me doubts as to the truth of 
 our belief. Again, when I doubted this faith in 
 the influence of literary men, I began to examine 
 more closely into the character and conduct of its 
 chief professors, and I convinced myself that 
 these writers were men who led immoral lives, 
 most of them worthless and insignificant individ- 
 uals, and far beneath the moral level ^of those 
 with whom I had associated during my former 
 dissipated and military career ; these men, how- 
 ever, had none the less an amount of self-confi- 
 dence only to be expected in those who are 
 conscious of being saints, or in those for whom 
 holiness is an empty name. 
 
 " I grew disgusted with mankind and with my- 
 self, and I understood that this belief which I had 
 accepted was a delusion. The strangest thing in 
 all this was that though I soon saw the falseness 
 of this belief and renounced it, I did not renounce 
 the position I had gained by it ; I still called my-
 
 100 A RUN THROUGH RUSSIA. 
 
 self a thinker, a poet, and a teacher. I was simple 
 enough to imagine that I, the poet and thinker, 
 was able to teach other men without knowing 
 myself what it was that I attempted to teach. I 
 had only gained a new vice by my companionship 
 with these men ; it had developed pride in me to 
 a morbid extreme, and my self-confidence in 
 teaching what I did not know amounted almost 
 to insanity. When I now think over that time, 
 and remember my own state of mind, and that of 
 these men (a state of mind common enough 
 among thousands still) it seems to me pitiful, ter- 
 rible and ridiculous ; it excites the feelings which 
 overcome us as we pass through a madhouse. 
 We were all then convinced that it behooved us 
 to speak, to write, and to print as fast as we 
 could, as much as we could, and that on this 
 depended the welfare of the human race. Hun- 
 dreds of us wrote, printed and taught, and all the 
 while confuted and abused each other. Quite 
 unconscious that we ourselves knew nothing, that 
 to the simplest of all problems in life what is 
 right and what is wrong we had no answer, we 
 all went on talking together without one to listen, 
 at times abetting and praising one another on 
 condition that we were abetted and praised in 
 turn, and again turning upon each other in wrath 
 in short, we reproduced the scenes in a mad- 
 house. 
 
 " Hundreds of exhausted laborers worked day
 
 THE STORY OF COUNT TOLSTOTS LIFE. IOI 
 
 and night, putting up the type and printing mill- 
 ions of pages, to be spread by the post all over 
 Russia, and still we continued to teach, unable 
 to teach enough, angrily complaining the while 
 that we were not listened to. A strange state 
 of things, indeed, but now it is clear enough. 
 The real motive that inspired all our reason- 
 ing was the desire for money and praise, to 
 obtain which we knew of no other means than 
 writing books and newspapers. In order, how- 
 ever, while thus uselessly employed, to hold fast 
 to the conviction that we were really of impor- 
 tance to society, it was necessary to justify our 
 occupation to ourselves by another theory, and 
 the following was the one we adopted : '"Whatever 
 is, is right ; everything that is, is due to develop- 
 ment, and the latter again to civilization ; the 
 measure of civilization is the figure to which the 
 publication of books and newspapers reaches ; we 
 are paid and honored for the books and news- 
 papers which we write, and we are, therefore, the 
 most useful and best of all citizens.' 
 
 "This reasoning might have been conclusive, 
 had we all been agreed ; but, as for every opinion 
 expressed by one of us there instantly appeared, 
 from another, one diametrically opposite, we had 
 to hesitate before accepting it. But this we 
 passed over ; we received money and were 
 praised by those who agreed with us, conse- 
 quently we were in the right. It is now clear to
 
 1O2 A RUN .THROUGH RUSSIA. 
 
 me that between ourselves and the inhabitants of 
 a madhouse there was no difference ; at the time 
 I only vaguely suspected this, and, like all mad- 
 men, thought all were mad except myself." 
 
 It was during this time of brilliant outward 
 success that Count Tolstoi began to be perplexed 
 about the value of his ideals, the meaning of life, 
 and the uselessness of all effort in the direction 
 of progress and perfection. He had held to the 
 doctrine of progress or development with a sort 
 of superstition as the only philosophy which 
 gave life a meaning and made effort rational. 
 The first protest within him against this super- 
 ficial doctrine arose on the side of feeling rather 
 than of reason, as indicated in the following 
 paragraph from " My Confession " : 
 
 " Thus, during 'my stay in Paris, the sight of a 
 public execution revealed to me the weakness of 
 my superstitious belief in progress. When I saw 
 the head divided from the body, and heard the 
 sound with which they fell separately into the 
 box, I understood, not with my reason, but with 
 my whole being, that no theory of the wisdom of 
 all established things, nor of progress, could jus- 
 tify such an act ; and that if all the men in the 
 world, from the day of creation, by whatever 
 theory, had found this thing necessary, it was not 
 so ; it was a bad thing, and that, therefore, I 
 must judge of what was right and necessary, not 
 by what men said and did, not by progress, but 
 what I felt to be true in my heart."
 
 THE STORY OF COUNT TOLSTOTS LIFE. 103 
 
 The death of his brother, after a year of pain- 
 ful illness, also filled him with anxious question- 
 ings which the doctrine of development could 
 no more satisfy than the inquiry, " Where are we 
 to steer ?" of a man drifting in a boat could be 
 answered by saying, " We are being carried some- 
 where." 
 
 Partly to quiet his mental unrest by work of a 
 more practical and beneficent kind, he devoted 
 himself, after returning a second time from 
 abroad, in 1861, to schemes and labors in the way 
 of popular education, with special reference to 
 the improvement of the serfs who had just been 
 freed. He became a local magistrate or arbitra- 
 tor, established schools for the instruction of the 
 ignorant and edited an educational journal. But 
 his mind was profoundly dissatisfied with his 
 work. He felt that he was assuming the function 
 of teacher without knowing what or how to 
 teach, and finally, worn out by the inward strug- 
 gle and intolerable contradiction, he gave up all 
 and started for the steppes to recuperate his 
 wasted energies. 
 
 Soon after his return, in 1862, he married, and 
 for fifteen years the happiness of his married life, 
 together with the new cares and occupations 
 which it brought, served to quiet the inward tur- 
 moil from which he suffered, and his rising doubts 
 were kept in abeyance. 
 
 " In this way," says he, " fifteen years passed.
 
 IO4 A RUN THROUGH RUSSIA. 
 
 Notwithstanding that during these fifteen years I 
 looked upon the craft of authorship as a very 
 trifling thing, I still continued to write. ... In 
 my writings I taught what for me was the only 
 truth, that the object of life should be our own 
 happiness and that of our family." It was during 
 these years that he wrote " War and Peace," and 
 " Anna Karenina." 
 
 But such a conflict as had been awakened in 
 him could not be long postponed or easily allayed. 
 There was nothing new or unusual in his state of 
 mind, but he could not rest short of some 
 explanation or doctrine that would lend validity 
 to existence and answer for a working theory of 
 life. He recognized that he was mentally ill 
 afflicted with the measles of doubt and he could 
 find no peace until the evil disease should be 
 expelled and health and soundness restored. He 
 was in search of a faith, and could not rest until 
 he found it. Schopenhauer's pessimism brought 
 him no relief, for it left no logical or consistent 
 course but suicide, and for suicide he was not 
 prepared. So long as he was willing to live he 
 could not without self-stultification accept the 
 creed of the pessimist. He could not tell why he 
 desired to live, unless it was in order that he 
 might clear up his mental confusion, but he was 
 not willing to take his own life, and kept sharp 
 watch over himself, even to the hiding of a piece 
 of cord, to avoid the temptation to hang himself 
 in some moment of sudden impulse.
 
 THE STORY OF COUNT TOLSTOI'S LIFE. 105 
 
 To give the solution of these difficulties which 
 he finally reached and describe the faith which 
 restored harmony to his life would be to repro- 
 duce the entire substance of his two books, "My 
 Confession," and " My Religion " a task which 
 is impossible within the limits of the present 
 volume. But that this passage in his experience 
 is the one which most characteristically sets 
 forth the future of the man and the phase of his 
 work in which he penetrates farthest into the 
 core of reality, there can be no manner of doubt.
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 THE WRITTEN WORKS OF COUNT TOLSTOI. 
 
 THE one impression made upon the minds of 
 these travellers in Russia, whenever they met the 
 friends and family and admirers of Count Tolstoi, 
 was, that it was a great pity " Leo " should 
 abandon the congenial work of fiction for the 
 harder school of the moralist, the reformer, and 
 the Scriptural Exegete. 
 
 At the Winter Palace and the Marble Palace, 
 as well as on Prince Ourouzeff's plantation, the 
 sigh of regret was heard on all sides, " Oh, if Leo 
 would only keep to his stories, and let his reforms 
 alone ! " 
 
 This sigh of the Russian social world over the 
 moral waywardness of Tolstoi's genius, was every- 
 where most marked. Miss Isabel Hapgood, in 
 her preface to the translations of Tolstoi's 
 "Childhood, Boyhood and Youth," remarks, "It 
 is to be hoped that he will return to literature, as 
 Turgenief besought him upon his death-bed to 
 do, and that he will, at some future day, complete 
 these memoirs." 
 
 But the almost universal condemnation of 
 Count Tolstoi's story, " The Kreutzer Sonata,"
 
 WRITTEN WORKS OF COUNT TOLSTOI. 107 
 
 shows us, most unmistakably, that the morbid 
 element in his mind is more baleful in the real- 
 istic realm of Zola's specialty, than in the less 
 attractive fields of morals, theology and political 
 economy. 
 
 Count Tolstoi has done his best work as a 
 novelist already, and, in his present mood of 
 mind, it were better for him to move onward up 
 to ethical problems, than to linger over the field 
 where his distorted and diseased imagination can 
 hold sway. 
 
 That Count Tolstoi is a man of genius and one 
 of the most sincere and original thinkers of his 
 time, no one at all acquainted with his writings 
 will think of questioning. Nor will close scru- 
 tiny of his life fail to show him also a man of 
 high moral qualities, and strong instincts for the 
 right, however they may have been repressed and 
 obscured by the contagious vices of the courtly 
 social world of Russia, which, in his earlier years, 
 held him, almost by force, in its embrace ; and, 
 however one-sided and unsatisfactory his latest 
 speculations upon the issues of life and death 
 may seem to us, whatever may be its limitations 
 of one kind or another, Count Tolstoi's genius is 
 certainly of a very high order, and of an extraor- 
 dinary character. And it is especially wonder- 
 ful in this* that its varied manifestations give 
 assurance that it would have made him eminent 
 in whatever field, for intellectual effort, he might
 
 108 A RUN THROUGH RUSSIA. 
 
 have sought eminence with any persistent energy ; 
 in any aim in which he could have had a full and 
 continuous faith to inspire him with such persist- 
 ence. His discussion of military affairs and 
 tactics in many of his works, and, especially his 
 treatment of great movements in the Russo- 
 Napoleonic wars, show that there was in him the 
 making of a great commander, if only, for any 
 considerable time, he had had the ambition and 
 opportunity to become such. It is, perhaps, 
 evidence of a still higher genius, that he had the 
 power of will and of conscience calmly to cast 
 away that ambition. 
 
 Almost simultaneously with his brief but brill- 
 iant army life, began his splendid achievements 
 as a novelist, among which we include his grand 
 early portraiture of man and nature in the Cauca- 
 sus ; and no critic, except himself, in his later mor- 
 bid mood, will think of denying the magnificence 
 of his genius in this field. Then came his life as 
 a philanthropist, a teacher of the most ignorant 
 classes in schools, by himself and through others, 
 as he had before thought to teach the educated 
 classes through his books ; and a benefactor in 
 every way that he could devise, of a crushed and 
 degraded peasantry. 
 
 And here, in the execution of his plans, he 
 often fell short of what a shrewd a*nd practical 
 man of mere talent, with the same aims, would 
 have accomplished. In the infinite pity of his
 
 WRITTEN WORKS OF COUNT TOLSTOI. 1 09 
 
 great heart, for his poorer countrymen, he un- 
 doubtedly made the great mistake of believing 
 that the wrongs of centuries can be righted 
 instantly at the will of any man or set of men, 
 however powerful. He did not recognize that 
 the comfort, the prosperity, the virtues of a 
 class or race, are things of growth, to be culti- 
 vated patiently as well as vigorously, and not a 
 structure to be hastily erected upon the ruins of 
 one as hastily demolished. But, notwithstanding 
 all this, we must recognize a noble and beneficent 
 genius in the scope of the ideal field of effort 
 and sacrifice which he marked out for himself, 
 and all whom he could persuade to follow him, in 
 behalf of the class which he believed had been 
 long robbed and oppressed by himself, his ances- 
 tors and the class to which he and they belonged. 
 
 An ideal of conduct, which seems too lofty for 
 the common world of to-day, may, if held up by 
 the hand of genius, become the standard of every- 
 day thought for the next generation ; and, as in 
 Count Tolstoi's case, may at once begin to in- 
 fluence those whom it cannot absolutely control. 
 
 Finally, his observations as a philanthropist, 
 and his consequent study of the Scriptures, have 
 made Count Tolstoi the founder of a new sect, or, 
 as one of his admirers puts it more strongly, the 
 prophet of a new religion. And here, again, we 
 discover that it is the force of his marvellous 
 genius which enables him to command the re-
 
 I IO A RUN THROUGH RUSSIA. 
 
 spectful and admiring attention of the world to 
 teachings, most of which would be scouted if 
 presented by a writer of merely ordinary talent. 
 
 In all the phases of his life, as a man of thought 
 and action, Count Tolstoi is still the man of 
 genius. If we ask what are the elements of that 
 genius, the analysis is not difficult. In one of 
 his later penitential confessions, he declares, 
 regretfully, that at one period of his life he wor- 
 shipped " the Ego," and at another " Force." 
 And yet, in a certain sense, a little varying from 
 his own definitions, " the Ego " and " Force " are 
 the very foundations of his genius, and of all that 
 it has accomplished. His intense personality is 
 apparent in all his writings and all his acts, con- 
 stantly and conspicuously, beyond precedent fur- 
 nished by any other author. And, as we find 
 him now in the last phase of his life that of self- 
 renunciation he believes that he has entirely 
 renounced " the worship of the ' Ego,' " while, in 
 fact, it is more completely his master than it was 
 when he believed that he was worshipping it, 
 since the real object of his idolatry was the 
 phantasm of a corrupt life, which enveloped it 
 and concealed him from himself. Now, it is his 
 own observations of life, his own study of the 
 Scriptures in their original tongues, his own logic 
 in interpreting them, that make him "the prophet 
 of a new religion." By reading, by travel, by 
 personal intercourse with scholars in theology, he
 
 WRITTEN WORKS OF COUNT TOLSTOI. 1 1 I 
 
 has become familiar with all the creeds of the 
 world, and the authorities upon which they are 
 based, only to renounce all allegiance to any and 
 all of them, and submit himself to the rule of 
 "the Ego." Intellectually, he himself is now 
 sole lord of himself. 
 
 Moreover, his personal force, his vigor of mind 
 and body, native in a great degree, but sedulously 
 and painfully cultivated, is a foundation-stone of 
 his genius, without which the superstructure could 
 not have arisen. Few of the elements which we 
 find in that superstructure could have belonged to 
 a mind deficient in mental or moral force, or, in- 
 deed, which was not endowed with both in a 
 measure far beyond that of most eminent authors. 
 That Count Tolstoi does possess this quality in 
 that super-eminent degree is apparent to all sym- 
 pathetic readers of his books. They recognize, 
 with delight, the vigorous spirit of the mind 
 which comes in contact with their own, and find 
 themselves, at least for a moment and in some 
 degree, imbued with its healthfulness ; for mental 
 health and, for that matter, physical health 
 may be as contagious as disease. If Leo Tolstoi 
 could not rightfully be a worshipper of force, he 
 might well thankfully worship the Power which 
 endowed him with it, and with the will to increase 
 and discipline it. 
 
 Not the least essential element in his genius for 
 authorship is his surpassing faculty for observing
 
 112 A RUN THROUGH RUSSIA. 
 
 and memorizing events, scenes and persons. 
 No details escape him ; none are dimly seen ; none 
 are forgotten ; and, however diverse in kind, and 
 however numerous they may be, they never ob- 
 scure or distort his view of the grand whole. 
 This faculty, together with his admirable skill in 
 constructing his stories, renders the result of his 
 studies from life in that form like paintings in 
 which a strong grasp of outline and a bold dash in 
 bringing out salient features are combined with an 
 exquisite finish of minutiae so inwrought on the 
 canvas that, while they do not disturb the first 
 vivid impression they add to that which grows upon 
 him under the continued contemplation of any true 
 masterpiece. This is a combination rare in the 
 painter's art, and certainly not less rare in the art 
 of the novelist: With the doubtful exception of 
 Dickens, we find it in no voluminous writer in 
 such perfection as in Tolstoi. With him, as a 
 novelist, the faculty for observing and memoriz- 
 ing is indispensable. His stories are mosaics, 
 composed of bits of fact and thought very rarely 
 bits of fancy so arranged and shaded into each 
 other as to form pictures strictly after real life 
 as he has observed it. It was needful that his 
 mind should be plentifully supplied with material 
 for these mosaics, and that each should be at 
 instant command when its place in the picture was 
 ready for it. Something of the value of such 
 collected material to the novelist may be learned
 
 WRITTEN WORKS OF COUNT TOLSTOI. 113 
 
 from Hawthorne's Note-books. But Hawthorne's 
 material of this kind was carefully noted down, 
 while Tolstoi, although he had his full note-books 
 had, as well, a memory still more abundantly 
 stored. Contrary to what this difference would 
 seem to indicate, Hawthorne idealizes almost 
 everything which he touches ; Tolstoi almost 
 nothing. In his novels he shows little imagina- 
 tion beyond what is needful to arrange his 
 material in a consecutive and effective narrative 
 form. It is his clear, vigorous, vivacious style, 
 with the earnest opinions and quick, deep feel- 
 ings that inspire it, which gives this indefinable 
 charm to his books. We perceive constantly 
 that what we read is not only realistic, but, in 
 the mind of the writer, absolutely and intensely 
 real. The imagination exercised is no more than 
 a good historian uses in giving truthful form and 
 spirit to his story, while strictly conforming to 
 the many sources of information from which it is 
 derived. It is very near akin to that which en- 
 ables a great pleader in a criminal case, bound by 
 all the laws of evidence, to frame from the testi- 
 mony of many discordant witnesses a theory sat- 
 isfactory to the jury. 
 
 Tolstoi's extraordinary faculty of observation 
 and memory must surely be accounted a very 
 substantial element in his genius as a novelist, 
 while that of imagination contributes very little, 
 until we reach his latest works in a novel form.
 
 I 14 A RUN THROUGH RUSSIA. 
 
 In one of these later stories, one of his heroes is 
 depicted as a disappointed devotee of a mystic- 
 politico religion, which he represents as at least 
 one form of freemasonry. Here his imagination 
 found full, but not absolutely free, play. It is 
 still governed by his keen and profound, if some- 
 times too jealous, knowledge of men. This, how- 
 ever, was the connecting link between Tolstoi the 
 novelist, severely portraying real life, and Tolstoi 
 the religious and political reformer, with all that 
 he had learned of reality in the past and present 
 beneath his feet, reaching upward to an ideal 
 future only to be attained by crushing out of ex- 
 istence all that characterizes and rules the present, 
 which he regards as only a superficially refined 
 form of an evil past. In his writings upon relig- 
 ious, political and cognate moral themes, he 
 gives evidence of his broad and accurate learning, 
 and of his extended observation of facts affecting 
 these themes ; but these are hardly more than 
 prosaic aids in their study and exposition. It is 
 the glorious and lofty imagination of the lover of 
 his kind, become poet perhaps prophet in his 
 ideal conception of its better future, which gives 
 their peculiar tone to Count Tolstoi's latest 
 writings, and raises them to the rank of works of 
 genius. 
 
 But there is another element in Tolstoi's genius 
 from which, more than any other, it derives its 
 most peculiar and characteristic tone ; and this is
 
 WRITTEN WORKS OF COUNT TOLSTOI. \ I 5 
 
 his profound capacity for introspection, and his 
 habit of exercising it constantly upon himself, and 
 in the study of other minds when he finds occa- 
 sion for it. In regard to himself, the impulse of 
 self-study, self -judgment, self-revelation, seems to 
 have been irresistible. Even in his most frivo- 
 lous and dissolute early years, we find it compel- 
 ling him to look into his inner life, with the result 
 of self-condemnation which finally drove him to 
 pursuits at least outwardly more pure. But it 
 also furnished him with material to be interwoven 
 into many novels and to give color to them. In 
 each succeeding period of his life, we find this 
 habitual self-introspection operating with ever 
 increasing force ; always, after awhile, rendering 
 him dissatisfied the more proper word may be 
 disgusted with his present stage of advancement 
 and painfully forcing him on to the next step. 
 His self-judgment may often be too severe and 
 unqualified ; his transition from one phase of 
 thought, feeling and belief may be abnormally 
 abrupt ; but, however violent these transitions 
 may be, he always takes with him from one plane 
 of life to another, not only his accumulated store 
 of facts and learning, but also that flood of feel- 
 ing whose slender fountain we see in his earliest 
 life, and which we can watch, as, swelling in vio- 
 lence, it grows more and more impetuous and 
 irresistible. To change the metaphor, the germs 
 of his latest beliefs and governing principles
 
 Il6 A RUN THROUGH RUSSIA. 
 
 appear in his earliest expressions of thought and 
 feeling ; and we can easily watch their develop- 
 ment and growth from seed-time to harvest. It 
 is all apparent in his books, to which it always 
 gives their tone, color and direction. It is often 
 said that he is himself the hero of his own stories, 
 and this is literally true of the earlier ones, 
 " The Cossacks," " Childhood, Boyhood and 
 Youth," and several of his shorter but quite as 
 interesting and characteristic tales. 
 
 In his later novels the conflicting moods and 
 opinions which are agitating his own mind are 
 divided among appropriate characters ; three at 
 least being thus inspired in one work, " War and 
 Peace." But, invariably, however introduced, 
 what he sees in his inmost self is reflected with 
 realistic vividness. His very latest works are 
 avowedly autobiographical. 
 
 The elements which go to make up Count 
 Tolstoi's genius are these : intense personality; 
 healthful, masculine force in all his nature, both 
 mental and physical ; unequalled powers of obser- 
 vation and memory ; an exceptionally keen and 
 profound faculty of introspection, unflinchingly 
 and unsparingly exercised upon himself ; extreme 
 conscientiousness and never-failing fidelity to 
 truth ; these, with such modicum of imagination 
 as is indispensable to make their fruits available 
 for the purpose of the novelist ; and such larger
 
 WRITTEN WORKS OF COUNT TOLSTOI. 1 1/ 
 
 proportion of that faculty in later years as carried 
 him into regions of a higher idealism. 
 
 It is hardly necessary to say that there can be 
 no intelligent consideration of works inspired by 
 a genius like this, without a parallel consideration 
 of the life of the author. It is the excess in 
 Count Tolstoi of the qualities named, which so 
 closely identifies him with his books, that they 
 cannot well be treated separately. It is this, also, 
 which gives them their admirable realism and 
 earnestness, which constantly says to the reader, 
 "This is no soothing amusement for a leisure 
 hour that I offer you, but a faithful picture of 
 the world and the evil which is in it, for you 
 and me to remedy, as we have helped to create 
 it. It is the social life in whose grossest vices 
 I have participated, that I now arraign before 
 .the tribunal of society's conscience, as I have 
 already arraigned it before my own. It is the 
 robbery and oppression by which we of the rul- 
 ing class have long crushed to earth the poor 
 and the weak, of which I ask you to repent and 
 aid me in redressing. In the guise of fiction, I 
 present to you, as vividly as I can, those great 
 truths which should inspire you with an earnest 
 purpose to do what in you lies to serve the right 
 and overthrow the wrong." 
 
 It is true that in none of his novels does he 
 avow any such noble purpose, and that in his 
 confessions he expressly disclaims any except
 
 Il8 A RUN THROUGH RUSSIA. 
 
 low and selfish motives for authorship. Never- 
 theless, those which we have ascribed to him 
 appear more and more clearly in each succeeding 
 publication ; more and more governing their 
 character, until, in the latest, they seem to have 
 attained to absolute control. Consciously or 
 unconsciously, he is always the teacher of right- 
 eousness, without parading it as his mission. He 
 paints the vices of his age and nation, but even 
 while he describes himself indulging in them 
 never in such form as to make them attractive. 
 To be sure he tells the story of gambling, adul- 
 tery, drunkenness and other national vices with 
 true Russian nonchalance, rarely expressing any 
 abhorrence of them in terms rarely denouncing 
 them as sins. Thus, in his great novel " Anna 
 Karenina," where a life of illicit love ends in utter 
 misery and suicide, he by no means characterizes 
 this as a special judgment in punishment for a 
 violation of the seventh commandment, but as the 
 logical and inevitable consequence of such a life, 
 even when led by a man and woman to whom he 
 ascribes all noble qualities not inconsistent with 
 it. Throughout his works, as in this, we still find 
 him invariably teaching, as the result of his 
 observation of life, the one old lesson of all lives, 
 that 
 
 " Sorrow follows wrong 
 As echo follows song, 
 
 On, on forever."
 
 WRITTEN WORKS OF COUNT TOLSTOI. I 19 
 
 It is a natural inquiry in regard to an author, 
 What conditions and experiences of life gave him 
 his opportunities for observation, and inspired 
 him with the deep feeling which he exhibits from 
 the first, and which has finally overmastered him ? 
 
 But great as are Count Tolstoi's novels, his re- 
 ligious writings show even more genius. No 
 such book of probing, searching, moral value has 
 appeared since St. Augustine's Confession, as 
 Tolstoi's wonderful work, " My Confession," 
 which, in some way, seems to put a new flooring 
 into the worn-out moral tone of those who have 
 pondered its meaning. And the seven discourses 
 which follow this work and which are called " The 
 Spirit of Christ's Teachings," reveal a depth of 
 spiritual insight and an originality of exegesis in 
 the study of the Bible, which remind us of the 
 fearless common-sense of John Bunyan in his 
 " Pilgrim's Progress," or Sir Thomas Browne in 
 his " Religio Medici," and prepare us for that 
 original interpretation of the Scriptures which 
 marks the pages of his later theological work, 
 " My Religion." 
 
 As an illustration of his original and penetrat- 
 ing method of interpreting familiar passages in 
 the Word of God, let the following passages speak 
 for themselves : 
 
 " If there are any who doubt the life beyond the 
 grave and salvation based upon redemption, none 
 can doubt the salvation of all men, and of each
 
 120 A RUN THROUGH RUSSIA. 
 
 individual man, if they will accept the evidence 
 of the destruction of the personal life and follow 
 the true way to safety by bringing their personal 
 wills into harmony with the will of God. Let 
 each man endowed with reason ask himself, 
 What is life ? and What is death ? and let him try 
 to give life and death another meaning than 
 that revealed by Jesus, and he will find that 
 any attempt to find in life a meaning not based 
 upon the renunciation of self, the service of 
 humanity, of the Son of man, is utterly futile. 
 It cannot be doubted that the personal life is con- 
 demned to destruction and that a life conforma- 
 ble to the will of God alone gives the possibility 
 of salvation. It is not much in comparison with 
 the sublime belief in the future life ! It is not 
 much, but it is sure. 
 
 "I am lost with my companions in a snow- 
 storm. One of them assures me, with the utmost 
 sincerity, that he sees a light in the distance, but 
 it is only a mirage which deceives us both ; we 
 strive to reach this light, but we never can find 
 it. Another resolutely brushes away the snow ; 
 he seeks and finds the road, and he cries to us, 
 ' Go not that way, the light you see is false, you 
 will wander to destruction ; here is the road, I 
 felt it beneath my feet ; we are saved ! ' It is 
 very little, we say. We had faith in that light 
 that gleamed in our deluded eyes, that told us of 
 a refuge, a warm shelter, rest, deliverance, and
 
 WRITTEN WORK'S OF COUNT TOLSTOI. 121 
 
 now, in exchange for it, we have nothing but the 
 road. Ah, but if we continue to travel towards 
 the imaginary light, we shall perish ; if \ve follow 
 the road, we shall surely arrive at a haven of 
 safety. 
 
 " What, then, must I do, if I, alone, understand 
 the doctrine of Jesus, and I, alone, have trust in 
 it among a people who neither understand it nor 
 obey it? What ought I to do to live like the rest 
 of the world, or to live according to the doctrine 
 of Jesus? I understood the doctrine of Jesus as 
 expressed in his commandments, and 1 believed 
 that the practice of these commandments would 
 bring happiness to me and to all men. I under- 
 stood that the fulfillment of these command- 
 ments is the will of (rod, the source of life. 
 More than this, I saw that I should die like a 
 brute after a farcical existence if I did not ful- 
 fill the will of God, and that the only chance of 
 salvation lay in the fulfillment of his will. In fol- 
 lowing the example of the world about me I 
 should unquestionably act contrary to the welfare 
 of all men, and, above all, contrary to the will of 
 the Giver of Life ; I should surely forfeit the sole 
 possibility of bettering my desperate condition. 
 In following the doctrine of Jesus I should con- 
 tinue the work common to all men who had lived 
 before me ; I should contribute to the welfare of 
 my fellows and of those who were to live after 
 me ; I should obey the command of the Giver of
 
 122 A RUN THROUGH RUSSIA. 
 
 t 
 
 Life ; I should seize upon the only hope of sal- 
 vation. 
 
 " The circus at Berditchef is in flames. A 
 crowd of people are struggling before the only 
 place of exit, a door that opens inward. Sud- 
 denly, in the midst of the crowd, a voice rings 
 out : ' Back, stand back from the door ; the 
 closer you press against it, the less the chance of 
 escape ; stand back ; that is your only chance of 
 safety ! ' 
 
 " Whether I am alone in understanding this 
 command or whether others with me also hear 
 and understand, I have but one duty, and that is, 
 from the moment I have heard and understood, to 
 fall back from the door, and to call on everyone 
 to obey the voice of the Saviour. ,1 may be suffo- 
 cated, I may be crushed beneath the feet of the 
 multitude, I may perish ; my sole chance of 
 safety is to do the one thing necessary to gain an 
 exit. And I can do nothing else. A saviour 
 should be a saviour, that is, one who saves. And 
 the salvation of Jesus is the true salvation. He 
 came, He preached His doctrine, and humanity is 
 saved. 
 
 " The circus may burn in an hour, and those 
 penned up in it may have no time to escape. 
 But the world has been burning for eighteen hun- 
 dred years. It has burned ever since Jesus said, 
 '/ am come to send fire on the earth ; ' and I suffer 
 as it burns : and it will continue to burn until
 
 WRITTEN WORKS OF COUNT TOLSTOI. 123 
 
 humanity is saved. Was not this fire kindled that 
 men might have the felicity of salvation ? Under- 
 standing this, I understood and believed that 
 Jesus is not only the Messiah that is, the 
 Anointed One, the Christ but that He is in 
 truth the Saviour of the world. I know that He 
 is the only way ; that there is no other way for 
 me, or for those who are tormented with me in 
 this life. I know that for me, as for all, there is 
 no other safety than the fulfillment of the com- 
 mandments of Jesus, who gave to all humanity 
 the greatest conceivable sum of benefits. Would 
 there be great trials to endure ? Should I die in 
 following the doctrine of Jesus ? This question 
 did not alarm me. It might seem frightful to 
 anyone who does not realize the nothingness and 
 absurdity of an isolated personal life, and who 
 believes that he will never die. But I know that 
 my life, considered in relation to my individual 
 happiness, is, taken by itself, a stupendous farce, 
 and that this meaningless existence will end in a 
 stupid death. Knowing this, I have nothing to 
 fear. I shall die as all others die who do not 
 observe the doctrine of Jesus ; but my life and my 
 death will have a meaning for myself and for 
 others. My life and my death will have added 
 something to the life and salvation of others, and 
 this will be in accordance with the doctrine of 
 Jesus." 
 
 The following passage, or table, is, after all, a
 
 124 A RUN THROUGH RUSSIA. 
 
 clear insight into the very heart of all Tolstoi's 
 religious writings : 
 
 " There is no man that hath left house, or breth- 
 ren, or sisters, or mother, or father, or children, or 
 lands, for my sake and for the Gospel's sake, but 
 he shall receive a hundredfold now in this time, 
 houses, and brethren, and sisters, and mothers, 
 and children, and lands with persecutions, and, in 
 the age to come, eternal life." (Mark 10 : 28-30.) 
 
 "Jesus declared it is true that those who follow 
 His doctrine must expect to be persecuted by 
 those who do not follow it ; but He did not say 
 that His disciples will be the worse off for that 
 reason. On the contrary, He said that His dis- 
 ciples would have, here in this world, more bene- 
 fits than those who did not follow Him. That 
 Jesus said and thought this is beyond a doubt, as 
 the clearness of His words on this subject, the 
 meaning of His entire doctrine, His life and the 
 life of His disciples, plainly show. But was His 
 teaching in this respect true ? 
 
 " When we examine the question as to which of 
 the two conditions would be the better, that of the 
 disciples of Jesus or that of the disciples of the 
 world, we are obliged to conclude that the condi- 
 tion of the disciples of Jesus ought to be the most 
 desirable, since the disciples of Jesus, in doing 
 good to everyone, would not arouse the hatred of 
 men. The disciples of Jesus, doing evil to no one, 
 would be persecuted only by the wicked. The
 
 WRITTEN WO UK'S OF COUNT TOLSTOI. 125 
 
 disciples of the world, on the contrary, are likely 
 to be persecuted by everyone, since the law of 
 the disciples of the world is the law of each 
 for himself the law of struggle, that is, of mutual 
 persecution. Moreover, the disciples of Jesus 
 would be prepared for suffering, while the disci- 
 ples of the world use all possible means to avoid 
 suffering. The disciples of Jesus would feel that 
 their sufferings were useful to the world ; but the 
 disciples of the world do not know why they suf- 
 fer. On abstract grounds, then, the condition of 
 disciples of Jesus would be more advantageous 
 than that of the disciples of the world. But is it 
 so in reality ? To answer this, let each one call 
 to mind all the painful moments of his life, all the 
 physical and moral sufferings that he has endured; 
 and let him ask himself if he has suffered these 
 calamities in behalf of the doctrine of the 
 world or in behalf of the doctrine of Jesus. 
 Every sincere man will find, in recalling his past 
 life, that he has never once suffered for practising 
 the doctrine of Jesus. He will find that the 
 greater part of the misfortunes of his life have 
 resulted from following the doctrines of the world. 
 In my own life (an exceptionally happy one from 
 a worldly point of view) I can reckon up as much 
 suffering caused by following the doctrine of the 
 world as many a martyr has endured for the doc- 
 trine of Jesus. All the most painful moments of 
 my life, the orgies and duels in which I took part
 
 126 A RUN l^HROUGH RUSSIA. 
 
 as a student, the wars in which I have partici- 
 pated, the diseases I have endured, and the 
 abnormal and insupportable conditions under 
 which I now live, all these are only so much 
 martyrdom exacted by fidelity to the doctrine of 
 the world. But I speak of a life exceptionally 
 happy from a worldly point of view. How many 
 martyrs have suffered for the doctrine of the 
 world torments that I should find difficulty in 
 enumerating ! 
 
 "We do not realize the difficulties and dangers 
 entailed by the practice of the doctrine of the 
 world, simply because we are persuaded that we 
 could not do otherwise than follow that doctrine. 
 We are persuaded that all the calamities that, we 
 inflict upon ourselves are the result of the inevi- 
 table conditions of life, and we cannot understand 
 that the doctrine of Jesus teaches us how we may 
 rid ourselves of these calamities and render our 
 lives happy. To be able to reply to the question, 
 Which of these two conditions is the happier ? we 
 must, at least for the time being, put aside our 
 prejudices, and take a careful survey of our sur- 
 roundings. Go through our great cities and 
 observe the emancipated, sickly, and distorted 
 specimens of humanity to be found therein ; recall 
 your own existence and that of the people with 
 whose lives you are familiar ; recall the instances 
 of violent deaths and suicides of which you have 
 heard, and ask yourself for what cause- all this
 
 WRITTEN WORKS OF COUNT TOLSTOI. \2/ 
 
 suffering and death, this despair that leads to 
 suicide, has been endured. You will find, perhaps 
 to your surprise, that nine-tenths of all human 
 suffering endured by men is useless, and ought 
 not to exist, that, in fact, the majority of men are 
 martyrs to the doctrine of the world. 
 
 " One rainy autumn day I rode on the tramway 
 by the Sukhareff Tower in Moscow. For the dis- 
 tance of half a verst the vehicle forced its way 
 through a compact crowd which quickly reformed 
 its ranks. From morning till night these thou- 
 sands of men the greater portion of them starv- 
 ing and in rags tramped angrily through the 
 mud, venting their hatred in abusive epithets and 
 acts of violence. The same sight may be seen in 
 all the market-places of Moscow. At sunset these 
 people go to the taverns and gaming-houses ; their 
 nights are passed in filth and wretchedness. 
 Think of the lives of these people, of what they 
 abandon through choice for their present condi- 
 tion ; think of the heavy burden of labor without 
 reward which weighs upon these men and women, 
 and you will see that they are true martyrs. All 
 these people have forsaken houses, lands, parents, 
 wives, children ; they have renounced all the com- 
 forts of life, and they have come to the cities to 
 acquire that which according to the gospel of the 
 world is indispensable to every one. And all 
 these tens of thousands of unhappy people sleep in 
 hovels, and subsist upon strong drink and wretched
 
 128 A RUN THROUGH RUSSIA. 
 
 food. But, aside from this class all, from factory 
 workman, cab-driver, sewing girl, and lorette, to 
 merchant and government official all endure the 
 most painful and abnormal conditions without 
 being able to acquire what, according to the 
 doctrine of the world, is indispensable to each."
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 THE WRITTEN WORKS, OF COUNT TOLSTOI. 
 (Continued.) 
 
 " SEEK, among all these men, from beggar to 
 millionaire, one who is contented with his lot, ami 
 you will not find one such in a thousand. Each 
 one spends his strength in pursuit of what is ex- 
 acted by the doctrine of the world, and of what 
 he is unhappy not to possess ; and scarcely, has 
 he obtained one object of his desires when he 
 strives for another, and still another, in that infi- 
 nite labor of Sisyphus which destroys the lives of 
 men. Run over the scale of individual fortunes, 
 ranging from a yearly income of 300 roubles to 
 50,000 roubles, and you will rarely find a person 
 who is not striving to gain 400 roubles if he have 
 300 ; 500 if he have 400, and so on to the top of 
 the ladder. Among them all you will rarely find 
 one who, with 500 roubles, is willing to adopt the 
 mode of life of him who has only 400. When 
 such an instance does occur, it is not inspired by 
 a desire to make life more simple, but to amass 
 money and make it more sure. Each strives, 
 continually, to make the heavy burden of existence 
 still more heavy, by giving himself up, body and 
 soul, to the practice of the doctrine of the world.
 
 130 A RUN 7'H ROUGH RL'SSIA. 
 
 To-day we must buy an overcoat ancl galoches, to- 
 morrow a watch and chain ; the next day we must 
 install ourselves in an apartment with a sofa and 
 a bronze lamp ; then we must have carpets and 
 velvet gowns, horses and carriages, paintings and 
 decorations, and then then we fall ill of overwork 
 and die. Another continues the same task, sacri- 
 fices his life to the same Moloch, and then dies 
 also without realizing for what he has lived. But, 
 possibly, this existence is in itself attractive ? 
 Compare it with what men have always called 
 happiness, and you will see that it is hideous. 
 For what, according to the general estimate, are 
 the principal conditions of earthly happiness ? 
 
 " I. One of the first conditions of happiness is 
 that the link between man and nature shall not 
 be severed that is, that he shall be able to see 
 the sky above him, and that he shall be able to 
 enjoy the sunshine, the pure air, the fields with 
 their verdure, their multitudinous life. Men have 
 always regarded it as a great unhappiness to. be 
 deprived of all these things, but what is the con- 
 dition of those men who live according to the 
 doctrine of the world ? The greater their success 
 in practising the doctrine of the world, the more 
 they are deprived of these conditions of happiness. 
 The greater their worldly success, the less they 
 are able to enjoy the light of the sun, the freshness 
 of the fields and woods, and all the delights of 
 country life. Many of them including nearly all
 
 WRITTEN WOKKS OF COUNT TOLSTOI. 1 3 I 
 
 the women arrive at old age without having seen 
 the sun rise, or the beauties of the early morning ; 
 without having seen a forest, except from a seat 
 in a carriage ; without ever 'having planted a 
 field or a garden, and without having the least 
 idea as to the ways and habits of dumb animals. 
 These people, surrounded by artificial light, 
 instead of sunshine, look only upon fabrics of 
 tapestry, and stone, and wood, fashioned by the 
 hand of man. The roar of machinery, the roll of 
 vehicles, the thunder of cannon, the sound of mu- 
 sical instruments are always in their ears ; they 
 breathe an atmosphere heavy with distilled per- 
 fumes and tobacco smoke. Because of the weak- 
 ness of their stomachs, and their depraved tastes, 
 they eat rich and highly spiced food. When they 
 move about from place to place, they travel in 
 closed carriages ; when they go into the country 
 they have the same fabrics beneath their feet ; 
 the same draperies shut out the sunshine ; and 
 the same array of servants cut off all communi- 
 cation with the- men, the earth, the vegetation, 
 and the animals about them. Wherever they go, 
 they are like so many captives shut out from the 
 conditions of happiness. As prisoners sometimes 
 console themselves with a blade of grass that 
 forces its way through the pavement of their 
 prison-yard, or make pets of a spider or a mouse, 
 so these people sometimes amuse themselves with 
 sickly plants, a parrot, a poodle, or a monkey, to
 
 132 A RUN THROUGH RUSSIA. 
 
 whose needs, however, they do not themselves 
 administer. 
 
 " II. Another inevitable condition of happiness 
 is WORK : first, intellectual labor that one is free 
 to choose and love ; secondly, the exercise of 
 physical power that brings a good appetite, and 
 tranquil and profound sleep. 
 
 " Here, again, the greater the imagined pros- 
 perity that falls to the lot of men, according to 
 the doctrine of the world, the more such men are 
 deprived of this condition of happiness. All the 
 prosperous people of the world the men of dig- 
 nity and wealth are as completely deprived of 
 the advantages of work as if they were shut up in 
 solitary confinement. They struggle unsuccess- 
 fully with the diseases caused by the need of 
 physical exercise, and with -the ennui which pur- 
 sues them unsuccessfully, because labor is a 
 pleasure only when it is necessary and they have 
 need of nothing ; or, they undertake work that is 
 odious to them, like the bankers, solicitors, 
 administrators, and government officials ; and their 
 wives, who plan receptions and routs, and devise 
 toilettes for themselves and their children. (I say 
 odious, because I never yet met any person of 
 this class who was contented with his work or 
 took as much satisfaction in it as the porter feels 
 in shoveling away the snow from before their 
 doorsteps.) All these favorites of fortune are 
 either deprived of work or are obliged to work at
 
 WRITTEN WORK'S OF COUNT TOLSTOI. 133 
 
 what they do not like, after the manner of crimi- 
 nals condemned to hard labor. 
 
 " III. The third undoubted condition of happi- 
 ness is the family. But the more men are en- 
 slaved by worldly success, the more certainly are 
 they cut off from domestic pleasures. The 
 majority of them are libertines, who deliberately 
 renounce the joys of family life and retain only 
 its cares. If they are not libertines, their children, 
 instead of being a source of pleasure, are a bur- 
 den, and all possible means are employed to render 
 marriage unfruitful. If they have* children, they 
 make no effort to cultivate the pleasures of com- 
 panionship with them. They leave their children 
 almost continually to the care of strangers, con- 
 fiding them first to the instruction of persons who 
 are usually foreigners, and then sending them to 
 public educational institutions, so that of family 
 life they have only the sorrows, and their children 
 from infancy are as unhappy as their parents, and 
 wish their parents dead, that they may become 
 the heirs. These people are not confined in 
 prisons, but the consequences of their way of liv- 
 ing, with regard to the family, are more melan- 
 choly than the deprivation from domestic relations 
 inflicted upon those who are kept in confinement 
 under sentence of the law. 
 
 " IV. The fourth condition of happiness is 
 sympathetic and unrestricted intercourse with all 
 classes of men. And the higher a man is placed
 
 134 A KU * THROUGH RUSSIA. 
 
 in the social scale, the more certainly is he de- 
 prived of this essential condition of happiness. 
 The higher he goes, the narrower becomes his 
 circle of associates; the lower sinks the moral and 
 intellectual level of those to whose companion- 
 ship he is restrained. 
 
 " The peasant and his wife are free to enter into 
 friendly relations with everyone, and if a million 
 men will have nothing to do with them, there re- 
 main eighty millions of people with whom they 
 may fraternize from Archangel to Astrakhan 
 without waiting for a ceremonious visit or an intro- 
 duction. A clerk and his wife will find hundreds 
 of people who are their equals; but the clerk of a 
 higher rank will not admit them to a footing of 
 social equality ; and they, in their turn, are ex- 
 cluded by others. The wealthy man of the 
 world reckons by dozens the families with whom 
 he is willing to maintain social ties all the rest 
 of the world are strangers. For the cabinet- 
 minister and the millionaire, there are only a 
 dozen people as rich and as important as them- 
 selves. For kings and emperors the circle is still 
 more narrow. Is not the whole system like a 
 great prison where each inmate is restricted to 
 association with a few fellow-convicts ? 
 
 "V. Finally, the fifth condition of happiness is 
 bodily health. And once more we find, that as we 
 ascend the social scale, this condition of happi- 
 ness is less and less within the reach of the
 
 WRITTEN WORKS OF COUNT TOLSTOI. 135 
 
 followers of the doctrine of the world. Compare 
 a family of medium social status with a family of 
 peasants. The latter toil unremittingly and are 
 robust of body; the former is made up of men and 
 women more or less subject to disease. Recall 
 to mind the rich men and women you have known 
 are not most of them invalids ? A person of 
 that class whose physical disabilities do not 
 oblige him to take a periodical course of hygienic 
 and medical treatment, is as rare as an invalid 
 among the laboring classes. All these favorites 
 of fortune are the victims and practitioners of 
 sexual vices that have become a second nature, 
 and they are toothless, gray, and bald, at an age 
 when a workingman is in the prime of manhood. 
 Nearly all are afflicted with nervous or other 
 diseases arising from excesses in eating, drunken- 
 ness, luxury, and perpetual medication. Those 
 who do not die young, pass half their lives under 
 the influence of morphine or other drugs, as mel- 
 ancholy wrecks of humanity, incapable of self- 
 attention ; leading a parasitic existence like that 
 of a certain species of ants which are nourished 
 by their slaves. Here is the death list : Qne has 
 blown out his brains ; another has rotted away 
 from the effects of syphilitic poison ; this old man 
 succumbed to sexual excess; this young man to 
 a wild outburst of sensuality ; one died of drunk- 
 enness, another of gluttony, another from the 
 abuse of morphine, another from an induced
 
 I 36 A RUN THROUGH RUSSIA. 
 
 abortion. One after another they perished 
 victims of the doctrine of the world. And a multi- 
 tude presses on behind them, like an army of 
 martyrs, to undergo the same sufferings, the same 
 perdition. 
 
 " To follow the doctrine of Jesus is difficult ! 
 Jesus said that they who would forsake houses, 
 and lands, and brethren, and follow His doctrine, 
 should receive a hundredfold in houses, and lands, 
 and brethren ; and besides all this, eternal life. 
 And no one is willing even to make the experi- 
 ment. The doctrine of the world commands its 
 followers to leave houses, and lands, and brethren; 
 to forsake the country for the filth of the city, 
 there to toil as a bath-keeper, soaping the backs 
 of others; as an apprentice in a little underground 
 shop, passing life in counting copecks; as a prose- 
 cuting attorney, to serve in bringing unhappy 
 wretches under condemnation of the law ; as a 
 cabinet-minister, perpetually signing documents 
 of no importance ; as the head of an army, killing 
 men. ' Forsake all and live this hideous life end- 
 ing in a cruel death, and you shall receive nothing 
 in this world or the other,' is the command ; and 
 everyone listens and obeys. Jesus tells us to take 
 up the cross and follow Him, to bear submissively 
 the lot apportioned out to us. No one hears His 
 words or follows His command. But let a man in 
 a uniform decked out with gold lace, a man whose 
 specialty is to kill his fellows, say, ' Take, not
 
 WRITTEN WORKS OF COUNT TOLSTOI. 137 
 
 your cross, but your knapsack and carbine and 
 march to suffering and certain death,' and a 
 mighty host is ready to receive his orders. Leav- 
 ing parents, wives, and children; clad in grotesque 
 costumes ; subject to the will of the first comer 
 of a higher rank ; famished, benumbed and ex- 
 hausted by forced marches they go, like a herd of 
 cattle to the slaughter-house, not knowing where, 
 and yet these are not cattle, they are men. 
 With despair in their hearts they move on to die 
 of hunger, or cold, or disease, or, if they survive, 
 to be brought within range of a storm of bullets 
 and commanded to kill. They kill and are killed, 
 no one knows why or to what end. An ambitious 
 stripling has only to brandish his sword and shout 
 a few magniloquent words to induce them to rush 
 to certain death. And yet no one finds this to 
 be difficult. Neither the victims nor those whom 
 they have forsaken find anything difficult in such 
 sacrifices, in which parents encourage their chil- 
 dren to take part. It seems to them not only 
 that such should be, but that they could not be 
 otherwise, and that they are altogether admirable 
 and moral." 
 
 Surely nothing stronger than this has been 
 written in this century. It is stronger than any- 
 thing Carlyle or Ruskin have penned, simply 
 because the life has been back of the writing to 
 underscore it and make it emphatic. 
 
 The best known of Count Tolstoi's works are
 
 138 A RUN THROUGH RUSSJA. 
 
 as follows : "Anna Karenina," " Childhood, Hoy- 
 hood, Youth," "What to Do," "Ivan Ilyitch," 
 " Family Happiness," " My Confession," " My 
 Religion," " Life," " Napoleon's Russian Cam- 
 paign," " Power and Liberty," " The Long Exile," 
 "The Invaders," "A Russian Proprietor," " Se- 
 bastopol," " The Cossacks," " War and Peace." 
 
 The Tolstoi booklets, already published, are : 
 "Where Love Is," "The Two Pilgrims," "What 
 Men Live By " ; and these are each little gems, 
 full of the fragrance and sweetness of Hans 
 Christian Andersen. 
 
 Tolstoi's " Boyhood, Childhood and Youth " 
 is one of the most attractive and fascinating bits 
 of autobiography ever published, and makes us 
 understand how the diary of Marie Bashkirtseff 
 came to be written, the former being the memoir 
 of a Russian reformer and the latter the memoir 
 of a Russian artist. 
 
 The glimpses we get of the boy's life at his 
 country home and in the city of Moscow help to 
 give us a clue to the true meaning of the man's 
 after-life, and show us, most unmistakably, his re- 
 markable insight into the social life of the Slavic 
 people and his marked preparation to be a leader 
 and reformer among them. 
 
 His book entitled, "What to Do, or Thoughts 
 Evoked by the Census of Moscow," is the most 
 radical and logical of all his writings, and shows 
 us his peculiar principles of social reform applied
 
 WRITTEN WORKS OF COUNT TOLSTOI. 139 
 
 with the remorseless rigor of John the Baptist in 
 the wilderness of the politico-economical world 
 of the Russia of to-day. Let the following ex- 
 tracts serve as an illustration of his writing as an 
 economist : 
 
 " I recollect once, while walking in a street in 
 Moscow, I saw a man come out and examine the 
 flagstones attentively ; then, choosing one of 
 them, he sat down by it and began to scrape and 
 rub it vigorously. 
 
 " What is he doing with the pavement ? I won- 
 dered ; and having come up close to him I dis- 
 covered he was a young man from a butcher's 
 shop, and he was sharpening his knife on the 
 flagstone. He was not thinking about the stones 
 when examining them, and still less while doing 
 his work ; he was merely sharpening his knife. 
 It was necessary for him to do so in order to cut 
 the meat, but to me it seemed that he was doing 
 something to the pavement. 
 
 " In the same way mankind seems to be oc- 
 cupied with commerce, treaties, wars, sciences, 
 arts ; and yet for them one thing only is import- 
 ant, and they only do that ; they are elucidating 
 those moral laws by which they live. 
 
 " Moral laws are already in existence, and man- 
 kind has been merely re-discovering them : this 
 elucidation appears to be unimportant and imper- 
 ceptible to one who has no need of moral law, 
 and one who does not desire to live by it. Yet
 
 I4O A RUN THROUGH RUSSIA. 
 
 this is not only the chief, but ought to be the 
 sole, business of all men. This elucidation is 
 imperceptible in the same way as the difference 
 between a sharp knife and a blunt one is imper- 
 ceptible. A knife remains a knife, and one who 
 has not got to cut anything with it will not notice 
 its edge ; but for one who understands that all 
 his life depends on whether his knife is blunt or 
 sharp, every improvement in sharpening it is 
 important ; and such a man knows that there 
 must be no limit to this improvement, and that 
 the knife is only really a knife when it is sharp, 
 and when it cuts what it has to cut. 
 
 " The conviction of this truth flashed upon me 
 when I began to write my pamphlet. Previously 
 it seemed to me that I knew everything about 
 my subject that I had a thorough understand- 
 ing of everything connected with those questions 
 which had been awakened in me by the impres- 
 sions made in Liapin's house during the census ; 
 but when I tried to sum them up and put them on 
 paper, it turned out that the knife would not cut, 
 and had to be sharpened ; so it is only now after 
 three years that I feel my knife is sharp enough 
 for me to cut out what I want. 
 
 " It is not that I have learned new things : my 
 thoughts are still the same, but they were blunt 
 formerly ; they kept scattering in every direc- 
 tion ; there was no edge to them ; nor was any- 
 thing brought, as it is now, to the one central
 
 WRITTEN WORKS OF COUNT TOLSTOI. 141 
 
 point, to one most simple and plain conclu- 
 sion. 
 
 " I recollect that during the whole time of my 
 unsuccessful endeavors to help the unfortunate 
 inhabitants of Moscow, I felt that I was like a 
 man trying to help others out of a morass, who 
 was himself all the time stuck fast in it. Every 
 effort made me feel the instability of the ground 
 upon which I was standing. I was conscious that 
 I myself was in this same morass ; but this 
 acknowledgment did not help me to look more 
 closely under my feet, in order to ascertain the 
 nature of the ground upon which I stood ; I kept 
 looking for some exterior means to remedy the 
 existing evil. 
 
 " I felt that my life was a bad one, and that 
 people ought not to live so ; yet I did not come 
 to the most natural and obvious conclusion, that 
 I must first reform my own mode of life before I 
 should have any conception of how to reform 
 that of others. And so I began as it were at the 
 wrong end. I was living in town and I desired 
 to improve the lives of the men there ; but I was 
 soon convinced that I had no power to do so, and 
 I began to ponder over the nature of town life 
 and town misery. I said to myself, over and over, 
 'What is this town life and town misery? and 
 Why, while living in town am I unable to help 
 the town poor ? ' 
 
 " The only reply I found was that I was power-
 
 142 A RUN THROUGfr RUSSIA. 
 
 less to do anything for them : first, because there 
 were too many collected together in one place ; 
 secondly, because none of them was at all like 
 those in the country. And again I asked myself, 
 'Why are there so many here, and in what 
 do they differ from the country poor ? ' To 
 both of these questions the answer was one and 
 the same. There are many poor people in towns 
 because there, all those who have nothing to 
 subsist on in the country are collected round the 
 rich, and their peculiarity consists only in that 
 they have all come into the towns from the coun- 
 try in order to get a living. (If there are any 
 town poor born there whose fathers and grandfath- 
 ers were town-born, these in their turn originally 
 came there to get a living.) But what are we to 
 understand by the expression getting a living in 
 town ? There is something strange in the expres- 
 sion : it sounds like a joke when we reflect on its 
 meaning. How is it that from the country, i. e^ 
 from places where there are woods, meadows, 
 corn and cattle, where the earth yields the treas- 
 ures of fertility men come away in order to get 
 a living in a place where there are none of these 
 advantages but only stones and dust ? What 
 then do these words signify, to get a living in 
 town ? 
 
 " Such a phrase is constantly used both by the 
 employed and their employers, and that as if it 
 were quite clear and intelligible. I remember
 
 WKITTEN WORKS OF COUNT TOLSTOI. 143 
 
 now all the hundreds and thousands of town peo- 
 ple, well or in want, with whom 1 have spoken 
 about their object in coming here, and all of 
 them, without exception, told me they had quitted 
 their villages in order to get a living ; that accord- 
 ing to the proverb, ' Moscow neither sows nor 
 reaps yet lives in wealth ' ; that in Moscow there 
 is abundance of everything ; and that therefore 
 in Moscow one may get the money which is 
 needed in the country for getting corn, cottages, 
 horses and other essentials of life. 
 
 " But, in fact, the source of all wealth is the 
 country ; there only are real riches, corn, woods, 
 horses and everything necessary. Why, then go 
 to towns in order to get what is to be had in the 
 country ? And why should people carry away 
 from the country into the towns such things as 
 are necessary for country people, flour, oats, 
 horses and cattle ? Hundreds of times have I 
 spoken thus with peasants who live in towns ; 
 and from my talks with them, and from my own 
 observations, it became clear to me that the 
 accumulation of country people in the cities is 
 partly necessary, because they could not other- 
 wise earn their livelihood, and partly voluntary, 
 because they are attracted by the temptations of 
 a town life. It is true that the circumstances of 
 a peasant are such that in order to satisfy the 
 pecuniary demands made upon him in his village, 
 he cannot do it otherwise than by selling that
 
 144 A KUN THROUGH RUSSIA. 
 
 corn and cattle which he very well knows will be 
 necessary for himself ; and he is compelled 
 whether he will or not, to go to town in order to 
 earn back that which was his own. But it is also 
 true that he is attracted to town by the charms of 
 a comparatively easy way of getting money, and 
 by the luxury of life there ; and under the pre- 
 text of earning his living he goes there in order 
 to have easier work and better eating, to drink 
 tea three times a day, to dress himself smartly, 
 and even to get drunk and lead a dissolute life. 
 
 " The cause is a simple one, for property pass- 
 ing from the hands of the agriculturalist into 
 those of non-agriculturalists, thus accumulates in 
 towns. Observe towards autumn how much wealth 
 is gathered together in villages. Then comes 
 the demands of taxes, rents, recruiting ; then the 
 temptations of vodka, marriages, feasts, peddlers 
 and all sorts of other snares ; so that, in one way 
 or other, this property in all its various forms 
 (sheep, calves, cows, horses, pigs, poultry, eggs, 
 butter, hemp, flax, rye, oats, buckwheat, peas, 
 hemp-seed and flax-seed) passes into the hands of 
 strangers, and is taken first to provincial towns 
 and from there to the capitals. A villager is 
 compelled to dispose of all these in order to 
 satisfy the demands made upon him, and the 
 temptations offered him and having thus dis- 
 pensed his goods, he is left in want and must 
 follow where his wealth has been taken ; and there
 
 WRITTEN WORK'S OF COUNT TOLSTOI. 145 
 
 he tries to earn back the money necessary for his 
 most urgent needs at home ; and so being partly 
 carried away by these temptations he himself 
 along with others, makes use of the accumulated 
 wealth. 
 
 "Everywhere throughout Russia, and L think 
 not only in Russia but all over the world, the 
 same thing happens. The wealth of country 
 producers passes into the hands of trades-people, 
 land-owners, government officials, manufacturers : 
 the men who receive this wealth want to enjoy it, 
 and to enjoy it fully, they must be in town. In 
 the village in the first place, owing to the inhabi- 
 tants being scattered, it is difficult for the rich to 
 gratify all their desires : you do not find there all 
 sorts of shops, banks, restaurants, theatres and 
 various kinds of public amusements. 
 
 " Secondly, another of the chief pleasures pro- 
 cured by wealth, vanity, the desire to astonish, 
 to make a display before others, cannot be 
 gratified in the country for the same reason, its 
 inhabitants being too scattered. There is no one 
 in the country to appreciate luxury ; there is no 
 one to astonish. There, you may have what you 
 like to embellish your dwelling, pictures, bronze 
 statues, all sorts of carriages, fine toilets, but 
 there is no one to look at them or to envy you ; 
 the peasants do not understand the value of all 
 this, and cannot make head nor tail of it. 
 
 "'Thirdly, the luxury in the country is even
 
 146 A KUA r THROUGH RUSSIA. 
 
 disagreeable -to a man who has a conscience, and 
 is an,,anxiety to a timid person. One feels uneasy 
 or ashamed at taking a milk bath, or in feeding 
 puppies with milk, when there are children close 
 by needing food ; one feels the same in building 
 pavilions and gardens among a people who live in 
 cottages covered with stable litter, and who have 
 no wood to burn. There is no one in the village 
 to prevent the stupid, uneducated peasants from 
 spoiling our comfort. 
 
 " And, therefore, rich people gather together in 
 towns and settle near those who, in similar posi- 
 tions have similar desires. In towns the enjoy- 
 ments of all sorts of luxuries is carefully protected 
 by a numerous police. The chief inhabitants of 
 the town are government functionaries, round 
 whom all sorts of master workmen, artisans, and 
 all the rich people have settled. 
 
 " There a rich man has only to think about any- 
 thing in order to get it. It is also more agreeable 
 for him to live there because he can gratify his 
 vanity ; there are people with whom he may try 
 to compete in luxury, whom he may astonish or 
 eclipse. But it is especially pleasant for a 
 wealthy man to live in town, because, where his 
 country life was uncomfortable and somewhat 
 incongruous on account of his luxury ; in town, on 
 the contrary, it would be uncomfortable for him 
 not to live splendidly and as his equals in wealth 
 do. ' . *
 
 WRITTEN WORKS OF COUNT TO LSI Of. 147 
 
 " Money ! what then is money ? It is answered, 
 money represents labor. I meet educated people 
 who even assert that money represents labor per- 
 formed by those who possess it. 1 confess that 1, 
 myself, formerly shared this opinion, although 1 
 did not very clearly understand it. But now it 
 became necessary for me to learn thoroughly 
 what money was. 
 
 " In order to do so I addressed myself to 
 science. Science says that money in itself is 
 neither unjust nor pernicious ; that money is the 
 natural result of the conditions of social life, and 
 is indispensable, first, for convenience of exchange; 
 secondly, as a measure of value ; thirdly, for sav- 
 ' ing ; and fourthly, for payments. 
 
 " The evident fact that when I have in my 
 pocket three rubles to spare, which I am not in 
 need of, I have only to whistle and in every civil- 
 ized town I obtain a hundred people ready for these 
 three rubles, to do the worst, most disgusting and 
 humiliating act I require ; and this comes, not 
 from money, but from the very complicated con- 
 ditions of the economical life of nations. 
 
 "The dominion of one man over others comes 
 not from money, but from the circumstance that 
 a workingman does not receive the full value of 
 his labor ; and the fact that he does not get the 
 full value of his labor, depends upon the nature of 
 capital, rent and wages ; and upon complicated 
 connections between them and production itself ;
 
 148 A RL'X THROUGH RUSSIA. 
 
 and between the distribution and consumption of 
 wealth. In plain language, it means that those 
 who have money, may twist around their finger 
 those who have none. But science says this is an 
 illusion ; that in every kind of production three 
 factors take part land, savings of labor (capital) 
 and labor ; and that the dominion of the few over 
 the many, proceeds from the various connections 
 between these factors of production, and because 
 the first two factors, land and capital, are not in 
 the hands of working people. From this fact, and 
 from the various conditions resulting therefrom, 
 proceeds this domination. 
 
 " Whence comes this great power of money, 
 which strikes us all with a sense of its injustice 
 and cruelty ? Why ie one man by the means of 
 money to have dominion over others? Science 
 says ' It comes from the division of the agents of 
 production, and from the consequent complicated 
 combination which oppress the workingman.' 
 
 " This answer has always appeared to me to be 
 strange, not only because it leaves one part of the 
 question unnoticed ; namely, the signification of 
 money, but also because of the division of the 
 factors of production, which to an uninformed 
 man will always appear artificial and not in accord- 
 ance with reality. It is asserted that in every 
 production, three agents come into operation 
 land, capital and labor ; and along with this divi- 
 sion, it is understood that property (or its value
 
 WRITTEN WORK'S O/< COUNT TOJ.STOI. 149 
 
 in money) is divided among those who possess one 
 of these agents. Thus, rent tlu value of the 
 ground belongs to the land-owner ; interest to 
 the capitalist, and labor to the workingman." 
 
 "Is it really so? First, is it true that in every 
 production three agencies operate ? Now while i 
 am writing this, around me proceeds the produc- 
 tion of hay. Of what is this production composed? 
 I am told of the land which produces the grass, 
 of capital, scythes, rakes, pitch-forks, carts, which 
 are necessary to the housing of the hay, and of 
 labor. But I see that this is not true. Besides 
 the land, there is the sun and rain ; besides social 
 order which has been keeping these meadows from 
 damage, caused. by letting stray cattle graze upon 
 them, the prudence of workingmen, their knowl- 
 edge of language, and many other agencies of 
 production, which, for some unknown reason, are 
 not taken into consideration by political economy. 
 
 " The power of the sun is as necessary as the 
 land. I may instance the position of men in 
 which (as, for instance, in a town) some of them 
 assume the right to keep out the sun from others 
 by means of walls or trees. Why, then, is this 
 sun not included in the agents of production ? 
 
 " Rain is another means as necessary as the 
 ground itself. The air, too, I can picture to my- 
 self men without water and pure air, because 
 other men assume to themselves the right to 
 monopolize these, which are essentially necessary
 
 I 50 A RUN THROUGH RUSSIA. 
 
 to all. Public security is likewise a necessary 
 element ; food and dress in workmen are similar 
 means in production ; this last is even recognized 
 by some economists. Education, the knowledge 
 of language which creates the possibility of reason- 
 able work, is likewise an agent. 1 could fill a 
 volume by enumerating such conditions unnoticed 
 by science. Why, then, are three only to be 
 chosen and laid as a foundation for the science of 
 political economy ? Why are the rays of the sun, 
 rain, food, knowledge, not equally recognized ? 
 Why only the land ? the instruments of labor and 
 the labor itself ? Simply because the right of 
 men to enjoy the rays of the sun, rain, food, speech 
 and audience are challenged only on rare occa- 
 sions ; but the use of land, and of the instruments 
 of labor are constantly challenged in society. 
 
 "This is the true foundation for it; and the 
 division of these agents for production into three, 
 is quite arbitrary and is not involved in the 
 nature of things. But it may be, perhaps, urged 
 that this division is so suitable to man, that 
 wherever economical relationships form them- 
 selves, there these appear at once and alone." 
 
 Of Anna Karenina, the best criticism is that of 
 our own novelist, W. D. Howells, whose pure 
 and beautiful story, " A Hazard of New For- 
 tunes," is the nearest approach we have yet had 
 to the long-expected American novel, if, in fact, 
 it is not the novel itself. It takes a soul to find
 
 WRITTEN WORK'S OF COUNT TOI.STOI. I 5 L 
 
 a soul ; it is only a poet who can rightly inter- 
 pret a poet, and the judgment of one true novel- 
 ist upon another, is worth our careful consider- 
 ation. 
 
 "As you read on you say not, 'This is like 
 life,' but, ' This is life.' It has not only the com- 
 plexion, the very hue of life, but its movement, 
 its advances, its strange pauses, its seeming re- 
 version to former conditions, and its perpetual 
 change, its apparent isolations, its essential solid- 
 arity. It is a world and you live in it while you 
 read and long afterward ; but, at no step have 
 you been betrayed, not because your guide has 
 warned or exhorted you, but, because he has been 
 true, and has shown you all things as they are." 
 
 Tolstoi's " War and Peace " is, perhaps, the 
 best known and most read of all his stories, and 
 leaves upon the mind the most vivid impression 
 of the awful horror of war. 
 
 And now, after his moral and religious writ- 
 ings, after thrilling us with the radical simplicity 
 of " My Confession," and " My Religion," we 
 find Count Tolstoi returning in his dreadful 
 " Kreutzer Sonata " to the " filth of Zola and the 
 atmosphere of Paris and a moral morgue." 
 
 That it is a great mistake on his part, we must 
 all admit. It does not do to defend our heroes 
 when our heroes falter. But, at least, this much 
 must be said, that the motive of the story was, 
 undoubtedly, to work a reform in the abuse of
 
 152 A RUN THROUGH RUSSIA. 
 
 the social glamour thrown around the modern 
 marriage market, and not wilfully to revel in the 
 filth of such a subject. 
 
 Tolstoi is a Russian with French modes of 
 expression, and radical and fanatical views of the 
 social life of to-day ; and the sound coming from 
 the story has the discordant note of a barbaric 
 Chinese gong struck by a madman but 'then, 
 everything depends upon the way one strikes a 
 gong !
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 THE DAY AT PRINCE OUROUZEFp'S. 
 
 THE farm or plantation of Count Tolstoi's 
 friend was a typical Russian farm-house, with 
 hay-mows, thatched hamlets, muddy roads, thick 
 bushes, and shortened trees as the environment 
 of the master's house. 
 
 A brick church and chapel, or school-house, 
 built of plain burnt red brick, with the usual 
 Muscovitish tower and belfry, indicated the pious 
 zeal of this stalwart lay member of the Greek 
 Church, who was as loyal to his faith as we found 
 our friend Lieutenant-General Kireff had been. 
 He, too, had been to the Bonn Conference upon 
 Christian Unity, and had met the late Bishop 
 Young of Florida, who had also been a delegate 
 from America. 
 
 Prince Ourouzeff conducted his guests through 
 his library, showing them his most valuable books, 
 his Hebrew Scriptures and manuscripts, keeping 
 up a pleasant talk in broken English, which Count 
 Tolstoi amplified in French and German, adding 
 shades of expression with a pleasant run of banter 
 as to the exact meaning of what was intended. 
 
 "Ah," said Prince Ouron^ff. '"hen Count
 
 154 A KUN THROUGH RUSSIA. 
 
 Tolstoi had taken the other two to a distant cor- 
 ner of the library to inspect some valuable work 
 there, " Ah ! if Leo would only keep to his novels 
 and let his reforms alone, how much better it 
 would be " ; a sentiment to which the Count 
 subsequently replied as follows : " Dear Ourouzeff, 
 he is so good and so pious ! " 
 
 While showing us his Hebrew volumes, Count 
 Tolstoi whispered, " You do not know how pious 
 Ourouzeff is ! He gets up every morning at three 
 o'clock to read the prophets in Hebrew and the 
 Epistles in Greek " a custom which our dear old 
 host seemed to think must be a common one with 
 the American clergy. 
 
 While looking over the books we came across a 
 copy of Derzhavin's works a Russian poet, who 
 lived 1763-1816, and who was a soldier of nine- 
 teen on guard at the Winter Palace, when Catha- 
 rine ascended the throne. 
 
 " I think I can quote you several stanzas in 
 English of Derzhavin's Hymn on God " said one 
 of the party, " my mother taught it to me when a 
 boy." Thereupon the memory lasted long enough 
 to repeat the following verses from Sir John 
 Bowring's translation to these listening Rus- 
 sians : 
 
 O Thou eternal One ! whose presence bright 
 All space doth occupy, all motion guide, 
 Unchang'd through time's all-devastating flight; 
 Thou only God ! there is no God beside !
 
 THE DAY AT PRINCE O URO UZEFF 'S. 155 
 
 Being above all beings ! Mighty One ! 
 Whom none can comprehend and none explore; 
 Who fill'st existence with Thyself alone : 
 Embracing all, supporting, ruling o'er, 
 Being whom we call God and know no more ! 
 
 In its sublime research, philosophy 
 
 May measure out the ocean deep may count 
 
 The sands or the sun's rays but God ! for Thee 
 
 There is no weight nor measure : none can mount 
 
 Up to Thy mysteries ; reason's brightest spark, 
 
 Though kindled by Thy light, in vain would try 
 
 To trace Thy counsels, infinite and dark ; 
 
 And thought is lost ere thought can soar so high, 
 
 Even like past moments in eternity. 
 
 A million torches lighted by Thy hand 
 Wander unwearied through the blue abyss: 
 They own Thy power, accomplish Thy command : 
 All gay with life, all eloquent with bliss, 
 What shall we call them! Piles of crystal light 
 A glorious company of golden streams 
 Lamps of celestial ether, burning bright 
 Suns lighting systems with their joyous beams ? 
 But Thou to these art as the moon to night. 
 
 Yes ! as a drop of water in the sea, 
 
 All this magnificence in Thee is lost ; 
 
 What are ten thousand worlds compared to Thee ? 
 
 And what am /, then ? Heaven's unnumber'd host, 
 
 Though multiplied by myriads, and array'd 
 
 In all the glory of sublimest thought, 
 
 Is but an atom in the balance weighed, 
 
 Against Thy greatness is a cipher brought 
 
 Against infinity ! What am I then ? Naught ! 
 
 Naught ! But the effluence of Thy light divine, 
 Pervading worlds, hath reached my bosom too ;
 
 156 A KUN THROUGH RUSSIA. 
 
 Yes ! in my spirit doth Thy spirit shine, 
 As shines the sunbeam in a drop of dew. 
 Naught ! but I live and on Hope's pinions fly 
 Eager towards Thy presence ; for in Thee 
 I live, and breathe, and dwell; aspiring high, 
 Even to the throne of Thy divinity. 
 I am, O God ! and surely Thou must be ! 
 
 Thou art ! directing, guiding all. Thou art ! 
 
 Direct my understanding then to Thee ; 
 
 Control my spirit, guide my wandering heart: 
 
 Though but an atom 'midst immensity, 
 
 Still I am something, fashioned by Thy hand ! 
 
 I hold a middle rank 'twixt heaven and earth, 
 
 On the last verge of mortal being stand, 
 
 Close to the realms where angels have their birth, 
 
 Just on the boundaries of the spirit-land ! 
 
 The chain of being is complete in me ; 
 In me is matter's last gradation lost, 
 And the next step is spirit deity! 
 I can command the lightning, and am dust ! 
 A monarch, and a slave! a worm, a god ! 
 Whence came I here, and how ? so marvellously 
 Constructed and conceiv'd ! unknown ? this clod 
 Lives surely through some higher energy? 
 For from itself alone it could not be ! 
 
 These verses seemed to make a deep impression 
 upon the two Russians, and they spoke in their 
 own tongue some words of appreciation of the 
 English measure of verse. 
 
 The nai've simplicity of our host was well illus- 
 trated by the following conversation : " My 
 friend," said Prince Ourouzeff, " ze standing army
 
 THE DA Y A T PKINCE OUROUZEFl-'S. I 57 
 
 of ze United State is only twenty-five thousand 
 troop ! Is zere not ze greatest danger that with 
 only twenty-five thousand troop ze United State 
 will be invaded by the Empire of Brazil ? " When 
 all fear of this impending danger was removed 
 the Prince resumed : " But with only twenty- 
 five thousand troop in ze United State is there 
 not great danger that ze President Harrison will 
 seize ze rein of government and become Dictator 
 like Boulanger ? " 
 
 Again the fears of our pious friend were put to 
 rest, and he took Lord Byron and Mr. Thackeray 
 into another portion of the house, and Count 
 Tolstoi and the writer were left together to take 
 a walk about the plantation. 
 
 In thinking in advance of this interview with 
 Tolstoi, the following apparently original and 
 spontaneous questions had been committed to 
 memory : 
 
 April nth Interview with Tolstoi. 
 
 1. What hope is there for social reform among 
 the Russian nobles ? 
 
 2. How many are there like-minded with Count 
 Tolstoi ? 
 
 3. What hope is there for progress in the 
 Greek Church ? 
 
 4. Do the monks exert a good influence ? 
 
 5. Would not an order 'of preachers among the 
 Greek Church do a great deal of good ? 
 
 6. What is the next step of reform in Russia?
 
 158 A RUN THROUGH RUSSIA. 
 
 7. Is Nihilism on the wane ? 
 
 8. Is the existing government likely to take 
 any steps towards constitutional ruling ? 
 
 9. Are the teachings of Henry George pro- 
 hibited in Russia ? 
 
 But not one of these questions was asked, for the 
 Count led the way by asking all sorts of questions 
 about America, and it seemed easier and wiser to 
 follow his train of thought than to insert abrupt 
 and independent questions which might not be 
 familiar to him. 
 
 His daughter had asked us to take to him a 
 large bundle of mail in the shape of letters and 
 papers, and as we deposited them in his room, my 
 eye fell on two American newspapers, the Boston 
 Index and a Shaker paper from Oregon, on the 
 Pacific coast. 
 
 On the journey to St. Petersburg, Stead's very 
 interesting book " Truth About Russia," had been 
 very carefully read, and the interview at Yasnaia 
 Poliana had been most particularly studied. 
 The very questions which were upon our 
 minds had been asked by his English visitor 
 and had been answered by the Russian novelist, 
 and since these replies of Count Tolstoi are so 
 interestingly told, the story shall be given in Mr. 
 Stead's own words : 
 
 "Of our religious sects he was naturally most 
 attracted by the Quakers. He had the autobi- 
 ography of George Fox on his book-shelf, but he
 
 THE DA Y A T PRINCE OUROUZEEl-'S. \ 59 
 
 had not yet read it. He heartily approved of the 
 simplicity of the Society of Friends, of the 
 modesty of their attire, and their use of " thee " 
 and "thou." He was, of course, entirely in ac- 
 cord with their principle of non-resistance. Only 
 in one thing the Friends came short of the Tol- 
 stoian ideal : they recognized the right of 
 property. 
 
 " Count Tolstoi was reluctant to speak of con- 
 troversial questions. He said, ' Christ in His 
 last prayer prayed that all His followers might be 
 one ; hence, 1 always endeavor to discover on 
 what points 1 can agree with any who follow 
 Christ.' It was this craving after the true Cath- 
 olicity the essential unity of the Christian 
 Brotherhood that led him to welcome so heartily 
 a little preface I had written some years ago to 
 ' Centres of Spiritual Activity,' in which 1 said 
 that. ' the Ideal Christian Church at the present 
 time ought to include many professing atheists 
 among its members, for men's definitions of them- 
 selves are not free from blunder and self-decep- 
 tion, and many professing atheists are unconscious 
 Christians.' 
 
 "Always endeavor to find out points of agree- 
 ment rather than those of antagonism ; find out 
 where you sympathi/e rather than where you are 
 in antipathy, such is the spirit of Christ." Hence, 
 Count Tolstoi is reluctant to express opinions 
 upon controverted points, upon the authority of
 
 l6o A RUN THROUGH RUSSIA. 
 
 the Scripture, upon miracles, and upon the famil- 
 iar moot questions which are the battle-ground of 
 fierce polemical debates. Speaking of human 
 conceptions of God, he said : " What does it 
 matter how we approach Him ? I approach 
 Him by the metaphysical road. Yours is the 
 road of the peasant ; it suits well the simplicity of 
 the child. It is impossible to me. But why dis- 
 pute ? All these roads are like the spokes of a 
 wheel. They start from different points in the 
 circumference, but they all meet in the centre.' 
 
 But there are two points which Count Tolstoi 
 would not regard as immaterial. The one is the 
 conception of sin and its punishment, the other 
 the Divinity of Christ. Sin, according to him, 
 consists in conscious failure to abide in the will 
 of God. All violence is sin. All participation in 
 the fruit of violence is sin, for the receiver is as 
 bad as the thief. If the Count takes money for 
 any of his books, and that money has been stolen, 
 he becomes a sinner equally with the thief. As 
 the distribution of the goods of this life is based 
 upon violence, we live in sin, encompassed by it 
 constantly. We must try to live out of it by obey- 
 ing Christ's laws. But sin is negative purely, and 
 in reality is non-existent. Only the good is. The 
 orthodox notion of Adam's fall and human de- 
 pravity Count Tolstoi utterly repudiates. Still, 
 he admits that in the soul, which is of God, there 
 are imperfect elements, diabolic elements, which
 
 THE DAY AT PRINCE OUROUZEWS. 1 6 1 
 
 lead it to choose evil rather than the truth. In 
 that choice lies the only judgment. The truth 
 would have made man free. He chooses falsehood, 
 and he is judged, for he remains in bondage, and 
 does not enter into the freedom which he might 
 otherwise have possessed. As for the idea of 
 other punishment for sin, that, he declared, was 
 contrary to reason. " Punishment and God are 
 antagonistic terms. God is love. The whole 
 idea of future punishment is radically false, and 
 contrary to the idea of God." I asked him how 
 he explained the parable of Lazarus. " Oh," said 
 he, promptly, "that is all wrong. It was spoken 
 in order to rebuke the social system which places 
 a yawning chasm between the rich and the poor, 
 and to satirize the idea very prevalent among the 
 rich, that the poor are their natural servants, 
 both in this world and the next. The moment 
 Dives sees Lazarus he expects that he will do his 
 bidding. The framework of the satire signifies 
 nothing. Christ constantly took the old Jewish 
 ideas and worked them into His parables. The 
 idea of judgment was archaic, it was not Christ's. 
 As for the vision in the Apoclaypse, that was of 
 no authority." " But," said I, "what did Christ 
 mean when He said, ' Depart, ye cursed ' ? " 
 
 It was a very hot day ; we had had a long walk, 
 and Count Tolstoi changed the subject abruptly 
 by saying he was too tired to talk any longer. 
 
 The other point upon which Count Tolstoi in-
 
 l62 A RUN THROUGH RUSSIA. 
 
 sists is the human character of Christ. Christ's 
 Divinity he recognizes in a sense. Christ spoke 
 the will of God, and he was God, for all of us 
 have what the peasants call a spark of God in the 
 breast. The great object of all religion is to de- 
 velop that spark, to make man more divine. But 
 Christ was only a man like other men. The story 
 of His birth and of His resurrection seems to 
 Count Tolstoi purely mythical. He died, and He 
 did not rise again. He lived, He sinned, He 
 suffered, and He was crucified, rejoicing in His 
 ability to forgive in death those who injured Him. 
 Of the Atonement, he says it has had its day, 
 like torture, and disappears before the truer con- 
 ception of the nature of God. 
 
 It is commonly believed that Count Tolstoi 
 denies the immortality of the soul. This is a 
 mistake. It is to him the best beloved of all his 
 speculative doctrines. We had many long talks 
 about the soul and the future life. 
 
 " Until two years ago," said he, " I thought but 
 little of the immortality of the soul. Now I think 
 of it constantly, and I ever think of it more and 
 more." 
 
 He believes in the free existence as well as the 
 immortality of the soul. Each soul had always 
 existed and would always exist. Nor would he 
 admit that the soul would not preserve its indi- 
 viduality. 
 
 " What is this ego ? What is the soul ? The
 
 THE DAY AT PRINCE OUKOUZ.EF1-' S. 163 
 
 consciousness of being? It is not identity of 
 matter. It is not identity of thought. It is like a 
 string on which a continuous series of conscious- 
 nesses are strung. It is independent of the 
 body. It will always be I. Life is a cone, cut at 
 the apex by birth, and at the base by death. 
 Existence is the continual broadening of the soul 
 in love, which is the only true life, which is (iod." 
 
 "But," I objected, " there are souls which in 
 life do not broaden, but shrink. What of them ? " 
 
 " I cannot say," he replied, " for I know not 
 what mysterious changes may take place at the 
 moment of death, transforming a loveless nature. 
 Or it is possible it may begin again a new exist- 
 ence on new conditions, in which it may have a 
 new chance to fulfil the law of its being which is 
 love which is God. It is with difficulty," he con- 
 tinued, " that I can tear my thoughts away from 
 the next world. I regret every moment in which 
 I do not feel that I am dying. If men could fully 
 realize the truth and nature of the next world, 
 there would be no keeping them in this. I long 
 to depart. But this is wrong I should be patient, 
 and wait. Yet the thought of death is growing so 
 increasingly pleasant that I need to struggle 
 against the fascination of its approach." 
 
 It is interesting to be able to read Count Tol- 
 stoi's latest and most matured convictions on 
 this subject, for hitherto most people have be- 
 lieved that he denied the immortality of the soul.
 
 164 A RUN THROUGH RUSSIA. 
 
 M. Anatole Leroy-Beaulieu, in his interesting study 
 of Count Tolstoi and religion in Russia,* says : 
 " Tolstoi denies categorically the future life. 
 In becoming Christian, he remains Nihilist. He 
 admits for man no other immortality than that of 
 humanity. According to him, true Christianity 
 knows no other. Jesus, he says, always taught 
 the renunciation of personal life ; and the doctrine 
 of individual immortality, which affirms the per- 
 manence of personality, is in opposition to that 
 teaching. The survival of the soul after death is 
 like the resurrection of the body only a supersti- 
 tion opposed to the spirit of the Gospel." This 
 may have been Count Tolstoi's opinion atone time. 
 It is not his opinion now. " I will always be I," he 
 declares ; and the doctrine of personal immortal- 
 ity has assumed an importance in his conception 
 of life which is utterly at variance with the doc- 
 trines imputed to him on the strength of passages 
 in his earlier writings. This change of front in 
 this important Christian doctrine more than 
 ever confirmed me in the opinion that Count 
 Tolstoi's religious ideas are still in the making. 
 This is to a certain extent admitted, even by 
 himself, nor is it probable that a thinker, who in 
 less than ten years has traversed the immense ex- 
 panse which separates absolute atheism, from a 
 Christianity of the very literal description out- 
 
 * Revue des Deux Mondes, Sept. 15, 1888. p. 434.
 
 THE DAY AT l^RINCE OUXOUZEWS. 165 
 
 lined in " My Religion,'' can have already arrived 
 at finality. 
 
 Such is Mr. Stead's description of a portion of 
 his interview with Tolstoi. It seems very strange, 
 after reading of this remarkable man and having 
 been a student of his writings, to find one's-self 
 in his presence and to realize the different layers- 
 of experience which were represented by this 
 remarkable life. As one looked into his face one 
 could see, according to the story as he himself 
 has given it in his Confession, the far-off student, 
 the dashing soldier of the Crimea, the society 
 man of St. Petersburg, the brilliant novelist of 
 later days, and last of all the arousing and awak- 
 ened reformer of Russia, bearing his testimony to 
 the truth and righteousness of God, in the radical 
 and heroic manner of the old Jewish prophets. 
 
 The words of the Master came into the writer's 
 mind as together we walked over that far-off 
 plantation : 
 
 " And as they departed, Jesus began to say 
 unto the multitudes concerning John: What went 
 ye out into the wilderness to see ? A reed shaken 
 with the wind ? 
 
 "But what went ye out for to see? A man 
 clothed in soft raiment? Behold, they that wear 
 soft clothing are in king's houses. 
 
 " But what went ye out for to see ? A prophet ? 
 yea, I say unto you and more than a prophet. . 
 
 " And from the days of John the Baptist until
 
 1 66 A RUN THROUGH RUSSIA. 
 
 now the Kingdom of Heaven suffereth violence 
 and the violent take it by force. . . . 
 
 " He that hath ears to hear, let him hear." 
 
 The man seemed to be one part Quaker, like 
 George Fox, one part like a bit of Emerson and 
 another part a bit of the fanaticism of John Brown. 
 Again and again during this walk and conversa- 
 tion, one could not but be struck with the force 
 and power of the directly Christian literalism of 
 the man, going back as he did through creeds 
 and councils and the words of doctors and of men 
 to the direct commands of the Master. 
 
 " Why do you not organize, Count Tolstoi, and 
 gather your disciples around you?" was one of 
 the questions asked on this occasion. " Ah," 
 replied the Count, " life is different from organi- 
 zation. Christ did not organize, he lived ; let me 
 live, but let those that come after me organize. 
 It is the life which tells." One thought of the dis- 
 ciples in the upper room at Jerusalem, who 
 organized after the disappearance of the Master. 
 One thought of Mohamed's followers organizing 
 after their great leader had died. One thought of 
 the Lutherans in Germany organizing their church 
 after the death of their great leader ; and it was 
 borne home upon the mind that in this matter 
 this man was both profound and wise. 
 
 " But," again was asked, " if you antagonize the 
 force of the government of Russia, in the way 
 that your friends fear, they may send you to
 
 THE DAY AT PRINCE OUROUZEFF'S. 1 67 
 
 Siberia." " Yes," he answered as he played with 
 a small, rough walking stick in his hand, " I may 
 go to Siberia. I will probably be sent there at 
 last and will die there, but it will be well ; I will 
 be happy to go." I looked at the man who 
 uttered this sentiment. He was dressed in a 
 moujik smock-frock with a waist-band as a girdle. 
 He had on a woolen shirt whose collar was broad 
 and ample. The grey hair of his head was long 
 and silvery, and his iron-grey beard and mous- 
 tache was silk-like and smooth, covering a ten- 
 der, delicate and sensitive mouth. " Is Christ, 
 indeed, your Master," I asked, "and do you think 
 of Him as divine?" "Ah," he answered, "Christ 
 brings me to the light. He may be (iod, he 
 may be man, he may be both, but I see God 
 only through him." " Have you published 
 your principles to the world in the form of 
 a creed?" was asked again. "No, no," he 
 replied, "it is mine to have a few simple princi- 
 ples ; so that the life tells. All the rest is unim- 
 portant." " What is it then," was asked, " which 
 will make a life tell ? " " Purity, humility, truth 
 these are the things which always make a man's 
 life tell. I have not much to bequeath to the 
 world," he added. " The banner of my life is 
 self-abnegation." " Have you no faith in the 
 churches as you know them ? " was the next 
 question. " Not as I see them," he answered. 
 *' The earth is the temple of the Lord and the
 
 l68 A RUN THROUGH RUSSIA. 
 
 churches hide themselves in an obscure corner of 
 it. The Christianity of this nineteenth century," 
 he added, " is a sham one. We must go back to 
 the literal Christianity if we would indeed make 
 the Gospel of Jesus a power." " What is it, 
 then," was asked, " which corrupts men ? " 
 " War, society, government," was the prompt 
 reply, " it is these which corrupt men. To 
 bring divine power again to man we must go back 
 and back to the words and life of Christ." 
 
 "Do you believe, then," the writer asked, "in 
 the progressive revelation of God to man ?" 
 "Certainly I do," was the reply. "If we occupy 
 our minds with nonsense, however, God will 
 never reveal himself to us. There will be no 
 room for Him in our lives, but if we seek to do 
 His will and live truly, it will not be a difficult 
 thing to find God in our lives. The trouble is 
 that too many of us are occupied with our non- 
 sense and God can do nothing with a nature 
 which occupies itself with nonsense.' 1 " Is there 
 no hope then," was the next question, " for the 
 Greek Church?" "None whatever," he replied, 
 " though my dear friend Prince Ourouzeff would 
 be shocked at my saying so. There is no hope for 
 the Greek Church. It is a corpse ; it is dead and 
 nothing living can ever come from its tomb." 
 " Ah, you must not think thus of all Christianity," 
 the writer said. " Come and visit us in America 
 and we will show you a church life that is hot
 
 THE DAY AT PRINCE OUROUZEFF'S. 169 
 
 dead." " You are most kind," was the reply, 
 " and on some accounts I should like to go, but I 
 Cannot now go to America. More must come 
 from my life and I must stay just where I am. 
 Man must not dissipate his life by travelling. If 
 his life is to be of any value he must live it out 
 and I must live my life out here." 
 
 At this point of the interview it seemed best to 
 drop the character of inquirer and answer the 
 many questions which seemed uppermost in this 
 man's mind Was our nation becoming frivolous ? 
 Were the churches indeed alive? Had the reign 
 of dogma passed ? Were the teachers and doc- 
 tors of the Church going directly to the foundation 
 of all life in the words of Jesus ? Were the 
 Shakers much thought of in America? Were 
 they not a harmless, innocent sect? Were the 
 Unitarians getting further from the word of 
 Christ or were they growing more into the spirit 
 of the Master ? Was it possible for a man to be 
 truly liberal and yet be a member of the Anglican 
 Communion? Someone had sent him a volume 
 of the Rev. Phillips Brooks' sermons. Had I 
 ever heard the man, and did I know him? Some- 
 one else had sent him a book by a clergyman 
 in New York. It was called " The Right and 
 Wrong Uses of the Bible." Did I know the 
 author ? Were the teachings of Henry George 
 thought well of in America ? He himself thought 
 that George was an original and profound thinker,
 
 I/O A RUN THROUGH RUSSIA. 
 
 and seemed pleased when I told him that we had 
 -been boys together in my father's Sunday-school. 
 What kind of a place was Massachusetts ? Would 
 they not think him very strange if he were to 
 visit America ? He was afraid they might over- 
 power him with kindness ; he had received so 
 many kind letters from America ten letters from 
 America coming in the mail to one from England. 
 American authors he was most fond of, markedly 
 so of Thoreau, Emerson, Theodore Parker, Bry- 
 ant and Whittier. There was great danger 
 before the American people in the rapid growth 
 of luxury and wealth. Did we think the Republic 
 would avoid the mistakes of the republics of the 
 past ? 
 
 .At this point of the interview Prince Ourouzeff, 
 with hio two companions, met us and in the dark 
 of the growing evening we entered the house 
 together and partook of a hospitable cup of tea 
 from the brass samovar upon the dining-room 
 table. As we passed a piano our host said : 
 " Play a waltz for the gentlemen, Leo ; show 
 them how we amuse ourselves together," and the 
 music of the crackling fire upon the hearth kept 
 time to the bright waltz which Count Tolstoi 
 played for us, adding, " It is a waltz of my own 
 composition. I composed it years ago when I 
 was a society man in St. Petersburg." 
 
 By this time the sledges had come for us at the 
 door. Entering them we were kindly wrapped
 
 THE DAY AT PRINCE OUROUZEFF'S. 1 7 1 
 
 up by our Russian friends and in the darkness of 
 that April evening we waved our farewell to the 
 Russian prophet and his pious host, and the 
 sleigh-bells jingled merrily as we struck the road 
 leading into Troitsa. 
 
 At Tavistock in Cornwall, on the i4th of June, 
 1889, the Honorable William E. Gladstone closed 
 an address before the electors with the following 
 sentence, which sentence lingers in my mind as 
 an emphatic realization of the influence through- 
 out the world to-day of Count Leo Tolstoi : 
 
 " For character is moral power and moral 
 power it is which by the sure and unshaken 
 ordinances of God, working in ways perhaps un- 
 known to us but known and fixed by Him and at 
 such times and in such manner as He shall 
 choose ; moral power it is which eventually 
 triumphs over every adversary and shapes the 
 fortunes of nations and determines the great 
 destinies of mankind."
 
 CHAPTER XI. 
 
 RUSSIAN NATIONAL LITERATURE. 
 
 IN the treatment of Russian national literature 
 we are dealing with a force that has been a liv- 
 ing and continuous fact for nearly a century and 
 a half ; and which has yet at least one great and 
 commanding representative among the living 
 writers of the empire. 
 
 Among the Russians, literature is no dilettante 
 matter, but an affair as earnest as life, as solemn 
 as death, and as real as nature. It constitutes no 
 mere side-play, no idle resources of amusement ; 
 With the educated classes, it is a fountain of 
 inspiration that acts as a controlling force in life 
 and is pursued with an intensity amounting to a 
 veritable passion. 
 
 The spiritual energy of the Russian, with all 
 the higher forces of his life, having been effect- 
 ually excluded from the spheres of church and 
 politics, is concentrated and intensified in the 
 limited area of literary activity. 
 
 This is why the fire of the literary instinct 
 burns with such peculiar brightness in Russia 
 and shines afar with such undimmed and penetra- 
 ting radiance : because it expresses the loftiest
 
 RUSSfAW NA TIONAL LITER A TURK. 1 73 
 
 aspirations, the deepest purpose and the concen- 
 trated earnestness of a vast and masterful race. 
 Energies which in other progressive nations are 
 diffused over wide and varied fields, are herft 
 gathered up into one irresistible volume of pas- 
 sion, of thought, of love, of hate, of thwarted 
 but determined purpose. In Russia, therefore, 
 literature is the solitary medium by which the 
 living current of divine prophetic fire and su- 
 pernal inspiration reaches the national heart. It 
 is the lever of progress, the engine by which 
 heaven's forces are moving. For this reason, 
 also, Russian literature has a national aspect and 
 significance, such as no other but the Hebrew 
 possesses. 
 
 The creator of Russian national literature was 
 Michael Lomonosof. Out of the darkling chaos 
 of primitive bilini, chronicles and ballad poetry, 
 there sprang at his creative word a light for 
 Russia whose growing splendor has been the 
 masterlight of all her seeing ever since. He not 
 only inaugurated the national literary era, but 
 was obliged to create the literary language of his 
 people ; and his services in shaping the form of 
 the Russian language of to-day were greater than 
 those of Chaucer in relation to the English 
 tongue. 
 
 The life-story of Mikhail Vasilyevitch Lom- 
 onosof from his birth in 1711 to his death in 176.5 
 reads like the veriest romance. His early life as
 
 174 A KUN THROUGH RUSSIA. 
 
 the son of a fisherman and serf, roving about 
 over the White Sea and the Arctic Ocean in the 
 hard hunt for food ; his enterprise in learning to 
 read and write from the village priest ; his steal- 
 ing away from home to Moscow with a wagon 
 train of frozen fish, in order to learn Latin ; the 
 favorable accident which placed him in a cloister 
 school ; his astonishing progress and subsequent 
 brilliant career at Kieff and St. Petersburg ; his 
 travels and studies in Germany ; his secret mar- 
 riage and threatened imprisonment for debt, fol- 
 lowed by his escape at the same time from the 
 country and from a Prussian recruiting officer 
 who had him entered in the cavalry service 
 after getting him drunk ; his marvellous success 
 at St. Petersburg in science, in rhetoric, in poetry 
 and in mosaic art these facts bespeak the life 
 of low-born genius and constitute a tale of adven- 
 ture and achievement such as cannot be found in 
 the life of any scholar, even of the Renaissance. 
 Lomonosof left no monumental work of literary 
 art behind him. In the province of literature he 
 was simply a pioneer, the herald of a brighter 
 day. He was a voluminous writer in the field of 
 physical science, and devoted himself to many 
 branches of it ; proving himself everywhere a 
 man of the most varied and profound learning. 
 But his great work consisted in settling his native 
 tongue as a vehicle for literary expression and in 
 the new impulse which he gave to education ad 
 to the intellectual life of Russia.
 
 A'VSS/AIV NA T1ONAL LITERA TURE. \ ?$ 
 
 Through Derzhavin and Zhukofski there is an 
 unbroken succession of literary mediocrity from 
 Lonionosof to Pushkin. It had been one of the 
 distinguishing merits of Lomonosof's well-nigh 
 universal genius that he was one of the noble 
 patriots, almost fanatical in their aims, whose 
 earnest toil intensified if it did not awake the 
 sentiment of nationality in Russia. Yet all the 
 poems of Lomonosof constituting his distinct- 
 ively literary work were formed upon foreign 
 models. Indeed it is characteristic of Russian 
 genius that it lacks originality in the matter of 
 literary form. And with the immediate suc- 
 cessors of Lomonosof literary effort was a sickly 
 imitation of the classicism after which his poetry 
 was modelled, with the addition of a dilettante. 
 romanticism under the lead of Zhukofski. 
 
 The very list of the names of the writers and 
 court-poets under Catherine II. is tedious and dull, 
 like an interminable procession of black hearses 
 with empty coffins in them. 
 
 Trediakofski, Sumarokoff, Kniazhnin, Kheras- 
 koff, Bogdanovitch Khemnitzer, Viezin, Radist- 
 cheff, Novikoff a dreary array of bombastic and 
 artificial poetasters and wordmongers, with only 
 here and there a momentary flash of spirited writ- 
 ing until, passing by the Alexandrine period of 
 Kavanizin and Zhukofski, we reach in the reign of 
 Nicholas, the great and honored name of Pushkin. 
 
 Alexander Sergeyvitch Pushkin was born at
 
 \J6 A RUN THROUGH RUSSIA. 
 
 Moscow in 1799, and perished in a duel at the 
 early age of thirty-eight. With the opening of, 
 his brilliant career, Russian literature, passing out 
 of its youthful stage attained its full majority, and 
 entered upon its rightful heritage of independent 
 freedom and power. It no longer bends beneath 
 the yoke of the professional moralist nor serves, 
 as a medium for the inculcation of patriotism as 
 blind obedience to the constituted order. It exists 
 in its own right, standing erect and powerful, 
 voicing and employing all the wild and native 
 freedom of the human soul. Pushkin was the first 
 among the memorable writers of Russia to grow 
 restive under the political situation and to bid 
 defiance to the prevailing despotism. For his keen 
 satirical treatment of the ruling persons and con- 
 ditions, including the idiotic censorship and the. 
 hated rule of the police, and for his bold defence 
 of Shelley's atheism contained in an intercepted 
 letter, he was twice exiled by the government > 
 first to Southern Russia, whence he obtained leave 
 to visit the Caucasus, there to fall under the 
 influence of Byron's poetry ; and lastly to his 
 private estate For six years, where he escaped that, 
 inevitable participationjn the revolt of 1825 which 
 would have been visited with swift and certain 
 execution. 
 
 Pushkin is emphatically the singer of the Slavic 
 race. Yet even so patriotic a critic as Ivan 
 Panim has denied him the rank of a true poet.
 
 RUSSIAN NATIONAL LITERATURE. 177 
 
 because he has no great controlling idea giving 
 force and harmonious unity to his work, but sings 
 merely under the eoullient impulse of a skill which 
 compels him to utterance. As a versifier he has 
 no peer ; but his genius is wholly receptive and 
 artistic, never poetic or creative. He gives pleas- 
 ure always but never imparts inspiration. He is 
 a worshipper of beauty for beauty's own sake and 
 a devotee of art for the sake of art. For this 
 reason the highest, the imperishable beauty 
 escaped him and the noblest art, the art that is 
 supreme because it is unconscious lost in the 
 vision of the ideal was beyond his grasp. This 
 aspect of his work was characteristic of the man, 
 and comports with the character of his mind and 
 life. His entire life, except the brief period of 
 his exile, was absorbed in the gay and voluptuous 
 high life of the capital. Spoiled in his youthful 
 education by French ideals and by a worldly 
 environment that had no redeeming feature, he 
 drowned his soul in the whirlpool of social vani- 
 ties and indulged even to his last days in the 
 silliest refinements of foppery. It is not wonder- 
 ful, therefore, that in his works he neither 
 addresses the heart nor speaks from the heart. 
 
 Occasionally in his lyrical pieces, where Push- 
 kin's art is always at its best, and toward the very 
 end of his brief life, in his finest prose work, 
 n The Captain's Daughter," he gives evidence of 
 a strength and depth of soul that was capable- of
 
 1/8 A RUN THROUGH RUSSIA. 
 
 higher achievements. His " Hymn to Force" is 
 one of the noblest and most beautiful of his lyrical 
 efforts, but there is nothing distinctively Russian 
 or strikingly original in it. It certainly reaches 
 the highest region of poetic realization and sweeps 
 the farthest horizon of scientific fact with infinite 
 freedom and power ; but so far as regards its form 
 and spirit it might have been written by Tenny- 
 son or Goethe or by our own Realf, whose 
 unhonored genius soared as high as any that have 
 ever sung. 
 
 Very different is the ringing note of the sing- 
 ing soul in his noblest poem, "The Prophet." 
 
 ''Tormented by the thirst for the Spirit 
 I was dragging myself in a sombre desert 
 And a six-winged seraph appeared 
 Unto me on the parting of the roads. 
 With fingers as light as a dream 
 
 He touched mine eyes ; 
 And mine eyes opened wide, 
 Like unto the eyes of a frightened eagle. 
 
 He touched mine ears, 
 And they filled with din and singing. 
 And I heard the tremblings of the heavens, 
 And the flight of the angels' wings, 
 And the creeping of the polyps in the sea, 
 And the growth of the vine in the valley. 
 
 And he took hold of my lips 
 And out he tore my sinful tongue 
 With its empty and false speech. 
 And the fang of the wise serpent 
 Between my terrified lips he placed 
 
 With bloody hand.
 
 RUSSIAN NA T1ONAL LITER A TURK. I 79 
 
 And ope he cut my breast with a sword, 
 
 And out he took my trembling heart, 
 
 And a coal blazing with flame 
 
 He shoved into the open breast. 
 
 Like a corpse I lay in the desert; 
 
 And the voice of the Lord called unto me : 
 
 Arise, O prophet and guide, and listen 
 
 Be thou filled with my will, 
 
 And going over land and sea, 
 
 Burn with the Word in the hearts of men." 
 
 Here the form and flavor are distinctly Rus- 
 sian. In this generation such a poem could not 
 have been written out of Russia nor by other than 
 a Russian hand. Elsewhere in this mammon- 
 stricken time, there is no such " thirst for the 
 Spirit " in the souls of men as drives them into 
 desert solitude to be visited by six-winged angels 
 of God ; the heavens do not tremble audibly in 
 the ears of men in other lands, nor does the vine 
 grow an audible message in any but Russian vales ; 
 much less in this cant-cursed Western world is any 
 sinful tongue torn out or a false and " trembling 
 heart " replaced by the blazing flaming coal of 
 the living Word. None but the semi-oriental 
 spirit of the Slav impregnated still by the breath 
 of truth and the eternal Spirit could possibly give 
 birth to such an astonishing conception. 
 
 Pushkin perceived at the last, even through the 
 mists of surrounding worldiness and inward 
 variety, that art had a higher function than 
 simply to entertain : that its aim was not pleasure
 
 ISO A RUA r THROUGH RUSSIA. 
 
 but helpfulness. He saw clearly that its mission 
 was the delivery of a message from the Infinite 
 which must come out of the depths of the human 
 soul ; but what that message was he never knew. 
 He never would have known or guessed it. He 
 had given himself over deliberately, knowingly, 
 repeatedly into the toils of a constricting and 
 consuming worldliness which crushed him and 
 devoured him according to his deserts.* 
 
 In Michael Lermontof, the outward incidents 
 of Pushkin's life were almost lived over again, 
 whilst his spirit takes a step forward in that, with 
 the intense Byronism of his works, he combines 
 an uncompromising scorn for the brutal barbarity 
 of the autocracy. Born at Moscow in 1814, he 
 received the same type of youthful training which 
 had forever shut out the soul of his great prede- 
 cessor from the noblest destiny. He was twice 
 banished to the Caucasus ; first at the age of 
 twenty-three, for an elegy on Pushkin's death, 
 in which he had the temerity to invoke the Czar's 
 vengeance on the murderer who was a court 
 favorite ; and again for a duel with a son of the 
 French Minister Barante. Finally, at the age of 
 twenty-seven, he was slain in a duel with a com- 
 
 * His principal works are the following : " Rusland and 
 Sindmila," " Fountain of Bakhchisarai," " Prisoner of the 
 Caucasus," " Lay of the Wiscoley," " Gypsies," " Ode to the 
 Sea,"" Boris Godunof," " The Captain's Daughter,"" Eugene 
 Ouyegin."
 
 K USSIAN NA TIOA'A L L ITEKA TURK. 1 8 [ 
 
 rade who had imagined himself insulted repeat- 
 edly, in Lermontof's romance, " The Hero of Our 
 Time." 
 
 The inveterate vice of Lermontof, as of Pushkin, 
 fs the persistence with which he fixes his gaze 
 upon himself and everlastingly describes himself 
 and his own feelings in his works. From him we 
 larn nothing of Russia. A spirit so subjective 
 was incapable of holding the mirror up to nature 
 And revealing the temper of his countrymen and 
 the condition of the land and time in which he 
 lived. His redeeming excellence is that he was 
 too brave and true ever to compromise with the 
 evil which he hated and denounced. To the last 
 he refused to fall down and worship the golden 
 image. In his own proud words : " They tor- 
 tured him because he dared to think ; stoned him 
 because he dared to speak ; they could make no 
 answer and that was the sole cause of their 
 frenzy. " " But he did not envy them nor their 
 servility by which they were won. They robbed 
 him of everything except his pride and courage. 
 He was on fire for the beautiful, fought for the 
 true. The others found that to be bad and dan- 
 gerous. When liberty is taken from him long, 
 solitary contemplation changed his hate to bound- 
 less contempt." 
 
 In him we see the awful tremblings of those 
 new forces that were beginning to stir in the 
 heart of Russia ; we hear the stern protest
 
 1 82 A RUN THROUGH RUSSIA. 
 
 against that autocratic brutality which has turned 
 Russian history into one long tragedy of more 
 than fifty years a protest that swelled to more 
 majestic and terrible tones in the literary epoch 
 that immediately followed, and which has deter- 
 mined the character and direction of literary 
 development in Russia ever since. 
 
 With the appearance of Nikolai Vasilyevitch 
 Gogol (1809-1852), Russian literature passed 
 finally beyond the subjective romanticism that 
 had ruled from Zhukofski to Lermontof, and not 
 only entered on a new epoch, but opened a new 
 era in the world of letters. Gogol is a realist of 
 the most original and impressive type. A native 
 of the steppes of southern Russia he grew up 
 amid the wild and radiant beauty of a luxuriant 
 and expansive nature ; whilst his inheritance of 
 Cossack freedom and daring familiarized him 
 with the untamed life and rude simplicity of that 
 most original people. His heart was tutored to 
 sincerity and his imagination inspired by the tales 
 of adventurous heroism recounted at the home 
 fireside. 
 
 At the age of twelve he entered school at 
 Nyezhin, where he was voted a dunce under the 
 humorous sobriquet of Universus Mundus the 
 first words of the opening paragraph in a Latin 
 Reader, which paragraph measured the extent of 
 his progress into the mysteries of the Latin 
 tongue. With like stupidity in mathematics he
 
 RUSSIAN NA TIONAL LITER A TURE. 1 83 
 
 abhorred it equally with the classics; nevertheless 
 he read voraciously, established a college review 
 with himself as chief contributor and took the 
 town by storm with his acting in the amateur 
 theatricals which he inaugurated. At twenty 
 years he was off to St. Petersburg, having out- 
 grown the provincial horizon, and filled with hun- 
 ger for the companionship and fame of Zhukofski 
 and Pushkin. 
 
 Here, after all manner of tribulation, penury, 
 starvation, disappointment ; after failure succes- 
 sively as a government clerk, university lecturer, 
 and on the stage ; and after having gone off to 
 Germany, to Lubeck, in the vain pursuit of for- 
 tune, he finally resolved to devote himself to the 
 literary life, come whatever fortune would. Here- 
 upon, he straightway enters upon a career of 
 imperishable renown as a writer. In 1830 he 
 began a series of tales entitled " Evenings on a 
 Farm," portraying the wild life of Cossackdom in 
 colors of such beauty and with scenes of such 
 thrilling interest as at once enchained the heart 
 of the nation. Oneof these, " Taras Bulba," takes 
 rank in Russia as a national epic and is praised 
 by Russian critics of high authority in terms of 
 most extravagant laudation, as worthy of com- 
 parison only with the Iliad. It is unquestion- 
 ably a tale of unique power, in which the whole 
 Cossack nature speaks, unfolding all the heroic 
 qualities and strange life in the ancient Cossack 
 republic.
 
 1 84 A K UN THRO i 'GH K USSIA . 
 
 Another tale much admired by Western critics 
 is " The Cloak,' 1 detailing the petty miseries of an 
 ill-paid government clerk, who all his life has 
 wanted a Spanish cloak and has the long-coveted 
 garment stolen from him shortly after becoming 
 its possessor. 
 
 It is not as a teller of stories, however strong 
 or fascinating, that Gogol reaches his high stan- 
 dard in the field of literature. This he attains in 
 the sphere of practical moral purpose, as a con- 
 scious and caustic protester against the shameless 
 abuses of the autocracy. His first attempt in 
 this direction was by the path of the drama in a 
 comedy entitled " The Reviser," or Government 
 Inspector. His professed aim was to drag into 
 light " all that was bad in Russia " and wither it 
 in the fire of indignant scorn. 
 
 He laid bare the abuses and corruption of the 
 civil service with a biting satire and placed the 
 alternate arrogance and servility of the officials in 
 alight so ridiculous that it aroused universal con- 
 tempt for the official class and at the same time 
 evoked their instant and bitter hostility. The 
 guilty officials of a small city, whose administra- 
 tion will not bear investigation, dreading the 
 advent of a secret examiner who, they learn, has 
 been sent from St. Petersburg on an errand of in- 
 vestigation, call in a body at the hotel where he 
 is supposed to lodge, and there mistake a penniless 
 spendthrift traveller for the dreaded inquisitor.
 
 K USSIA N NA TIONA L LITER A TURE. 1 8 5 
 
 He, after momentary surprise, accepts the situa- 
 tion when he sees them bent on warding off his 
 condemnation by the methods common to corrupt 
 officials. He accepts all their bribes ; borrows 
 money on all hands ; makes love to stfndry maids 
 and matrons, including the mayor's wife and 
 daughter ; and finally disappears with all his booty, 
 to be succeeded by the real revisor to the utter 
 dismay of the officials who, secure, as they sup- 
 posed, in the Reviser's favor, had launched forth 
 upon a new career of outrage. Such is the plot 
 of this famous play. The delicate subject was 
 handled with such artistic skill under the bewitch- 
 ing veil of impersonal humor which disguised the 
 author's indignation, that the censorship scarcely 
 hesitated to allow its presentation, and the 
 Emperor Nicholas, at its first performance called 
 the author to him and said : " I have never 
 laughed before as I have this evening." To which 
 Gpgol replied, " I had really aimed at another 
 effect." 
 
 This moral end sought and aimed at in " The 
 Revisor," was fully attained in Gogol's great 
 novel, " Dead Souls," which was directed against 
 the abuses of serfdom. An audacious adventurer 
 goes about Russia making fictitious purchases of 
 " Dead Souls," /. e. of serfs who have died since 
 the last census, yet who were still counted as liv- 
 ing, intending to people with these nominal beings 
 a worthless tract of land with a view of pledging
 
 1 86 A RUN THROUGH RUSSIA. 
 
 all to the government by means of ignorant and 
 corrupt bank officials. 
 
 This flimsy plot, which is scarce intelligible to 
 a Western mind, but which was vividly understood 
 by every Russian of the time, is simply an excuse 
 for painting the dark aspects of Russian civili- 
 zation or rather barbarism and for introduc- 
 ing numerous types of Russian society. It is a 
 sort of panorama of Russian life. It revealed 
 Russia to the Russians and made them realize how 
 little they had felt the awful sores which were 
 poisoning the life-blood of the empire. " Great 
 God," exclaimed Pushkin, on reading it, " I had 
 no idea Russia was such a dark country ! " 
 
 In these two great works " The Revisor " and 
 " Dead Souls," Gogol transcended the narrow 
 limitations and barbaric ideals to which he had 
 been born, as well as the traditional romanticism 
 of the time and launched forth upon a hitherto 
 unexplored sea, demonstrated with marvellous 
 skill and amazing genius that conscience and 
 moral purpose could be made a commanding force 
 in literature. It was he that emancipated litera- 
 ture from the thraldom of an artificial tradition 
 and led it forth from the world of dreams into the 
 atmosphere of real life. 
 
 His life ended sorrowfully enough. Finding 
 that his genius had exhausted itself in the work 
 of protest against the crying evils of his native 
 land, and was incapable of constructive or idealiz-
 
 RUSSIAN NA TIONAL LITER A TURE. \ 87 
 
 ing achievement, he burnt the second part of 
 " Dead Souls," on which he had labored long, as 
 unworthy his best art, and giving all his posses- 
 sions to the poor, he devoted himself to a religious 
 life. 
 
 Wishing to make a pilgrimage to Jerusalem, he 
 published a volume of private correspondence to 
 obtain the needed funds for the journey and drew 
 down upon himself a storm of denunciation from 
 his former liberal associates for the spirit of 
 Christian submissiveness and humility exemplified 
 and commended in these letters. He was merci- 
 lessly abused as an imbecile and a renegade ; and, 
 heart-broken at the coldness or hostility of former 
 friends, took refuge in the most extreme religious 
 mysticism. Giving himself over to fast and vigil, 
 that wrecked his mind and wasted his body, lie 
 was at last found starved to death before a shrine, 
 in front of which he had been prostrate in silent 
 prayer. So passed from labor and from suffering 
 the noblest, most original, and most striking figure 
 in the field of Russian literature, and one who, 
 for purity of soul, elevation of purpose and Christ- 
 liness of spirit, is without a peer in the universal 
 republic of letters. 
 
 The closing years of Gogol's life witnessed the 
 appearance of a body of clever and accomplished 
 writers who won a national recognition Shevt- 
 chenko, Byelinski, Niekrasof, Herzin, Tchrunish- 
 evski, etc. whose names are scarcely known
 
 1 88 A RUN THROUGH RUSSIA. 
 
 out-side of Russia and who contributed hardly 
 anything distinctive to the national literature. 
 
 With the rise of Ivan Turgenief we reach a 
 period and a man in Russian literature that are 
 both imposing and familiar to the entire reading 
 public in every Western land ; for his cosmopolitan 
 genius and Russian spirit made Russian litera- 
 ture popular in the West and prepared the way 
 for his younger contemporary, Tolstoi. 
 
 Rarely indeed has an author obtained a triumph 
 against such terrible odds as did Turgenief. He 
 has been read and admired in every land where 
 art and genius win the homage of mankind ; but 
 never, outside his own land, has he been read in 
 his own tongue. Everywhere his work has be- 
 come known through the medium of translations ; 
 yet even when thus distorted and robbed of its 
 finest finish, his work has everywhere elicited the 
 most genuine enthusiasm and commanded the 
 highest respect. 
 
 The style of a great author is the quality and 
 feature of his work which always makes the most 
 effective impression the vehicle on which his art 
 is carried to the goal of the reader's appreciation ; 
 yet Turgenief's style is almost wholly unknown 
 to the bulk of his readers, and his art is 
 made real to them through the style of the trans- 
 lator. That in spite of such obstacles his art 
 should have made its way during his own. lifetime 
 into the unqualified admiration of the civilized
 
 KUSSIA1V XA T1ONAL LITER A TURE. 1 89 
 
 world is more than ample proof of its excellence. 
 It was the supremacy of his literary art that ena- 
 bled him to conquer universal recognition. There 
 is an architectural symmetry and completeness of 
 form in every one of his books not to be found so 
 perfectly exemplified in any other modern author. 
 In this particular each of his six- great novels is a 
 perfect masterpiece. Nothing is superfluous ; yet 
 nothing is wanting. No three-volume standard 
 compels prolixity and endless verbiage ; no com- 
 mercial tyranny of the bookseller drives the au- 
 thor to disregard nature and perspective whilst 
 pandering to the popular whim of the hour. In 
 fact, there is no such thing known in Russia as 
 bookmaking. The author is before all things an 
 artist with the most exacting standards and the 
 most conscientious regard for the demands of his 
 art. Hence, in Russia there are few scribblers 
 but many writers, who have produced few vol- 
 umes but have executed many masterpieces. 
 
 One supreme virtue of Turgenief's art which 
 makes his work thrill and glow under the eye of 
 the reader like a thing of life and beauty, is his 
 deep sympathy with nature. There was in his 
 soul that unconscious poetic discernment of the 
 living force that animates the world which made 
 him reverent toward nature, in spite of his agnos- 
 ticism, and led him to paint the universe as a liv- 
 ing thing. The air trembles under his eyes, the 
 sunshine laughs, the thunder growls as he listens ;
 
 IQO A RUN THROUGH RUSSIA. 
 
 even the darkness is clothed with intelligence 
 and feeling, and the warmth of a summer eve is 
 charged with a message of peace, as in this exquisite 
 sentence from one of his minor stories : " Night, 
 silent caressing night, lay on the hills and dales. 
 From its fragrant depths afar whether from 
 heaven or from earth could not be told there 
 poured a soft and quiet warmth." 
 
 Above all Turgenief has the rare dramatic 
 power of living in the characters which he creates, 
 and so of making them live and breathe before us. 
 He himself was conscious of this power as he 
 said to Mikhailof, Professor of Physiology in 
 St Petersburg : " I see a man who strikes me from 
 some characteristic or other perhaps of little im- 
 portance. I forget him. And then, long after, 
 the man suddenly starts up from the grave of for- 
 getfulness. About the characteristic which I 
 observed others group themselves, and it is of no 
 use now if I want to forget him : I cannot do it; 
 he has taken possession of me ; 1 think with him, 
 live in him ; I can only restore myself to ease by 
 finding an existence for him." 
 
 The weak aspect of Turgenief's work was not 
 on the artistic, but on the moral side. He was a 
 man utterly devoid of faith : hence, there is noth- 
 ing positive or inspiring in his purposes. The 
 pall of an immovable pessimism hangs over all 
 his work. Melancholy, dark, stubborn, impene- 
 trable, possesses him. Whatever purpose rules his
 
 K USSIA N NA T1ONA L LI TERA TURE. 1 9 1 
 
 work and his art is full of purpose is negative, 
 critical. He is a fighter, a destroyer. The Rus- 
 sian autocracy that shadowed his youth and 
 blighted his manhood, making him a hopeless 
 exile, was the foe that called out the energy of his 
 nature in life-long hostility. 
 
 Pushkin stood for the expression of literary in- 
 dependence ; Gogol for that of satirical protest 
 and earnest criticism ; in Turgenief we reach the 
 attitude of determined assault and persistent 
 enmity to the existing social order the literature 
 of pure negation and destruction, if not of de- 
 spair. 
 
 With the work of Dostoyevski we begin to 
 ascend toward a new order. There is in the 
 strange, complex, incomprehensible nature of this 
 marvellous man, a boundless prophecy of positive 
 constructive genius which never gets its fulfilment. 
 He never gets beyond the analytic stage. But it 
 is a distinct and immeasurable gain over all that 
 preceded him in Russian writing that he is analyt- 
 ical, not critical ; dialetic, not cynical ; psycholog- 
 ical, not sociologic or economic in his view of 
 man and human relations. Here, at last, we feel 
 that we are dealing with the primordial elements 
 out of which all social fabrics are constructed, 
 namely with those human instincts and motives 
 which are the source of all maladjustments of 
 social relation and organization. The conditions 
 and activities of the human soul are the engros-
 
 IQ2 A RUN THROUGH RUSSIA. 
 
 sing matters of his interest. Outward nature 
 makes no impression on him. There are no land? 
 scapes in his background ; no descriptions en- 
 cumber his pages. But with a perfectly clairvoy- 
 ant perception of mental conditions and spiritual 
 processes, he opens up dark continents of undis- 
 covered thought and motive, traversed by streams 
 of action and consequence, and embracing impen- 
 etrable jungles of problem and mystery. "Crime 
 and Punishment " is an analysis of motive and an 
 unfolding of spiritual sequence unsurpassed, if not 
 unequalled, in any language ; and makes one feel 
 how slight and trivial in comparison is such a psy- 
 chologic portrait as " Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde." 
 Apparently the simple analysis of a special crime, 
 it is, in reality, a vast picture of the psychology 
 of contemporary Russia, with its social conditions 
 for background. With little or no art employed 
 in its structure and with many vices of style, the 
 story is yet enthralling by virtue of its intense 
 realism and profound- tragic verity. 
 
 In his sympathy with the human soul and in 
 his immediate and clear perceptions of its laws 
 Dostoyevski is the true forerunner of the great 
 personality who claims the main story of this 
 volume.
 
 THK CZAR AND His FAMILY.
 
 CHAPTER XII. 
 
 THK EXIT FROM RUSSIA VIA WARSAW. 
 
 THE night train from Troitsa hurried the travel- 
 lers back that same evening to Moscow, refresh- 
 ment having been secured at intervals along the 
 way. The note-books were much in use that 
 night in making entries of this interesting day's 
 work, and the sleep of the just crowned the night 
 with its blessing in the comfortable Hotel de 
 Berlin, in Moscow. 
 
 The next day saw these same three pilgrims 
 going once more over the sights of the Kremlin 
 and through St. Savior's massive structure, to 
 the house of the Tolstoi family to report the suc- 
 cess of their visit to Troitsa/ On the way thither 
 a-family group of the Tolstoi children, with Miss 
 Tatiana, the elder sister, and the English gover- 
 ness, were discovered walking to see the rise in 
 the river Moskva, which was bounding along like 
 a New England river in a spring freshet. After 
 giving the children an account of our visit to their 
 father and Prince Ourouzeff, which conversation 
 was instantly translated into Russian by the elder 
 sister, Miss Tolstoi added : " Ah ! yes, you see 
 they are great cronies, Papa and Ourouzeff, and
 
 194 A RUX THROUGH RUSSIA. 
 
 they don't agree one bit ; but they are fast friends." 
 And the happy group of children went running 
 along to see the river, waving a farewell to the 
 Americans, who turned once more to see that 
 never-failing object of interest, the Kremlin, with 
 its many souvenirs of the past. Along the river 
 side many peasants were occupied in getting that 
 familiar harbinger of spring, the always welcomed 
 "pussy-willows." Groups of peasants would se.- 
 cure for themselves little branches of these, which 
 were tied together with colored ribbons, and 
 would then proceed to the different shrines and 
 icons in the churches within the Kremlin walls, 
 there to dedicate them to their favorite saint and 
 patron. 
 
 As we re-entered the Troitski or Trinity (late of 
 the Kremlin the gate through which Napoleon 
 both entered and left Moscow a curious sight 
 met our eyes. A detachment of gray-coated sol- 
 diers was being reviewed by the officer in command, 
 whereupon a conversation ensued in Russian be- 
 tween the commander on horseback and the troops 
 who were drawn up in line ; which conversation 
 was translated to us by our guide as follows : 
 
 (Officer in command.) " Soldiers, are you 
 well ?" 
 
 (Soldiers giving a salute.) " Yes." 
 
 (Officer in command.) " Soldiers, are you ready 
 to suffer ? " 
 
 (Soldiers giving a second salute.) " Yes."
 
 THE EXIT FROM RUSSIA VIA WARSAW. 195 
 
 (Officer in command.) " Soldiers, are you 
 pledged to defend your country ?" 
 
 (Soldiers giving a third salute.) " Yes." 
 
 Hereupon the commanding officer, giving in 
 return a salute, left the detachment which had, in 
 the meantime, grounded its arms, and went over 
 to a second detachment to go through this mili- 
 tary catechism with them. 
 
 . Murray says of the Kremlin that " Russian ar- 
 chaeologists are unable to trace the name to any 
 certain source. It is by most supposed to be de- 
 rived from the Russian word Kremen or si lex, but 
 it occurs for the first time in its present form in 
 the year 1446. 
 
 " Originally part of the site now occupied by it 
 was enclosed by walls of oak. Demetrius of the 
 Don, laid the foundation of stone walls in 1367, 
 which resisted the Tartars on several occasions, 
 and were only seized by Toktamysh through 
 treachery. In 1445 the Kremlin was burned, and 
 the walls and gates partly destroyed. The intro- 
 duction of artillery rendered the old walls, although 
 repaired, no longer safe against invaders. John 
 III. invited Italians to build new fortifications of 
 stone, which were accordingly erected between 
 the years of 1485 and 1492, and subsequently ex- 
 tended and strengthened. These walls alone 
 escaped the ravages of a fire that destroyed the 
 whole of the Kremlin in 1737. They are now 
 7,280 feet in circumference and pierced by five
 
 196 A RUN THROUGH RUSSIA. 
 
 gates, the principal of which, the Spaski or ' Re- 
 deemer ' Gate, nearest the Church of St. Basil, was 
 built by Peter Solarius, a Milanese, in 1491. Chris- 
 topher Galloway, an English clock-maker, built 
 the tower in 1626, and placed a clock in it which 
 was, however, later replaced by another. Hence 
 the style of the tower is Gothic, and out of keep- 
 ing with the Italian battlements : it is the Porta 
 Sacra and Porta Triumphalis of Moscow. Over 
 it is a picture of the Redeemer of Smolensk, held 
 in high veneration by the Orthodox. An omis- 
 sion to uncover the head while passing under this 
 gate, was anciently punishable by fifty compulsory 
 prostrations. The traveller should not fail to pay 
 the respect to old traditions here exacted, since 
 the Emperor himself conforms to the custom. 
 Criminals executed in front of this gate, offered 
 their last prayers on earth to the image of the 
 Redeemer of Smolensk, which also witnessed the 
 execution of the Streltsi by Peter the Great. In 
 his reign the sectaries who refused to shave their 
 beards paid a fine in passing through this gate. 
 
 " The next gate in importance alongside the 
 Spaski Vorota is the Nikolsky or Nicholas Gate. 
 The miraculous image of St. Nicholas the Mojaisk, 
 'the dread of perjurers and the comforter of suf- 
 fering humanity,' is suspended over it. Oaths 
 were anciently administered to litigants in front 
 of this venerated image. The tower was originally 
 built in 1491 by an Italian architect, but has, like
 
 THE EXIT FROM RUSSIA VIA WARSAW. 197 
 
 the other buildings of the Kremlin, been restored 
 after successive disasters. The troops of Tokh- 
 tamysh, of Sigismund III., and of Napoleon passed 
 through this gate within four centuries. In 1408 
 it witnessed the siege of Moscow by Edigei ; in 
 1551 the invasion by the Crim Tartars; and in 
 1611-12, the battles between the Poles and the 
 Russians for the possession of Holy Moscow. It 
 ,was, also, partly destroyed by orders of Napoleon, 
 when it escaped with only a rent which split the 
 tower in the middle as far as the frame of the 
 picture but not even the glass of the picture ; that 
 of the lamp suspended before it was said to have 
 been injured. An inscription to that effect was 
 placed over the gate by order of Alexander I. 
 
 "A gate near the western extremity of the 
 Kremlin wall, is called the Troitski or Trinity 
 Gate. Its tower was likewise built by Christopher 
 Galloway in the early part of the seventeenth 
 century ; restored in 1759, and after the confla- 
 gration in 1812. The French both entered and 
 left the Kremlin by this gate. Before that inva- 
 sion the buildings in the vicinity afforded a refuge 
 for vagrants, thieves and murderers, who kept the 
 inhabitants in great terror." 
 
 After a farewell sight of the Church of the 
 Assumption where a great service was being held 
 with a musical refrain which sounded like a cho- 
 rus of the colored Jubilee singers, and after an- 
 other survey of the Church of the Annunciation,
 
 198 A RU\\ THROUGH RUSSIA. 
 
 where the Czar is always crowned, we turned from 
 tombs of the Romanoff princes with the tomb of 
 Ivan the Terrible built as an annex just outside 
 the church, and went to the banker's for rouble 
 notes enough to carry us out of Russia. 
 
 "Where have you come from ? " asked the po- 
 lite, man-of-the-world young man. " We have 
 come from Troitsa," was the reply. 
 
 " What took you to Troitsa ? " he inquired once 
 again. 
 
 "We went to see Count Tolstoi," was the answer. 
 
 "Count Tolstoi?" inquired the clerk in an in- 
 credulous tone of voice, " well, have you seen the 
 big bell in the Kremlin the Tsar Kodokol or 
 King of Bells ? " The reply was in the affirmative, 
 
 "Well, then if you have seen the big bell of 
 Moscow, and Count Tolstoi," replied the clerk, 
 "you have seen the two objects of interest ; and 
 the same thing has happened to each of them 
 they are both cracked ."' 
 
 Such was the Russian verdict upon our pious 
 pilgrimage to Troitsa ; and there the conversation 
 at the banking office ceased. 
 
 The happy thought generally comes too late. 
 When seated in the cars an hour later the right 
 answer came to this remark. " Yes," should have 
 been the reply, " but in such a God-forsaken, 
 darkened country as Russia one rejoices in the 
 light which comes in even through a crack." 
 
 The route from Moscow to Warsaw is almost
 
 THE EXIT FROM RUSSIA VIA WARSAW. 199 
 
 the identical route taken by Napoleon on his re- 
 treat from Russia. The cannon which surround 
 the gates and walls of the Kremlin, with the proud 
 letter N stamped upon them, are the only remain- 
 ing souvenirs of the French occupancy of this 
 sacred shrine of the Russian people. 
 
 Borodino, the river Beresina, and the smoky 
 town of Smolensk, were passed on the journey, 
 while the imagination was busy in conjuring up 
 the facts of history all along the memorable and 
 historic route. 
 
 " On the 23d of June, 1812, the French crossed 
 the Niemen and pushed on to Wilna, the Russians 
 carefully retreating and leaving Napoleon to pass 
 that river on the 28th, and enter the town unop- 
 posed. Here the French emperor remained 
 eighteen days, and then, after considerable man- 
 ceuvering, marched on to Vitepsk, where he fully 
 expected to bring the Russians, under Barclay de 
 Tolly, to action. The Russian general, however, 
 declined ; and Napoleon instead of following the 
 advice of his marshals and wintering on the Dwina, 
 crossed the Dnieper and marched on Smolensk. 
 On the i6th of August he was once more in front 
 of the Russian grand army near that town ; but 
 the wary and intelligent de Tolly had occupied it 
 only to cover the flight of its inhabitants, and 
 carry off or destroy its magazines ; and on the 
 following morning Napoleon, to his great mortifi- 
 cation, learned that the enemy in pursuance of his
 
 20O A RUN THROUGH RUSSIA. 
 
 Fabian tactics, was again off. Smolensk was now 
 taken by assault, the last inhabitants that re- 
 mained having set fire to it before they left. 
 
 " Up to this time the Russian commander-in- 
 chief had been able to adhere to his plan of draw- 
 ing the French into the country without risking a 
 general engagement until a favorable opportunity 
 should occur tactics which were not liked by his 
 army, and Alexander, yielding to the clamor, ap- 
 pointed Kutusoff to the command. 
 
 " The battle of Borodino, sometimes called that 
 of the Moskva, fought on the ist of September, 
 was the result of this change of leaders. The 
 combatants amounted on either side to about 120,- 
 ooo, and the killed and wounded in both to about 
 80,000. On the 1 2th, Bonaparte again moved for- 
 ward, his troops by this time nearly famished and 
 heartily tired of the war, for the day of Borodino 
 had given them a clear idea that the enemy would 
 only yield after a desperate struggle. On Sunday, 
 the i3th, the Russian army marched out of the 
 old capital, with silent drums and colors furled, 
 by the Kolomna Gate, and left the city to its fate. 
 In the afternoon of Monday, the advanced guard of 
 the French army caught the first view of her 
 golden minarets and starry domes, and the Krem- 
 lin burst upon their sight. 
 
 " ' All this is yours,' cried Napoleon, when he 
 first gazed upon the goal of his ambition, and a 
 shout of ' Moscow ! Moscow ! ' was taken up by
 
 THE EXIT FROM RUSSJA VJA WAKSAil. 2OI 
 
 the foremost ranks and carried to the rear of his 
 army. In Moscow they bivouacked the same 
 evening. Ere the night had closed in, their leader 
 arrived at the Smolensko Gate and then learnt, to 
 his astonishment, that 300,000, inhabitants had 
 fled and that the only Russians who remained in 
 the city were the convicts who had been liberated 
 from the jails, a few of the rabble, and those who 
 were unable to leave it. On Tuesday, the i5th 
 of September, the mortified victor entered Mos- 
 cow and took up his residence in the Kremlin ; 
 but here his stay was destined to be short indeed, 
 for on the morning of the i6th it was discovered 
 that a fire, which had at first given but little 
 cause for alarm, could not be restrained fanned 
 by the wind it spread rapidly, and consumed the 
 best portion of the city. ' The churches,' says 
 Labaume,' though covered with iron and lead, 
 were destroyed, and with them those graceful 
 steeples which we had seen the night before re- 
 splendent in the setting sun ; the hospitals, too, 
 which contained more than 20,000 wounded, soon 
 began to burn a harrowing and dreadful spec- 
 tacle and almost all these poor wretches perished, 
 a few who still survived were seen crawling, half- 
 burnt, amongst the smoking ruins, while others 
 were groaning under heaps of dead bodies, en- 
 deavoring in vain to extricate themselves. The 
 confusion and tumult which ensued when the 
 work of pillage began, cannot be conceived.
 
 2O2 A RUN THROUGH RUSSIA. 
 
 Soldiers, sutlers, galley-slaves and prostitutes 
 were seen running through the streets, penetrat- 
 ing into the deserted palaces, and carrying away 
 everything that could gratify their avarice. Some 
 clothed themselves in rich stuffs, silks and costly 
 furs, others dressed themselves in women's pe- 
 lisses ; and even the galley-slaves concealed their 
 rags under the most splendid court-dresses ; the 
 rest crowded to the cellars, and, forcing open the 
 doors, drank the wine and carried off an immense 
 booty. This horrible pillage was not confined to 
 the deserted houses alone, but extended to the few 
 which were inhabited, and soon the eagerness and 
 wantonness of the plunderers caused devastations 
 which almost equalled those occasioned by the 
 conflagration.' ' Palaces and temples,' writes 
 Karamzin, ' monuments of art and miracles of 
 luxury, the remains of past ages and those which 
 had been the creation of yesterday, the tombs of 
 ancestors and the nursery cradles of the present 
 generation, were all indiscriminately destroyed ; 
 nothing was left of Moscow save the remembrance 
 of the city, and the deep resolution to avenge its 
 fate.' 
 
 "On the 2oth, Napoleon returned to the Krem- 
 lin from the Palace of Petrofsky, to which he had 
 retired, and soon tried to negotiate with Kutusoff, 
 who replied that no treaty could be entered into 
 so long as a foreigner remained within the fron- 
 tier. The Emperor then requested that he would
 
 THE EXIT FROM RUSSIA VIA WARSAW. 203 
 
 forward a letter to Alexander. ' I will do that,' 
 said the Russian general, ' provided the word 
 peace is not in the letter.' 
 
 " To a third proposition, Kutusoff replied that 
 it was not the time to treat or enter into an armis- 
 tice, as the Russians were, just about to open the 
 campaign. At length, on the igth of October, 
 after a stay of thirty-four days, Napoleon left 
 Moscow with his army, consisting of 120,000 men 
 and 550 pieces of cannon, a vast amount of plun- 
 der, and a countless host of camp-followers. And 
 now the picture of the advance was to be re- 
 versed. Murat was defeated at Malo-Yaroslavets 
 on the 24th, and an unsuccessful stand was made at 
 Viasma on the 3d of November. On the 6th, a 
 winter, peculiarly early and severe even for Rus- 
 sia, set in. The thermometer sank eighteen de- 
 grees, the wind blew furiously, and the soldiers, 
 vainly struggling with the eddying snow, which 
 drove against them with the violence of a whirl- 
 wind, could no longer distinguish their road, and 
 falling into the ditches by the side, there found a 
 grave. Others crawled on, badly clothed, with 
 nothing to eat or drink, frost-bitten, and groaning 
 with pain. Discipline disappeared, the soldier no 
 longer obeyed his officer ; disbanded, the troops 
 spread themselves right and left in search of food, 
 and as the horses fell, fought for their mangled 
 carcasses, and devoured them raw ; many re- 
 mained by the dying embers of the bivouac fires,
 
 2O4 A RUN THROUGH RUSSIA. 
 
 and as these expired, an insensibility crept over 
 them, which soon became the sleep of death. On 
 the pth of November Napoleon reached Smolensk, 
 and remained till the i5th, when he set out for 
 Krasnoe. From this time, to the 26th and 27th, 
 when the French crossed the Beresina, all was 
 utter and hopeless confusion ; and in the passage 
 of that river, the wretched remnant of their once 
 powerful army was nearly annihilated. The exact 
 extent of their loss was never known, but a Rus- 
 sian account states that 36,000 bodies were found 
 in the river alone, and burnt after the thaw. On 
 the 5th of December Napoleon deserted the sur- 
 vivors ; on the loth he reached Warsaw, and on 
 the night of the i8th, his capital and the Tuil- 
 eries. The army that had so well and enthusias- 
 tically served him, was disposed of as follows : 
 
 Slain in fight 125,000 
 
 Died from fatigue, hunger, and the sever- 
 ity of the climate 132,000 
 
 Prisoners 193,000 
 
 450,000 
 
 " The remains of the grand army which es- 
 caped the general wreck (independently of the two 
 auxiliary armies of Austria and Prussia, which 
 knew little of the horrors of the retreat) was 
 about 40,000 men, of whom it is said scarcely 10,- 
 ooo were Frenchmen. Thus ended the greatest 
 military catastrophe that ever befell an army in 
 either ancient or modern times.
 
 THE EXIT FROM RUSSIA VIA WARS A W. 2O$ 
 
 " To return to Napoleon. Europe was now ex- 
 asperated and combined against him, and though, 
 in the following spring, he gained the battles of 
 Lutzen and Bautzen, and on the 27th of August, 
 that of Dresden, fortune deserted him on the i8th 
 of October of the same year, on the field of Leipsic. 
 On the Rhine the allies offered him peace and the 
 Empire of France, which he refused, and on the 
 3ith of March, 1814, Alexander had the satisfac- 
 tion of marching into Paris." 
 
 As the train came to a halt at the station at 
 Smolensk, and was delayed for awhile in the mat- 
 ter of some freight or baggage, the following par- 
 ticulars as regards this city on the Dnieper, were 
 taken from a Russian source : 
 
 " When the grand army began its march from 
 the Niemen, in 1812, the Russian troops fell back 
 on Smolensk. Although Barclay de Tolly encour- 
 aged the inhabitants and assured them of their 
 safety, he nevertheless caused the treasury to be 
 removed, and all documents from which the enemy 
 might derive any information about the condition 
 of the country. The two Russian armies (one 
 commanded by Barclay de Tolly, the other by 
 Bagration) reached Smolensk on the 226. of July 
 (O.S.) and encamped on the left bank of the 
 Dnieper. Three days later they retreated further, 
 leaving only one regiment in the town. In the 
 meanwhile the French advanced, and, after the 
 engagement with Neverofski at Krasnoi, appeared
 
 2O6 A RUN THROUGH RUSSIA. 
 
 on the 3rd of August in the neighborhood of 
 Smolensk. Raefski, sent to assist Neverofski, for- 
 tified as far as he could, the suburbs of the town, 
 and resolved to maintain himself in it until the 
 arrival of the two armies. 
 
 " On the morning of the 4th (i6th) of August, the 
 fighting commenced, and was continued the next 
 day with great carnage, as the armies had advanced 
 the day before. Many assaults were repulsed, the 
 old walls withstood a fearful cannonade, and a 
 
 dreadful fire broke out in the town 
 
 During the night our troops evacuated the town, 
 and on the morning of the 6th (i8th) Napoleon 
 entered it, but found nothing but smouldering 
 ruins, and no inhabitants except the old, the 
 young, and the sick, many of whom had taken 
 refuge in the churches. Napoleon remained four 
 days at Smolensk, and established a Commission 
 for the civil administration of the town, with Can- 
 laincourt as Military Governor. The Commission 
 could, however, do nothing; arising took place 
 all over the country ; bands of partisans were 
 formed, and destroyed foraging parties, and even 
 larger bodies of the enemy, whenever they met 
 them. The French tried to overawe the people 
 by acts of severity, and, having seized the leaders 
 of two bands of partisans, Engelhard and Shubin, 
 shot them, at Smolensk. This only increased the 
 animosity of the people, and when, on the 2Qth of 
 October (O . S .), Napoleon returned to Smolensk,
 
 THE EXIT FROM RUSSIA VIA WAX SAW. 2O/ 
 
 he found nothing for the support of the remnants 
 of the ' great army.' 
 
 " The further retreat of Napoleon was protected 
 at Smolensk by Ney, who left the city on the 6th 
 (i8th) of November, after blowing up eight of the 
 towers built by Godunof ; and a part of the other 
 fortifications. The Russians who had remained 
 in the town, issued out of their places of refuge, 
 and began to destroy with frenzy the stragglers 
 who roamed about the town, throwing them 
 into the flames of the burning buildings, and into 
 holes in the ice. 
 
 " The Twentieth Regiment of Rifles entered 
 Smolensk and put an end to these outrages. The 
 removal and destruction of the bodies of men and 
 carcasses of horses, were continued for three 
 months afterwards ; for many of the streets were 
 literally encumbered with the dead. 
 
 " At first, the bodies were burned, piled in heaps 
 half a verst in length and two fathoms high ; and 
 when the supply of wood failed, they were buried 
 in trenches and covered with quicklime. Epi- 
 demics subsequently broke out in consequence. 
 
 " The losses incurred by Smolensk were at that 
 time valued at 6,592,404 r. 60 c. 
 
 "The mounds which cover the bodies of the un- 
 fortunate Frenchmen will be seen on either side 
 of the old post-road from Moscow. 
 
 " Although the demolition of the historical walls 
 of Smolensk has been commenced by the town
 
 208 A RUN THROUGH RUSSIA. 
 
 council, there is reason to hope that this act of 
 vandalism will go no further ; and that the travel- 
 ler passing through the old city will still catch a 
 glimpse of its ancient defences." 
 
 The train upon which we were travelling in this 
 forty-four hour journey out of Russia, consisted 
 of nineteen cars and two engines, with heavy well- 
 ballasted sleeping-cars. 
 
 A party of. opera singers belonging to the 
 Royal Opera Company of Berlin, were upon the 
 train, having come up to Moscow from Odessa 
 and the Crimea on their way back to Berlin. 
 
 There were some Norwegian and Swedish sing- 
 ers in the party, and one tall, splendid looking 
 man in the company found his way into our com- 
 partment, being attracted thither by the jolly 
 voice of Lord Byron, who was singing some gentle 
 snatches from " Mikado." 
 
 " Pray go on," said this professional basso. " I 
 like to hear other people sing I, too, am a 
 singer.' 1 
 
 In vain Lord Byron protested his inability to sing 
 before a professional : the neighboring female 
 singers were sent for and in a little while our 
 compartment was crowded with an admiring and 
 not over-critical audience, the ladies smoking 
 Russian cigarettes and applauding the unknown 
 English words of Gilbert and Sullivan's favorite 
 opera. 
 
 Through Minsk and Ledletz and other Polish
 
 THE EXIT FROM RUSSIA I'JA WARSAW. 209 
 
 towns this overland train slowly but effectively 
 plodded on its way, along a dreary country unin- 
 teresting in the extreme in its physical aspect, 
 and over-flooded with the spring freshets of April, 
 as its history had been flooded with the blood of 
 the thousands slain in the Russian and Polish 
 wars and uprisings in the past. 
 
 A curious episode on this exit from Russia was 
 found in the fact that our unknown basso friend 
 proved to us, then and there, that after all, this 
 earth of ours is a very little world. 
 
 In giving us his impressions of the Wagner 
 school of opera, in a very modest and intelligent 
 way, he mentioned the great tenor, Nieman, who 
 had recently rendered the Wagner trilogy in New 
 York. One of the party having mentioned that 
 he himself was at the Metropolitan Opera House 
 in New York, on the night when Nieman made 
 his debut as Siegfried, added " But after all that 
 is said about Nieman in " Die Walkure," I pre- 
 ferred the " Hunding " who appeared with him that 
 evening ; he was even greater than Nieman." 
 " Oh, thank you, thank you, gentlemen ! " ex- 
 claimed our basso friend, making a profound bow. 
 "You have very much complimented me I was 
 " Hunding " that night." 
 
 There was not very much to see in the old 
 Polish city of Warsaw. Thaddeus of that place 
 was dead, and we knew of no other character half 
 so interesting. I believe we stayed in the build-
 
 2IO A RUN J^HROUGH RUSSIA. 
 
 ing now used as a hotel where Napoleon stop- 
 ped when on his flight from Russia. But we did 
 not have so much upon our minds as he had, and 
 did not leave our baggage and things on the way, 
 as his custom was. 
 
 A little later on, we stopped at the same hotel 
 at which, on a former occasion, the Grand Duke 
 Don John, of Austria, the hero of the naval battle 
 of Lepanto, as described in Motley's " History of 
 the Dutch Republic," stayed ; but this far-off fact 
 of history made no appreciable difference in our 
 appetite or sleep or manner of life. 
 
 A miserable Polish commissionaire tried in vain 
 by the help of the most detestable French, to 
 cheat Mr. Thackeray out of two five-rouble notes 
 but was balked of his nefarious purpose by the 
 bold and continuous appeal of Lord Byron and 
 the other member of the party to the" Chef de 
 Police," which appeal they kept murmuring in 
 soft and liquid cadences now rising, now falling 
 like the rhymthic sequences of the Greek chorus 
 appealing to the gods for vindication ! The 
 sleeping-car conductor on this same Russian train, 
 a Pole, who used execrable French, tried a bluff 
 game upon these innocents, forbidding them the 
 use of their apartments on some technical ground ; 
 hoping thereby to extort a bribe from each of 
 these strangers whereupon Lord Byron and his 
 friend resorted again to the Greek chorus appeal 
 to the Immortals in the likeness of the helmeted 
 and be-buttoned police.
 
 7'ffE EXIT FROM RUSSIA VIA WARS A //". 2 I I 
 
 These two short but effective episodes impressed 
 upon the minds of the travellers the fact that, 
 after all, there was a good deal to be said in be- 
 half of the partition of Poland, and that if " Free- 
 dom shrieked when Kosciusco fell," it might be 
 as the writer once heard a certain minister begin a 
 funeral discourse that Freedom, like the orator 
 on the occasion, " was not intimately acquainted 
 with the deceased." 
 
 At five o'clock on the morning of April 151)1, at 
 Sasnowice, on the frontier, our passports were 
 asked for, and after a short inspection they were 
 returned to us on German soil again. 
 
 We could have embraced the German custom- 
 house officers, so glad were we to see their famil- 
 iar uniforms again ; and at Breslau, at ten o'clock, 
 we breakfasted on the old German roll again, and 
 took the train for Dresden. 
 
 The electric ding-dong bell of the well-known 
 Dresden Staclt sounded four o'clock in the after- 
 noon as the travellers emerged from their railway 
 carriages at the Dresden depot. 
 
 The run through Russia had been made, it was 
 no fool's errand after all. Each member of the 
 party said his good-bye, and entering his carriage, 
 drove off. 
 
 Russia and Tolstoi had been seen and had been 
 conquered and " every man went unto his own 
 house ! "
 
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 ^