to a negro ancestry. In the case of Spain, which is close to us, we can
recognise the resurrection of a Christian and cultured nation after its
age of bondage. But Russia is rather remote; and those to whom nations are
but names in newspapers can really fancy, like Mr. Baring's friend, that
all Russian churches are "mosques." Yet the land of Turgeniev is not a
wilderness of fakirs; and even the fanatical Russian is as proud of being
different from the Mongol, as the fanatical Spaniard was proud of being
different from the Moor.

The town of Reading, as it exists, offers few opportunities for piracy
on the high seas: yet it was the camp of the pirates in Alfred's day. I
should think it hard to call the people of Berkshire half-Danish, merely
because they drove out the Danes. In short, some temporary submergence
under the savage flood was the fate of many of the most civilised states
of Christendom; and it is quite ridiculous to argue that Russia, which
wrestled hardest, must have recovered least. Everywhere, doubtless, the
East spread a sort of enamel over the conquered countries, but everywhere
the enamel cracked. Actual history, in fact, is exactly opposite to
the cheap proverb invented against the Muscovite. It is not true to
say "Scratch a Russian and you find a Tartar." In the darkest hour of
the barbaric dominion it was truer to say, "Scratch a Tartar and you
find a Russian." It was the civilisation that survived under all the
barbarism. This vital romance of Russia, this revolution against Asia, can
be proved in pure fact; not only from the almost superhuman activity of
Russia during the struggle, but also (which is much rarer as human history
goes) by her quite consistent conduct since. She is the only great nation
which has really expelled the Mongol from her country, and continued to
protest against the presence of the Mongol in her continent. Knowing
what he had been in Russia, she knew what he would be in Europe. In
this she pursued a logical line of thought, which was, if anything, too