bestow an epithet upon a person, it will descend to his race and
posterity; he will bear it about with him, in service, in retreat, in
Petersburg, and to the ends of the earth; and use what cunning he
will, ennoble his career as he will thereafter, nothing is of the
slightest use; that nickname will caw of itself at the top of its
crow's voice, and will show clearly whence the bird has flown. A
pointed epithet once uttered is the same as though it were written
down, and an axe will not cut it out.

*"Russia of To-day," page 203.

"And how pointed is all that which has proceeded from the depths of
Russia, where there are neither Germans nor Finns, nor any other
strange tribes, but where all is purely aboriginal, where the bold and
lively Russian mind never dives into its pocket for a word, and never
broods over it like a sitting-hen: it sticks the word on at one blow,
like a passport, like your nose or lips on an eternal bearer, and
never adds anything afterwards. You are sketched from head to foot in
one stroke.

"Innumerable as is the multitude of churches, monasteries with
cupolas, towers, and crosses, which are scattered over holy, most
pious Russia, the multitude of tribes, races, and peoples who throng
and bustle and variegate the earth is just as innumerable. And every
people bearing within itself the pledge of strength, full of active
qualities of soul, of its own sharply defined peculiarities, and other
gifts of God, has characteristically distinguished itself by its own
special word, by which, while expressing any object whatever, it also
reflects in the expression its own share of its own distinctive
character. The word Briton echoes with knowledge of the heart, and