a gentle and beautiful soul, only half revealed, and too much
concealed by her dilapidation and her dilemma; a peaceful soul,
abnormally humble and devout, and in respect to these qualities
unequalled in Christendom.

Since the age of Vladimir the Holy, "The Beautiful Sun of
Kief," in the tenth century, Russia has had the tradition of
international peace. Vladimir wandered over the country, sword
and battle ax in hand, like a reincarnation of Thor, armed with
his mighty and wondrous hammer. Then came his yearning for a
new religion--something to inspire his life better than
Perun--Russia's old god of thunder--and the other idols, and a
little later, the picturesque investigation of his peripatetic
commissioners having been completed, he became a Christian of
the Greek church, was baptized with many fine and grand
ceremonies, compelled his docile people to do likewise, and,
like a true Northman that he was--the great grandson of Rurik
of the Baltic wilds--he so impressed his frowsy hordes, half
Scythian and half Slav, that now in the hearts of their
descendants, in their popular songs and legends, in those
concerning Kief especially--a beautiful and pathetic strain of
music eight centuries old--he, Vladimir, is still the central
heroic figure; once a man, but now a kind of god, sent from
Heaven to rule, enlighten and bring peace to his people and be
known in story and song as "Vladimir the Holy, the Beautiful
Sun of Kief."

An old chronicle describes for us how his hordes drank their
cup of trembling at his hands. There, around about the low
hills of the southern Dnieper River, probably on the crumbling