marked
homogeneity, despite a motley collection of race ingredients which have
entered into the make-up of the Russian people. Without boundary or
barrier, the country has stood wide open to invasion; but the intruders
found no secluded corners where they could entrench themselves and
preserve their national individuality.[1036] They dropped into a vast
melting-pot, which has succeeded in amalgamating the most diverse
elements. The long-drawn Baltic-North Sea plain of Europe shows the same
power to fuse. Here is found a prevailing blond, long-headed stock from
the Gulf of Finland to the Somme River in France.[1037] Yet this natural
boulevard has been a passway for races. Prehistoric evidences show that
the dark, broad-headed Celtic folk once overspread this plain east to
the Weser;[1038] it still tends to trickle down from the southern uplands
into the Baltic lowland, and modify the Teutonic type along its southern
margin throughout Germany.[1039] The Slavs in historic times reached as
far west as the Weser, while the expansion of the Teutons has embraced
the whole maritime plain from Brittany to the Finnish Gulf. Here it is
difficult to draw an ethnic boundary on the basis of physical
differences. The eastern Prussians are Slavonized Teutons, and the
adjacent Poles seem to be Teutonized Slavs, while the purest type of
Letto-Lithuanian at the eastern corner of the Baltic coast approximates
closely to the Anglo-Saxon type which sprang from the western
corner.[1040] A similar amalgamation of races and peoples has taken place
in the lowlands of England and Scotland, while diversity still lingers
in the highlands. In the Lowlands of Scotland, Picts in small numbers,
Britons, Scots from Ireland, Angles, Frisians, Northmen and Danes have
all been blended and assimilated in habits, customs and speech.[1041]

[Sidenote: Retardation due to monotonous environment.]

This uniformity is advantageous to early development in a small plain,
because of the juxtaposition of contrasted environments, but is
stultifying to national life in an immense expanse of monotony like that
of Russia. Here sameness leaves its stamp on everything. Language is
differentiated with only two dialects, that of the Great Russians of the
north and the Little Russians of the southern steppes, who were so long
exposed to Tartar influences. Most other languages of Europe, though
confined to much smaller areas, show far greater diversity.[1042] While
the Russia