introduced me to his colleagues, and invited me to come and see him
at his office as often as I felt inclined. Of this invitation I made
abundant use. At first my visits were discreetly few and short, but when
I found that my new friend and his colleagues really wished to instruct
me in all the details of Zemstvo administration, and had arranged a
special table in the president's room for my convenience, I became a
regular attendant, and spent daily several hours in the bureau, studying
the current affairs, and noting down the interesting bits of statistical
and other information which came before the members, as if I had been
one of their number. When they went to inspect the hospital, the lunatic
asylum, the seminary for the preparation of village schoolmasters, or
any other Zemstvo institution, they invariably invited me to accompany
them, and made no attempt to conceal from me the defects which they
happened to discover.

I mention all this because it illustrates the readiness of most Russians
to afford every possible facility to a foreigner who wishes seriously to
study their country. They believe that they have long been misunderstood
and systematically calumniated by foreigners, and they are extremely
desirous that the prevalent misconceptions regarding their country
should be removed. It must be said to their honour that they have
little or none of that false patriotism which seeks to conceal national
defects; and in judging themselves and their institutions they are
inclined to be over-severe rather than unduly lenient. In the time
of Nicholas I. those who desired to stand well with the Government
proclaimed loudly that they lived in the happiest and best-governed
country of the world, but this shallow official optimism has long since
gone out of fashion. During all the years which I spent in Russia I
found everywhere the utmost readiness to assist me in my investigations,
and very rarely noticed that habit of "throwing dust in the eyes of
foreigners," of which some writers have spoken so much.

The Zemstvo is a kind of local administration which supplements the
action of the rural Communes, and takes cognizance of those higher
public wants which individual Communes cannot possibly satisfy. Its
principal duties are to keep the roads and bridges in proper repair, to
provide means of conveyance for the rural police and other officials, to
look after primary education and sanitary affairs, to watch the state of