Chinese and Russian pedantry there is an essential difference. In the
Middle Kingdom the sacrifice of practical considerations proceeds from
an exaggerated veneration of the wisdom of ancestors; in the Empire of
the Tsars it is due to an exaggerated adoration of the goddess Nauka
(Science) and a habit of appealing to abstract principles and scientific
methods when only a little plain common-sense is required.

On one occasion, I remember, in a District Assembly of the province
of Riazan, when the subject of primary schools was being discussed, an
influential member started up, and proposed that an obligatory system
of education should at once be introduced throughout the whole district.
Strange to say, the motion was very nearly carried, though all the
members present knew--or at least might have known if they had taken the
trouble to inquire--that the actual number of schools would have to be
multiplied twenty-fold, and all were agreed that the local rates
must not be increased. To preserve his reputation for liberalism, the
honourable member further proposed that, though the system should be
obligatory, no fines, punishments, or other means of compulsion should
be employed. How a system could be obligatory without using some means
of compulsion, he did not condescend to explain. To get out of the
difficulty one of his supporters suggested that the peasants who did
not send their children to school should be excluded from serving as
office-bearers in the Communes; but this proposition merely created
a laugh, for many deputies knew that the peasants would regard this
supposed punishment as a valuable privilege. And whilst this discussion
about the necessity of introducing an ideal system of obligatory
education was being carried on, the street before the windows of the
room was covered with a stratum of mud nearly two feet in depth! The
other streets were in a similar condition; and a large number of the
members always arrived late, because it was almost impossible to come on
foot, and there was only one public conveyance in the town. Many
members had, fortunately, their private conveyances, but even in these
locomotion was by no means easy. One day, in the principal thoroughfare,
a member had his tarantass overturned, and he himself was thrown into
the mud!

It is hardly fair to compare the Zemstvo with the older institutions
of a similar kind in Western Europe, and especially with our own local
self-government. Our