f a parliament! This threw a new light
upon them--under the disguise of archaeological conservatives they were
evidently aiming at important liberal reforms.

As a foreigner and a heretic, I expected a very cold and distant
reception from these uncompromising champions of Russian nationality and
the Orthodox faith; but in this I was agreeably disappointed. By all
of them I was received in the most amiable and friendly way, and I soon
discovered that my preconceived ideas of them were very far from the
truth. Instead of wild fanatics I found quiet, extremely intelligent,
highly educated gentlemen, speaking foreign languages with ease and
elegance, and deeply imbued with that Western culture which they were
commonly supposed to despise. And this first impression was amply
confirmed by subsequent experience during several years of friendly
intercourse. They always showed themselves men of earnest character
and strong convictions, but they never said or did anything that could
justify the appellation of fanatics. Like all philosophical theorists,
they often allowed their logic to blind them to facts, but their
reasonings were very plausible--so plausible, indeed, that, had I been a
Russian they would have almost persuaded me to be a Slavophil, at least
during the time they were talking to me.

To understand their doctrine we must know something of its origin and
development.

The origin of the Slavophil sentiment, which must not be confounded
with the Slavophil doctrine, is to be sought in the latter half of
the seventeenth century, when the Tsars of Muscovy were introducing
innovations in Church and State. These innovations were profoundly
displeasing to the people. A large portion of the lower classes, as I
have related in a previous chapter, sought refuge in Old Ritualism or
sectarianism, and imagined that Tsar Peter, who called himself by the
heretical title of "Imperator," was an emanation of the Evil Principle.
The nobles did not go quite so far. They remained members of the
official Church, and restricted themselves to hinting that Peter was the
son, not of Satan, but of a German surgeon--a lineage which, according
to the conceptions of the time, was a little less objectionable; but
most of them were very hostile to the changes, and complained bitterly
of the new burdens which these changes entailed. Under Peter's immediate
successors, when not only the principles of administration but also many
of the administrat