ors were German, this hostility greatly increased.

So long as the innovations appeared only in the official activity of
the Government, the patriotic, conservative spirit was obliged to keep
silence; but when the foreign influence spread to the social life of the
Court aristocracy, the opposition began to find a literary expression.
In the time of Catherine II., when Gallomania was at its height in Court
circles, comedies and satirical journals ridiculed those who, "blinded
by some externally brilliant gifts of foreigners, not only prefer
foreign countries to their native land, but even despise their
fellow-countrymen, and think that a Russian ought to borrow all--even
personal character. As if nature arranging all things with such wisdom,
and bestowing on all regions the gifts and customs which are appropriate
to the climate, had been so unjust as to refuse to the Russians a
character of their own! As if she condemned them to wander over all
regions, and to adopt by bits the various customs of various nations,
in order to compose out of the mixture a new character appropriate to
no nation whatever!" Numerous passages of this kind might be quoted,
attacking the "monkeyism" and "parrotism" of those who indiscriminately
adopted foreign manners and customs--those who

"Sauntered Europe round,
And gathered ev'ry vice in ev'ry ground."

Sometimes the terms and metaphors employed were more forcible than
refined. One satirical journal, for instance, relates an amusing
story about certain little Russian pigs that went to foreign lands to
enlighten their understanding, and came back to their country full-grown
swine. The national pride was wounded by the thought that Russians
could be called "clever apes who feed on foreign intelligence," and
many writers, stung by such reproaches, fell into the opposite extreme,
discovering unheard-of excellences in the Russian mind and character,
and vociferously decrying everything foreign in order to place these
imagined excellences in a stronger light by contrast. Even when they
recognised that their country was not quite so advanced in civilisation
as certain other nations, they congratulated themselves on the fact,
and invented by way of justification an ingenious theory, which was
afterwards developed by the Slavophils. "The nations of the West," they
said, "began to live before us, and are consequently more advanced than
we are; but we have on that account no reason to env