tected the people from danger, the block of masonry from which,
on solemn occasions, the Tsar and the Patriarch had addressed the
assembled multitude--these, and a hundred other monuments sanctified by
tradition, have kept alive in the popular memory some vague remembrance
of the olden time, and are still capable of awakening antiquarian
patriotism.

The inhabitants, too, have preserved something of the old Muscovite
character. Whilst successive sovereigns have been striving to make the
country a progressive European empire, Moscow has remained the home of
passive conservatism and an asylum for the discontented, especially for
the disappointed aspirants to Imperial favour. Abandoned by the modern
Emperors, she can glory in her ancient Tsars. But even the Muscovites
were not prepared to accept the Slavophil doctrine in the extreme form
which it assumed, and were not a little perplexed by the eccentricities
of those who professed it. Plain, sensible people, though they might
be proud of being citizens of the ancient capital, and might thoroughly
enjoy a joke at the expense of St. Petersburg, could not understand
a little coterie of enthusiasts who sought neither official rank nor
decorations, who slighted many of the conventionalities of the higher
classes to which by birth and education they belonged, who loved to
fraternise with the common people, and who occasionally dressed in the
national costume which had been discarded by the nobles since the time
of Peter the Great.

The Slavophils thus remained merely a small literary party, which
probably did not count more than a dozen members, but their influence
was out of all proportion to their numbers. They preached successfully
the doctrine that the historical development of Russia has been
peculiar, that her present social and political organisation is
radically different from that of the countries of Western Europe, and
that consequently the social and political evils from which she suffers
are not to be cured by the remedies which have proved efficacious in
France and Germany. These truths, which now appear commonplace, were
formerly by no means generally recognised, and the Slavophils deserve
credit for directing attention to them. Besides this, they helped to
awaken in the upper classes a lively sympathy with the poor, oppressed,
and despised peasantry. So long as the Emperor Nicholas lived they had
to confine themselves to a purely literary activity; but during the