raordinary embassies were sent from
Whitehall to the Kremlin and from the Kremlin to Whitehall.

The English embassies had historians whose narratives may still be
read with interest. Those historians described vividly, and sometimes
bitterly, the savage ignorance and the squalid poverty of the barbarous
country in which they had sojourned. In that country, they said, there
was neither literature nor science, neither school nor college. It was
not till more than a hundred years after the invention of printing that
a single printing press had been introduced into the Russian empire; and
that printing press had speedily perished in a fire which was supposed
to have been kindled by the priests. Even in the seventeenth century
the library of a prelate of the first dignity consisted of a few
manuscripts. Those manuscripts too were in long rolls; for the art of
bookbinding was unknown. The best educated men could barely read and
write. It was much if the secretary to whom was entrusted the direction
of negotiations with foreign powers had a sufficient smattering of Dog
Latin to make himself understood. The arithmetic was the arithmetic of
the dark ages. The denary notation was unknown. Even in the Imperial
Treasury the computations were made by the help of balls strung on
wires. Round the person of the Sovereign there was a blaze of gold and
jewels; but even in his most splendid palaces were to be found the filth
and misery of an Irish cabin. So late as the year 1663 the gentlemen of
the retinue of the Earl of Carlisle were, in the city of Moscow, thrust
into a single bedroom, and were told that, if they did not remain
together, they would be in danger of being devoured by rats.

Such was the report which the English legations made of what they had
seen and suffered in Russia; and their evidence was confirmed by the
appearance which the Russian legations made in England. The strangers
spoke no civilised language. Their garb, their gestures, their
salutations, had a wild and barbarous character. The ambassador and the
grandees who accompanied him were so gorgeous that all London crowded to
stare at them, and so filthy that nobody dared to touch them. They came
to the court balls dropping pearls and vermin. It was said that one
envoy cudgelled the lords of his train whenever they soiled or lost
any part of their finery, and that another had with difficulty been
prevented from putting his son to death for the crime of shaving an