incts in her peasantry, which have never
been invaded by foreign influences and which have survived all the
vicissitudes of a thousand years in Russia?

The _Raskolniks_, composed chiefly of free peasants and the smaller
merchant class, had fled in large numbers from these blasphemous
changes--some among the Cossacks, and many more to the forests, hiding
from persecution and from this reign of Satan. The more they studied
the Apocalypse the plainer became the signs of the times. Satan was
being let loose for a period. They had been looking for the coming of
Antichrist and now he had come! The man in whom the spirit of Satan
was incarnate was Peter the Great. How else could they explain such
impious demeanor in a Tsar of Russia--except that he was of Satanic
origin, and was the Devil in disguise? By his newly invented census
had he not "numbered the people"--a thing expressly forbidden? And his
new "calendar," transferring September to January, was it not clearly a
trick of Satan to steal the days of the Lord? And his new title
_Imperator_ (Emperor), had it not a diabolic sound? And his order to
shave, to disfigure the image of God! How would Christ recognize his
own at the Last Day?

Hunted like beasts, these people were living in wild communities, dying
often by their own hands rather than yield the point of making the sign
of the cross with two fingers instead of three--2700 at one time
voluntarily perishing in the flames, in a church where they had taken
refuge. Peter put an end to their persecution. They were permitted to
practice their ancient rites in the cities and to wear beards without
molestation, upon condition of paying a double poll-tax.

The millions of _Raskolniks_ in Russia to-day still consider New Russia
a creation of the evil one, and the Tsar as Antichrist. They yield a
sullen compliance--pray for the Tsar, then in private throw away the
handle of door if a heretic has touched it. It is a conservative
Slavonic element which every Tsar since Mikhail Romanoff has had to
deal with.

Not one of the reforms was more odious to the people than the removal
of the capital from Moscow to St. Petersburg. It violated the most
sacred feelings of the nation; and many a soul was secretly looking
forward to the time when there would be no Peter, and they would return
to the shrine of revered associations. But the new city grew in
splendor--a city not of wood, to be the prey of conflagrations like