readers who were in Russia a few years ago must remember
the famous caricature of "National Music," representing the various
journals as a band of musicians. In the foreground stands the minister
of police as bandmaster, regulating the time with the flourish of his
baton: on his right is the _Russian Invalid_ (the government organ) with
a trombone, on his left the _Military Gazette_ with a kettledrum.
Immediately below, the _Moscow Gazette_, in the person of its celebrated
chief, M. Katkoff, is playing in a reckless, haphazard fashion upon an
enormous bass fiddle. Close by are the two leading comic journals, the
one tinkling a triangle, the other blowing the pandean pipes. Farther on
the _Voice_ (_Golos_) is bawling through a speaking-trumpet, and the
_Bourse Gazette_ flourishing a tambourine, a host of minor performers
being loosely sketched in the background; while far in the distance a
hand outstretched from a cloud of mist is tolling a cracked church-bell,
symbolical of M. Kerzen's famous _Kolokol_ (_Bell_), at that time in the
zenith of its sinister renown; and Russia, as a young lady in a
ball-dress, is vainly attempting, with a look of dismay, to close her
ears against the uproar.

Equally clever and equally audacious is a more recent travesty of the
well-known scene in Dante's _Inferno_ where Bertrand de Born, a noted
sower of sedition, comes forth with his severed head in his hands. In
the Russian version the renowned editor of the _Moscow Gazette_ is seen
hobbling along with a cannon-ball labelled "Police Surveillance" at his
ankle, and carrying by the hair his own head, which is so drawn as to
bear a grotesque likeness to an inkstand with a pen in each ear. The
text of Dante is thus travestied:

And by the hair he with despairing look
Upheld his head, which cried to me, "Oh woe!
Himself is his own inkstand! Thus are two
In one tormented."

The backwardness of the Russian press, attributed to so many different
causes, is really due to one very simple one--the want of readers. Among
a population of whom only nine per cent. can read, and who neither know
nor care what passes in the world of politics, the existence of free
public opinion, or indeed of any opinion at all, can hardly be expected;
and thus, while no country contains such frantic republicans as Russia,
no government is more absolutely secure. Upon that tremendous passivity
the utmost efforts of such men as Netchaieff and Bakounin f