f a dim, remote
distance the road comes towards one, and while nothing save the sky and
the light clouds through which the moon is cleaving her way seem halted,
the brief glimpses wherein one can discern nothing clearly have in them
a pervading touch of mystery. Ah, troika, troika, swift as a bird, who
was it first invented you? Only among a hardy race of folk can you have
come to birth--only in a land which, though poor and rough, lies spread
over half the world, and spans versts the counting whereof would leave
one with aching eyes. Nor are you a modishly-fashioned vehicle of the
road--a thing of clamps and iron. Rather, you are a vehicle but shapen
and fitted with the axe or chisel of some handy peasant of Yaroslav.
Nor are you driven by a coachman clothed in German livery, but by a man
bearded and mittened. See him as he mounts, and flourishes his whip, and
breaks into a long-drawn song! Away like the wind go the horses, and
the wheels, with their spokes, become transparent circles, and the
road seems to quiver beneath them, and a pedestrian, with a cry of
astonishment, halts to watch the vehicle as it flies, flies, flies on
its way until it becomes lost on the ultimate horizon--a speck amid a
cloud of dust!

And you, Russia of mine--are not you also speeding like a troika which
nought can overtake? Is not the road smoking beneath your wheels, and
the bridges thundering as you cross them, and everything being left in
the rear, and the spectators, struck with the portent, halting to wonder
whether you be not a thunderbolt launched from heaven? What does that
awe-inspiring progress of yours foretell? What is the unknown force
which lies within your mysterious steeds? Surely the winds themselves
must abide in their manes, and every vein in their bodies be an
ear stretched to catch the celestial message which bids them, with
iron-girded breasts, and hooves which barely touch the earth as
they gallop, fly forward on a mission of God? Whither, then, are
you speeding, O Russia of mine? Whither? Answer me! But no answer
comes--only the weird sound of your collar-bells. Rent into a thousand
shreds, the air roars past you, for you are overtaking the whole world,
and shall one day force all nations, all empires to stand aside, to give
you way!

1841.

PART II

CHAPTER I

Why do I so persistently paint the poverty, the imperfections of Russian
lif