is in the sense of
one who is hostile to civilization, not one who is insufficient in it.
But when we pass from the idea of the barbaric to the idea of the
Oriental, the case is even more curious. There is nothing particularly
Tartar in Russian affairs, except the fact that Russia expelled the
Tartars. The Eastern invader occupied and crushed the country for many
years; but that is equally true of Greece, of Spain, and even of
Austria. If Russia has suffered from the East, she has suffered in order
to resist it; and it is rather hard that the very miracle of her escape
should make a mystery about her origin. Jonah may or may not have been
three days inside a fish; but that does not make him a merman. And in
all the other cases of European nations who escaped the monstrous
captivity, we do admit the purity and continuity of the European type.
We consider the old Eastern rule as a wound, but not as a stain.
Copper-colored men out of Africa overruled for centuries the religion
and patriotism of Spaniards. Yet I have never heard that "Don Quixote"
was an African fable on the lines of "Uncle Remus." I have never heard
that the heavy black in the pictures of Velasquez was due to a negro
ancestry. In the case of Spain, which is close to us, we can recognize
the resurrection of a Christian and cultured nation after its age of
bondage. But Russia is rather remote; and those to whom nations are but
names in newspapers can really fancy, like Mr. Baring's friend, that all
Russian churches are "mosques." Yet the land of Turgenev is not a
wilderness of fakirs; and even the fanatical Russian is as proud of
being different from the Mongol as the fanatical Spaniard was proud of
being different from the Moor.

*"Scratch a Russian."*

The town of Reading, as it exists, offers few opportunities for piracy
on the high seas; yet it was the camp of the pirates in Alfred's days. I
should think it hard to call the people of Berkshire half Danish merely
because they drove out the Danes. In short, some temporary submergence
under the savage flood was the fate of many of the most civilized States
of Christendom, and it is quite ridiculous to argue that Russia, which
wrestled hardest, must have recovered least. Everywhere, doubtless, the
East spread a sort of enamel over the conquered countries; but
everywhere the enamel cracked. Actual history, in fact, is exactly
opposite to the cheap proverb invented against the Muscovite. It is not
true to