tinction to the Finno-Russian speech prevailing at Moscow. The significant discrimination made is confirmed by a corresponding procedure on the part of the Muscovites themselves. When appropriating the ethnographic title of their west ern neighbours and recent subjects, the Muscovites did not take it over in its exact form and shape, but significantly altered its mould and general appearance. Slavic Russia always called herself simply Rus; but the princes of the Finnic territory, on espousing the new epithet, adorned it with the classical and eminently European termination of ia. What was Rus at Kieff, with a Latin tinge became Russia (Rossiya) at Moscow. Probably the wish to approximate culture by a classical name, and the policy of displaying independence by a distinct appellation, equally contributed to cause Muscovites to change Russ into Russia when dropping their more ancient Finnish patronymic. The political bearing of this cognominal metamorphosis may be traced down to the present day. The reunion of semi-Finnic Muscovy with a portion of Slavic Russia 250 years ago gave the signal for adopting the denomination of Russ: the more novel plan to establish Russian hegemony over all Slavs has lately encouraged Muscovite politicians to claim absolute Slavonic descent,—a pretension not at all included in the original appropriation of the style and title of Russ.

There is ample indigenous and foreign proof of the national diversity between the two sections of the Russian Empire since the beginning of their recorded history. In the eleventh and twelfth centuries the Rurikian dominion, divided into a number of independent and semi-independent principalities, extended about 700 miles north and south, and 600 miles east and west, comprising about one-fourth of the present area of European Russia. From Nestor, the earliest Russian historiographer, who penned his important chronicles towards the end of the eleventh century, we learn, that at least one-fourth of this original empire, including the principalities of Susdal, Vladimir, and Moscow, was Finnic, not Slavic, in speech. A missionary, scholar, and historian, Nestor carefully separates the Turanic people of Moscow from the Aryans of Kieff, and expressly points out the linguistic diversity of the two. The Nishni Novgorod Chronicler likewise calls the aboriginals of his province Finnish heathens.' Six hundred years later, i.e., towards the end of the seventeenth century, barely two hundred years ago, the German traveller Olearius found the eastern portions of Moscow and Susdal still Finnic in speech. The fact is the more notable, as

Kutko Khan, the last Finno-Tataric ruler of Moscow and Susdal, was dethroned by Ivan Dolgoruki, a member of the Rurikian family, full five hundred years before Olearius visited those parts. Five.

hundred years of Rurikian rule, then, had not sufficed to Slavify Moscow. Towards the middle of the eighteenth century, L'Abbé Chappe d'Auteroche, sent to explore Russia in behalf of the French Government, noted in his diaries the same radical dissimilarity between Slav and Muscovite. It was only in the reign of the Empress Elizabeth Petrovna (1741-1762) that the Mordva Finns of Nishni Novgorod, Simbirsk, Samara, Pensa, Saratoff, Kasan, and Astrakhan were forced to adopt Christianitya ceremony which did not prevent their adhering to pagan rites and foreign dialects till thirty or forty years ago.

The slow progress of Slavification is accounted for by a variety of geographical and political circumstances. Extending from Novgorod to Muscovy, and farther east across the low ridges of the Ural, the Finno-Tatar expanse was too large to be easily dotted with Slavonic settlements. When the Mongol territory was annexed, being a perfect wilderness of immense extent, it presented another obstruction to the progress of Slavonic speech. There were constantly fresh arrivals from Siberia, too; while, owing to the long political division separating the Eastern from the Western, the Finnic from the Slavonic principalities of the Rurikian dynasty, comparatively few Slavs (according to Karamsin and other historians) ever emigrated to the Turanic lands. Neither should

it be overlooked, that the Mongol inroad under Gingiskhan, though it overran, at the same time strengthened, the cognate Finno- Tatar element indigenous in the Eastern territories. In a paper upon Russian literature in the fourteenth century, the famous philologist Bouslayeff calls Rurikian Moscow a semi-Tatar camp, which made war upon Novgorod, Pskoff, Tver, and the north western Slavs generally in the Mongol interest and with Mongol help. In point of fact, it was this semiTataric character which procured Muscovy the countenance of the pure and unmitigated Tatar, i.e., the Mongol, and at the time of the Khanish suzerainty, enabled her to begin the subjugation of the neighbouring Slav, whose speech and name she subsequently proclaimed as her own. Thus strengthened in her Finno-Tataric proclivities even after she had turned the tables upon the common suzerain, and, with the help of the Slav, whom the Mongol permitted her to annex, had defeated and partially annexed the Mongol himself, Muscovy kept her ancient speech. Like many Asiatic tribes, Finno-Tatars indeed possess a wonderful facility in acquiring foreign tongues-a facility which, to a modern European, is next to unintelligible. Notwithstanding, however, this ready aptitude for linguistic denationalisation, which could hardly occur if old ideas were cherished and new ones appreciated in the way they are farther west, the antagonistic

agencies enumerated strongly asserted themselves until within recent times.

Accordingly, Finns, Tatars, and Mongols required a thousand years in the old Rurikian territory, and about half as much in the lands annexed since the overthrow of the Khanates, to attain their present state of more or less advanced Slavification. Passive recipients of everything foreign as they always have been, the Finns, Tatars, and Mongols of European Russia even now largely use their own idiom. conjointly with Slav. To this day East Vladimir, the province east of Moscow, and the centre of old Susdal, knows its own Mordva dialect by the side of Slav. Nay, all over the more northern and eastern sections of the ancient Finnish and Tatar area, though the upper classes are Slav in speech, there remain millions of villagers and nomads with a Slavonic smattering and a marked partiality for Turanian word and phrase. As there are only some four hundred towns in the late Finno-Tatar territory, their Russian aspect, accordingly, neither mitigates nor disproves the Turanian descent of the immense majority of the rustics. In many parts the original tribal names of the Finno-Tataric race, Mer, Mordva, Tcheremiss, Tchuwasch, Votyak, Siryan, Teruchan, Karatai, Vogul, Baskhir, Petscheneg, &c., are still remembered and in use. The very capital of Moscow derives its name from the Moshka tribe, a subdivision of the Mordva.

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