For more than half a century Earl Russell lived in the excitement of political life. He participated in the troubles of Whiggism before 1832, and shared in its triumph after that event. He expounded the principles of the first Reform Bill and lived to see a second carried into law by the Conservative ministry of Lord Derby. Unlimited confidence in his own resources exposed him to many jests from both friend and foe, but he rightly estimated his powers, and they carried him to the highest places in the state. His tragedies and his essays are forgotten, but his works on Fox are among the chief authorities on Whig politics. Earl Russell was twice married, —first, in 1835, to Adelaide, daughter of Mr Thomas Lister, and widow of Thomas, second Lord Ribblesdale, and secondly, in 1841, to Lady Frances Ann Maria, daughter of the second earl of Minto. By the former he had two daughters, by the latter three sons and one daughter. His eldest son, Lord Amberley, predeceased him 9th January 1876.

RUSSELLWilliam Russell, Lord (1639-1683), the third son of Lord Russell, afterwards fifth earl and still later first duke of Bedford, and Lady Anne Carr, daughter of the infamous countess of Somerset, was born September 29, 1639. Nothing is known of his early youth, except that about 1654 he was sent to Cambridge with his elder brother Francis. On leaving the university, the two brothers travelled abroad, visiting Lyons and Geneva, and residing for some while at Augsburg. His account of his impressions is spirited and interesting. He was at Paris in 1658, but had returned to Woburn in December 1659. At the Restoration he was elected for the family borough of Tavistock. For a long while he appears to have taken no part in public affairs, but rather to have indulged in the follies of court life and intrigue; for both in 1663 and 1664 he was engaged in duels, in the latter of which he was wounded. In 1669 he married the second daughter of the earl of Southampton, the widow of Lord Vaughan, thus becoming connected with Shaftesbury, who had married Southampton’s niece. With his wife Russell always lived on terms of the greatest affection and confidence.

It was not until the formation of the “country party,” in opposition to the policy of the Cabal and Charles’s French-Catholic plots, that Russell began to take an active part in affairs. He then joined Cavendish, Birch, Hampden, Powell, Lyttleton, and others in vehement antagonism to the court. With a passionate hatred and distrust of the Catholics, and an intense love of political liberty, he united the desire for ease to Protestant Dissenters. His first speech appears to have been on January 22, 1673, in which he inveighed against the stop of the exchequer, the attack on the Smyrna fleet, the corruption of courtiers with French money, and “the ill ministers aboht the king.”

He also supported the proceedings against the duke of Buckingham. In 1675 he moved an address to the king for the removal of Danby from the royal councils, and for his impeachment. On February 15, 1677, in the debate on the fifteen months’ prorogation, he moved the dissolution of parliament; and in March 1678 he seconded the address praying the king to declare war against France. The enmity of the country party against Danby and James, and their desire for a dissolution and the disbanding of the army, were greater than their enmity to Louis. The French king therefore found it easy to form a temporary alliance with Russell, Hollis, and the opposition leaders, by which they engaged to cripple the king’s power of hurting France, and to compel him to seek Louis’s friendship,— that friendship, however, to be given only on the condition that they in their turn should have Louis’s support for their cherished objects. Russell in particular entered into close communication with Rouvigny, who came over with money for distribution among members of parliament. By the testimony of Barillon, however, it is clear that Russell himself utterly refused to take any part in the intended corruption.

By the wild alarms which culminated in the Popish Terror Russell appears to have been affected more completely than his otherwise sober character would have led people to expect. He threw himself into the party which looked to Monmouth as the representative of Protestant interests, a grave political blunder, though he afterwards was in confidential communication with Orange. On November 4, 1678, he moved an address to the king to remove the duke of York from his person and councils. At the dissolution of the pensionary parliament, he was, in the new elections, returned for Bedfordshire. Danby was at once overthrown, and in April 1679 Russell was one of the new privy council formed by Charles on the advice of Temple. Only six days after this we find him moving for a committee to draw up a bill to secure religion and property in case of a Popish successor. He does not, however, appear to have taken part in the exclusion debates at this time. In June, on the occasion of the Covenanters’ rising in Scotland, he attacked Lauderdale personally in full council.

In January 1680 Russell, along with Cavendish, Capell, Powell, Essex, and Lyttleton, tendered his resignation to the king, which was received by Charles “with all my heart.” On June 16 he accompanied Shaftesbury, when the latter indicted James at Westminster as a Popish recusant; and on October 26 he took the extreme step of moving “how to suppress Popery, and prevent a Popish successor”; while on November 2, now at the height of his influence, he went still further by seconding the motion for exclusion in its most emphatic shape, and on the 19 th carried the bill to the House of Lords for their concurrence. The limitation scheme he opposed, on the ground that monarchy under the conditions expressed in it would be an absurdity. The statement, made by Echard alone, that he joined in opposing the indulgence shown to Lord Strafford by Charles in dispensing with the more horrible parts of the sentence of death—an indulgence afterwards shown to Russell himself—is entirely unworthy of credence. On December 18 he moved to refuse supplies until the king passed the Exclusion Bill. The Prince of Orange having come over at this time, there was a tendency on the part of the opposition leaders to accept his endeavours to secure a compromise on the exclusion question. Russell, however, refused to give way a hair’s breadth.

On March 26, 1681, in the parliament held at Oxford, Russell again seconded the Exclusion Bill. Upon the dissolution he retired into privacy at his country seat of Stratton in Hampshire. It was, however, no doubt at his wish that his chaplain wrote the Life of Julian the Apos tate, in reply to Dr Hickes’s sermons, in which the lawfulness of resistance in extreme cases was defended. In the wild schemes of Shaftesbury after the election of Tory sheriffs for London in 1682 he had no share; upon the violation of the charters, however, in 1683, he began seriously to consider as to the best means of resisting the Government, and on one occasion attended a meeting at which treason, or what might be construed as treason, was talked. Monmouth, Essex, Hampden, Sidney, and Howard of Escrick were the principal of those who met to consult. On the breaking out of the Rye Plot, of which neither he, Essex, nor Sidney had the slightest knowledge, he was accused by informers of promising his assistance to raise an insurrection and compass the death of the king. Refusing to attempt to escape, ho was brought before the council, when his attendance at the meeting referred to was charged against him. He was sent on June 26, 1683, to the Tower, and, looking upon himself as a dying man, betook himself wholly to preparation for death. Monmouth offered to appear to take his trial, if thereby he could help Russell, and Essex refused to abscond for fear of injuring his friend’s chance of escape. Before a committee of the council Russell, on June 28, acknowledged his presence at the meeting, but denied all knowledge of the proposed insurrection. He reserved his defence, however, until his trial. He would probably have saved his life but for the perjury of Lord Howard. The suicide of Essex, the news of which was brought into court during the trial, was quoted as additional evidence against him, as pointing to the certainty of Essex’s guilt. On July 19 he was tried at the Old Bailey, his wife assisting him in his defence. Evidence was given by an informer that, while at Shaftesbury’s hiding-place in Wapping, Russell had joined in the proposal to seize the king’s guard, a charge indignantly denied by him in his farewell paper, and that he was one of a committee of six appointed to prepare the scheme for an insurrection. Howard, too, expressly declared that Russell had urged the entering into communications with Argyll in Scotland. Howard’s perjury is clear from other witnesses, but the evidence was accepted. Russell spoke with spirit and dignity in his own defence, and, in especial, vehemently denied that he had ever been party to a design so wicked and so foolish as those of the murder of the king and of rebellion. It will be observed that the legality of the trial, in so far as the jurors were not properly qualified and the law of treason was shamefully strained, was denied in the Act of 1 William and Mary which annulled the attainder. Hallam maintains that the only overt act of treason proved against Russell was his concurrence in the project of a rising at Taunton, which he denied, and which, Ramsay being the only witness, was not sufficient to warrant a conviction.

Russell was sentenced to die. Many attempts were made to save his life. The old earl of Bedford offered £50,000 or £100,000, and Monmouth, Legge, Lady Ranelagh, and Rochester added their intercessions. Russell himself, in petitions to Charles and James, offered to live abroad if his life were spared, and never again to meddle in the affairs of England. He refused, however, to yield to the influence of Burnet and Tillotson, who endeavoured to make him grant the unlawfulness of resistance, although it is more than probable that compliance in this would have saved his life. He drew up, with Burnet’s assistance, a paper containing his apology, and he wrote to the king a letter, to be delivered after his death, in which he asked Charles’s pardon for any wrong he had done him. A suggestion of escape from Lord Cavendish he refused. He behaved with his usual quiet cheerfulness during his stay in the Tower, spending his last day on earth as he had intended to spend the following Sunday if he had reached it. He received the sacrament from Tillotson, and Burnet twice preached to him. Having supped with his wife, the parting from whom was his only great trial, he slept peacefully, and spent the last morning in devotion with Burnet. He went to the place of execution in Lincoln’s Inn Fields with perfect calmness, which was preserved to the last. He died on July 21, 1683, in the forty-fourth year of his age.

A true and moderate summing up of his character will be found in his Life, by Lord John Russell.

RUSSELL John Scott (1808-1882), was born in 1808 near Glasgow, a “son of the manse,” and was at first destined for the ministry. But this intention on his father’s part was changed in consequence of the boy’s early leanings towards practical science. He attended in succession the universities of St Andrews, Edinburgh, and Glasgow,— taking his degree in the last-named at the age of sixteen. After spending a couple of years in workshops, he settled in Edinburgh as a lecturer on science, and soon collected large classes. In 1832-33 he was engaged to give the natural philosophy course at the university, the chair having] become vacant by the death of Leslie. In the following year he began that remarkable series of observations on waves whose results, besides being of very great scientific importance, were the chief determining factor of his subsequent practical career. Having been consulted as to the possibility of applying steam-navigation to the Edinburgh and Glasgow Canal, he replied that the question could not be answered without experiments, and that ho was willing to undertake such if a portion of the canal were placed at his disposal. The results of this inquiry are to be found in the Transactions of the Royal Society of Edinburgh (vol. xiv.), and in the British Association Reports (seventh meeting). We need not say more than that the existence of the long wave, or wave of translation, as well as many of its most important features, were here first recognized, and (to give one very simple idea of the value of the investigation) that it was clearly pointed out why there is a special rate, depending on the depth of the water, at which a canal-boat can be towed at the least expenditure of effort by the horse. The elementary mathematical theory of the long wave is very simple, and was soon supplied by commentators on Scott Russell’s work; a more complete investigation has been since given by Stokes; and the subject may be considered äs certainly devoid of any special mystery. Russell held an opposite opinion, and it led him to many extraordinary and groundless speculations, some of which have been published in a posthumous volume, The Wave of Translation (1885). His observations led him to propose and experiment on a new system of shaping vessels, which is known as the w ave system. This culminated in the building of the enormous and unique “Great Eastern,” of which it has been recently remarked by a competent authority that “it is probable that, if a new ‘ Great Eastern ’ were now to be built, the system of construction employed by Mr Scott Russell would be followed exactly.”

Though his fame will rest chiefly on the two great steps we have just mentioned, Scott Russell’s activity and ingenuity displayed themselves in many other fields,— steam-coaches for roads, improvements in boilers and in marine engines, the immense iron dome of the Vienna exhibition, cellular double bottoms for iron ships, Ac. Along with Mr Stafford Northcote (now Lord Iddesleigh), he was joint secretary of the Great Exhibition of 1851; and he was one of the chief founders of the Institution of Naval Architects, from the twenty-third volume of whose Transactions we have extracted much of what is stated above. Russell contributed the articles Steam, Steam-Engine, Steam Navigation, &c., to the 7th edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica. He died at Ventnor. June 8, 1882.

Kara Seas—and the northern Pacific, that is, the Seas of Behring, Okhotsk, and Japan, bound it in the north and east. The Baltic, with its two deep indentations, the Gulfs of Bothnia and Finland, limits it on the north-west; and two sinuous lines of frontier separate it respectively from Sweden and Norway on the north-west and from Prussia, Austria, and Roumania on the west. The southern frontier is still unsettled, and has never remained unaltered for so many as twenty consecutive years. Quite recently it has been pushed southwards, on both the western and the eastern shores of the Black Sea, parts of Roumania and Asia Minor having been annexed in 1878. In Asia, beyond the Caspian, the southern boundary of the empire remains vague; the advance into the Turcoman Steppes and Afghan Turkestan and on the Pamir plateau is still in progress. Bokhara and Khiva, though represented as vassal khanates, are in reality mere dependencies of Russia. An approximately settled frontier-line begins only farther east, where the Russian and the Chinese empires meet on the borders of Eastern Turkestan, Mongolia, and Manchuria. But even there, the province of Kuldja has recently been occupied by Russia, and again restored to China; while in eastern Mongolia, the great overland route from Kiakhta to Peking, via Urga, is in fact in the hands of Russia, and it is difficult to predict how far Russian influence may extend should circumstances lead it to seek a footing on the thinly-peopled plateaus of Central Asia.

Russia has no oceanic possessions, and has abandoned those she owned in last century; her islands are mere appendages of the mainland to which they belong. Such are the Aland archipelago, Hochland, Tiitters, Dagö, and Osel in the Baltic Sea; Nova Zembla, with Kolguefi and Vaigatch, in the Barents Sea; the Solovetsky Islands in the White Sea; the New Siberian archipelago, and the small group of the Medvyezhii Islands off the Siberian coast; the Commandor Islands off Kamchatka; the Shantar Islands and Saghalin in the Sea of Okhotsk. The Aleutian archipelago was sold to the United States in 1867, together with Alaska, and in 1874 the Kurile Islands were ceded to Japan.

A vast variety of physical features is obviously to be expected in a territory like this, which comprises on the one side the cotton and silk regions of Turkestan and Transcaucasia, and on the other the moss and lichen-clothed Arctic tundras and the Verkhoyansk Siberian pole of cold —the dry Transcaspian deserts and the regions watered by the monsoons on the coasts of the Sea of Japan. Still, if the border regions, that is, two narrow belts in the north and south, be left out of account, a striking uniformity of physical feature prevails. High plateaus, like those of Pamir (the “Roof of the World”) or of Armenia, and high mountain chains like the snow-clad summits of the Caucasus, the Alay, the Thian-Shan, the Sayan, are met with only on the outskirts of the empire.

Viewed broadly by the physical geographer, it appears as occupying the territories to the north-west of that great plateau-belt of the old continent—the backbone of Asia —which spreads with decreasing height and width from the high tableland of Tibet and Pamir to the lower plateaus of Mongolia, and thence north-eastwards through the Vitim region to the furthest extremity of Asia. It may be said to consist of the immense plains and flat lands which extend between the plateau-belt and the Arctic Ocean, including also the series of parallel chains and hilly spurs which skirt the plateau-belt on the north-west. It extends over the plateau itself, and crosses it, beyond Lake Baikal only.

This belt—the oldest geological continent of Asia— being unfit for agriculture and for the most part unsuited for permanent settlement, while the oceanic slopes of it have from the dawn of history been occupied by a dense population, has long prevented Slavonian colonization from reaching the Pacific. Russians happened to cross it in the 17th century, only in its narrowest and most northerly part, thus reaching the Pacific on the foggy and frozen coasts of the Sea of Okhotsk; and two centuries elapsed ere, after colonizing the depressions of the plateau around Lake Baikal, the Russians crossed the plateau in a more genial zone and descended to the Pacific by the Amur, rapidly spreading farther south, up the nearly uninhabited Usuri, to what is now the Gulf of Peter the Great. In the south-western higher portions of the plateau-belt the empire has only recently planted its foot on the Pamir; as we write, it is endeavouring to get command of the lower passages which give an easy access to the Afghan portion of the plateau; while already, within the present century, it has established itself firmly on the plateaus of Armenia.

A broad belt of hilly tracts—in every respect alpine in character, and displaying the same variety of climate and organic life as alpine tracts usually do—skirts the plateau-belt throughout its length on the north and north-west, forming an intermediate region between the plateaus and the plains. The Caucasus, the Elburz, the Kopet-dagh, and Paropamisus, the intricate and imperfectly known network of mountains west of the Pamir, the Thian-Shan and Ala-tau mountain regions, and farther north-east the Altai, the still unnamed complex of Minusinsk mountains, the intricate mountain-chains of Sayan, with those of the Olekma, Vitim, and Aldan, all of which are ranged en échelon— the former from north-west to south-east, and the others from south-west to north-east—all of these belong to one immense alpine belt bordering that of the plateaus. These have long been known to Russian colonists, who, seeking to escape religious prosecutions and exactions by the state, early penetrated into and rapidly pushed their small settlements up the better valleys of these tracts, and continued to spread everywhere as long as they found no obstacles in the shape of a former population or in unfavourable climatic conditions.

As for the flat-lands which extend from the Alpine hill-foots to the shores of the Arctic Ocean, and assume the character either of dry deserts in the Aral-Caspian depression, or of low table-lands in central Russia and eastern Siberia, of lake-regions in north-west Russia and Finland, or of marshy prairies in western Siberia, and of

tundras in the far north,—their monotonous surfaces are diversified by only a few, and these for most part low, hilly tracts. Recently emerged from the Post-Pliocene sea, or cleared of their ice-sheet coverings, they preserve the very same features over immense stretches; and the few portions that rise above the general elevation have more the character of broad and gentle swellings than of mountain-chains. Of this class are the swampy plateaus of the Kola peninsula, gently sloping southwards to the lake-regions of Finland and north-west Russia; the λ'aldai table-lands, where all the great rivers of Russia take their rise; the broad and gently-sloping meridional belt of the Ural Mountains; and lastly, the Taimyr, Tunguska, and Verkhoyansk ridges in Siberia, which do not reach the snow-line, notwithstanding their sub-Arctic position. As to the picturesque Bureya mountains on the Amur, the forest-clothed Sikhota-alin on the Pacific, and the volcanic chains of Kamchatka, they belong to quite another orographical world; they are the border-ridges of the terraces by which the great plateau-belt descends to the depths of the Pacific Ocean.

It is owing to these leading orographical features— divined by Carl Ritter, but only within the present day revealed by geographical research—that so many of the great rivers of the old continent are comprised within the limits of the Russian empire. Taking rise on the plateau-belt, or in its Alpine outskirts, they flow, first, like the upper Rhone and Rhine, along high longitudinal valleys formerly filled up with great lakes; next they find their way through the rocky walls; and finally they enter the lowlands, where they become navigable, and, describing great curves to avoid here and there the minor plateaus and hilly tracts, they bring into water-communication with one another places thousands of miles apart. The double river-systems of the Volga and Kama, the Obi and Irtish, the Angara and Yenisei, the Lena and Vitim on the Arctic slope, the Amur and Sungari on the Pacific slope, are instances. They were the true channels of Russian colonization.

A broad depression,—the Aral-Caspian desert—has arisen where the plateau-belt has reached its greatest height and suddenly changes its direction from a northwestern into a north-eastern one; this desert is now filled only to a small extent by the salt waters of the Caspian, Aral, and Balkash inland seas; but it bears unmistakable traces of having been during Post-Pliocene times an immense inland basin. There the Volga, the Ural, the Sir Daria, and the Oxus discharge their waters without reaching the ocean, but continue to bring life to the rapidly drying Transcaspian Steppes, or connect by their river network, as the Volga does, the most remote parts of European Russia.

The above-described features of the physical geography of the empire explain the relative uniformity of this wide territory, in conjunction with the variety of physical features on its outskirts. They explain also the rapidity of the expansion of Slavonic colonization over these thinly peopled regions; and they also throw light upon the internal cohesion of the empire, which cannot fail to strike the traveller as he crosses this immense territory, and finds everywhere the same dominating race, the same features of life. In fact, in their advance from the basins of the Volkhoff and Dnieper to the foot of the Altai and Sayan Mountains, that is, along nearly a quarter of the earth’s circumference, the Russian colonizers could always find the same physical conditions, the same forests and prairies as they had left at home, the same facilities for agriculture, only modified somewhat by minor topographical features. New conditions of climate and soil, and consequently new cultures and civilizations, the Russians met with, in their expansion towards the south and east, only beyond the

Caucasus, in the Aral-Caspian region, and in the basin of the Usuri on the Pacific coast. Favoured by these conditions, the Russians not only conquered northern Asia— they colonized it.

The total population of the Russian empire was stated at 102,000,000 by estimates made in 1878-82; but it is multiplying rapidly, and, as the surplus of births over deaths reaches nearly 1,250,000 every year, it must now be somewhat more than 106 millions.

Within the empire a very great diversity of nationalities is comprised, due to the amalgamation or absorption by the Slavonian race of a variety of Ural-Altaic stems, of Turco-Tartars, Turco-Mongolians, and various Caucasian stems. Statistics as to their relative strength are still very imperfect, and their ethnical relations have not as yet been completely determined; but, considered broadly, they may be classified as follows:—

A. The Letto-Slavonians comprise ( a ) the Lithuanians and Letts on the lower Niemen and Düna, and ( b ) the Slavonians, that is, the Poles on the Vistula and Niemen and the Russians—Great, Little, and White—whose proper abodes are in European Russia, south of a line drawn from the Gulf of Finland to the middle Volga. Spreading from this region towards the north-east, east, and south-east, they have colonized north-east Russia, the Ural region, Caucasus, Siberia, and large parts of the Kirghiz Steppe,—the leading feature of their colonization having always been penetration in compact masses among the original inhabitants. Thus, on northern Caucasus the Russians (chiefly Little Russians) already constitute a compact rural population of nearly 1,500,000, that is, about a quarter of the total population of Caucasia. In Western Siberia the Great Russians already number more than 2,300,000 agriculturists, constituting four-fifths of the entire population; in Eastern Siberia they number more than 1,000,000, that is, probably more than the original inhabitants; and the Kirghiz Steppe has also begun rapidly to be colonized within the last twenty years. It is only in the more densely peopled Turkestan, and in the recently annexed Transcaspian region, that Russian settlers continue to bear but a small proportion to the natives (who are more than 4,600,000 strong). The Slavonians altogether number more than 75,000,000, of which number 5,600,000 are Poles.

Swedes (310,000), Germans (1,240,000), Roumanians, Serbs, <kc., may number altogether about 2,500,000.

B. A great variety of populations belonging to the Caucasian race, but not yet well classified, some of which are considered to be remainders of formerly larger nationalities pushed aside into the mountain tracts during their migrations, are met with on Caucasus. Such are the Georgians, Ossetes, Lesghians, who fall little short of 2,500,000, and the Armenians, about 1,000,000.

C. The Iranian branch is represented by some 130,000 Persians and Kurds in Caucasia and Transcaucasia, and by Tajiks in Turkestan, mixed with Turco-Tartar Sarts. The nomad Tsigans, or Gipsies, numbering nearly 12,000, may be mentioned under this head.

D. The Semitic branch consists of upwards of 3,000,000 Jews in Poland, in west and south-west Russia, and on Caucasus and in the towns of Central Asia, and of a few thousand Karaite Jews.

E. The Ural-Altaic branch comprises two great subdivisions—the Finnish and the Turco-Tartarian stems, mixed to some extent with Mongolians. The former (see below) occupy, broadly speaking, a wide stretch of territory to the north of the Slavonians, from the Baltic to the Yenisei, and include the Baltic Finns, the Northern Finns, the Volga Finns, and the Ugrians. The Russians have already spread among the last two in compact masses,

and, while some stems, like the Ostiaks, are rapidly disappearing, others, like the Mordvinians, Permians, &c., are losing their national character, and becoming assimilated to the Russians. The West Finns alone have fully maintained their national features, and happen to have constituted a nationality developing into a separate state.

The Turco-Tartars (nearly 10,000,000) comprise the Tartars, the Bashkirs, the Kirghizes, the Uzbegs, and the Turcomans of the Aral-Caspian region, the Yakuts on the Lena, and a variety of smaller stems in East Russia and Caucasia. They occupy another broad belt which extends from the Aral-Caspian depression to the eastern parts of the Arctic coast.

F. The Mongol-Manchurian stems of the Tunguses, and the Golds, and the Manchus proper, come next, occupying the eastern parts of the mountain-belt and the plateau itself in Siberia, the Tunguses also projecting north-westwards, so as to separate the Yakuts from their southern Turkish brethren. Small stems of the same family also pass a nomad existence in the basin of the Amur. They are rapidly diminishing in number, and can hardly be estimated at more than 50,000.

G. The Mongolian branch is represented by nearly half a million of Kalmucks on the Altai outskirts of the great plateau and around the Caspian, and by nearly 250,000 Buriats in and around the Baikal depression.

H. A variety of stems, not yet well classified, are met with on the Pacific coasts. Such are the Tchuktchies, the Kamchadales, the Koryaks in the north-east, the Ghilyaks on the Amur, and the Ainos in Saghalin.

Statistics of the relative strength of different nationalities in the Russian empire, which, however, must be considered only as rough estimates, are given (in millions) in the following table (I.) :— [table]

The area and population of the various divisions of the Russian empire are given in the following table :— [table]

[table]

Of the areas given in the table, the following (298,636 square miles) are occupied by internal waters (larger lakes and estuaries) :—

The islands included in the above statement have the following .areas (total 91,182 square miles) :— [table]

The Russian empire falls into two great subdivisions, the European and the Asiatic, the latter of which, representing an aggregate of nearly 6,500,000 square miles, with a population of only 16 million inhabitants, may be considered as held by colonies. The European dominions comprise European Russia, Finland, which is in fact a separate nationality treated to some extent as an allied state, and Poland, whose very name has been erased from official documents, but which nevertheless continues to pursue its own development. The Asiatic dominions comprise the following great subdivisions :—Caucasia (q.v.), under a separate governor-general; the Transcaspian region, which is under the governor-general of Caucasus; the Kirghiz Steppes; Turkestan (q.v.), under separate governors-general; Western Siberia and Eastern Siberia (see Siberia); and the Amur region, which last comprises also the Pacific coast region and Kamchatka (see Kamchatka and Maritime Province). The administrative subdivisions, with their populations, as estimated for 1882 for European Russia, Poland, and Caucasus, 1881 for Finland, and 1878-82 for the remainder (no regular census having been taken since 1858), are shown above in Table II.

The empire contains only twelve cities with a population exceeding 100,000:—St Petersburg, 929,090 (1881); Moscow, 753,469 (1884); Warsaw, 406,260 (1882); Odessa, 217,000(1882); Riga, 169,330 (1881); Kharkoff, 159,660 (1883); Kazan, 140,730 (1883); Kishineff, 130,000; Kieff, 127,250 (1874); Lodz, 113,146, in Poland (1884); Saratoff, 112,428 (1882); Tiflis, 104,020 (1883); and Tashkend, 100,000. According to the most recent returns Vilna, Orel, Rostoff, Astrakhan, Nikolaieff, Dünaburg, Tula, Samara, Taganrog, Kherson, Nijni-Novgorod, Berditcheff, Bobruisk, Zhitomir, Minsk, Vitebsk, Elisabetgrad, Reval, and Voronezh had from 94,000 to 50,000 inhabitants, while 61 towns more in European Russia, Finland, and Poland, and 20 in the Asiatic dominions, had from 50,000 to 20,000 inhabitants. The number of towns above 10,000 is considerable, but they are mostly mere administrative centres; many villages have greater importance.

Only 9,263,000 (or 9 per cent.) of the aggregate population of Russia inhabit towns, the number of which is 601 in the 50 Russian governments. The great number of the Russian towns are mere villages; their inhabitants depend on agriculture, and the houses are mostly built of wood, only 127,000 out of about 787,000 houses in towns being built of stone. Of the 68,600,000 who in 1882 formed the rural population of European Russia the greater part were settled in 555,278 villages, almost entirely built of wood; nearly one-seventieth of the houses are destroyed by fire yearly (164,400 out of 10,649,000 in 1882).

Russia is an absolute and strongly centralized monarchy. The primary unit of state organization is the village community, or mir. A number of such communities are united into volosts, whose peasant inhabitants elect an elder (yolost-noy starshina) and a peasants’ tribunal ( yolostnoy sud). Placed, however, under the uncontrolled rule of a state official—the mirovoyposrednik— and of the police, the elder of the volost and his clerk have become mere organs of the local police and tax-gatherers, while the tribunal of the volost is at the mercy both of influential land-proprietors and of the wealthier peasants or merchants. The system of local self-government is continued in the elective district and provincial assemblies—the zemstvo— on the one hand, and on the other in the elective justices of the peace (mirovoy sudia), whose periodical gatherings (mirovoy syezd) are courts of appeal against the decisions of the individual justices. But neither of these institutions—and least of all the zemstvo—is capable of acquiring the necessary independence. The zemstvos—one for each district, and another for the province—consist of a representative assembly (zemskoye Sobraniye) and an executive Gemskaya τιprava) nominated by the former. The sobraniye consists of three classes of delegates :—the landed proprietors (all nobles possessing more than 590 acres, and delegates from the remainder, along with delegates from the clergy in their capacity of landed proprietors); representatives of the merchants, artisans, and urban population; and representatives of the peasants, indirectly elected,—matters being usually so adjusted that this class is less numerous than the aggregate of the other two. In theory the zemstvos have large powers in relation to the incidence of taxation, as well as in matters affecting education, public health, roads, &c. But in reality they are for the most part compelled to limit themselves to the adjustment of the state taxation, which is so high that new taxes for education, sanitary purposes, and so on, must necessarily be very limited. Moreover, the decisions of the zemstvos are jealously controlled by the representative of the central Government,— the governor,—and promptly annulled whenever they manifest...