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in the use of a fine red enamel with inlaid foliage of
silver, where the shadows of the leaves are brought out
by a device in the process of firing.
In this popular intelligence, exactly the opposite of
the English, the capacity for fructification, intellectual
suppleness, is the predominating talent.
It can easily be understood how a national character
of this kind should be developed in this land above
all others. We see before us an enormously large but
scantily populated country, very backward in education,
and which it is necessary at once to reclaim by new
settlements and to elevate by European culture,—a land
with broad, unoccupied territory, as in the United States,
and at the same time governed in much the same manner
as Turkey.
It is a great winter-land, and the first effect of the cold
is to produce inertia. That is possibly the cause of the
national inclination to indolence, which has obtained its
typical expression in Goncharóf’s novel “Oblómof,”
famous both in and out of Russia, and a monumental
picture of Russian sluggishness. Oblómof is a character
so slack, so tired, so indolent, so disinclined to activity,
that he loses his dignity, his self-respect, his sweetheart
and his fortune, from pure, insurmountable indifference.
The want of sufficiently nutritious food makes the
blood thin, the requirements for protection against the
cold make the temperament nervous. Passivity becomes
a fundamental trait, which is sharply and clearly
manifested in the popular amusements. While the Spaniard
takes his pleasures in bull-fights, either as participant or
spectator; while the Englishman boxes and rows, the
Frenchman fights, the Pole dances,—the Russian finds no
happiness in any kind of sport. His delight is to hear
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