Russian Memories

admired as Madame Novikoff. And yet it may seem just, if it does not seem vain, that a full-hearted tribute should come to he

ut more than that she is one who has really done a great deal in her life. You cannot say of her, as of so m

classes who read Seton Merriman, Russia was a fantastic country of revolutionaries and bloodthirsty police; but fortunately the ruling and upper classes always have had some better vision, they have had the means o

nothing of the nation to which she belongs. That is true, and therein lay the true grace and genius of Madame Novikoff. She was not merel

" He esteemed her. With his whole spiritual nature he exalted her. She was his Beatrice, and to her more than to anyone in his life he brought flowers. Morley has somehow omitted this in his biography of Gladstone. Like so many intellectual Radicals he i

ich is noticeable in the work of Carlyle at that time. A tendency tow

3

was real appreciation of a fine woman. Anthony Froude worshipped at the same shrine, an

ingenious mind, a courtliness, and with all this something of the goddess. She had a presence into which people came. And then she had a visible

seful in promoting peace between the two Empires, she was worth an army in the field

r with revolutionary Russia. This has obtained for her not a few enemies. There are many Russians with strong political views, estimable but misguided men, who have issued in the past such harmful rubbish as Darkest Russia, journals and pamphlets wherein {4} systematically everything to the discredit of the Tsar and his Government

EN GR

sc

, 1916.