all times and everywhere the plain has invited the invader, and in order to repel and expel that foreign invader the inhabitants have had to submit to the protecting yoke of a master; they have had to accept a military and centralized monarchy.
Examine on the map the few and scattered historic cities of Russia—Moscow, Novgorod the Great, Nijni Novgorod, Kiev, Kazan—generally situated on the border of the sheltering forest, or at the mouth or on the banks of rivers. The new city or "nov gorod" is generally situated on the lower bank (nijni), but the old city is almost invariably situated on a height, round a Kreml. Each one of those old cities dominating the plain appears to us like a sentinel who watches and like a stronghold which protects, and that Kremlin—which is both an acropolis and a capitol, which is at once a fortress, a church, and a city—tells us by its aspect of the violent destinies of the inhabitants. The whole of Russian history is one continued effort to drive out foreign invasion. In everlasting succession on each frontier arises a new enemy—Tatars of Kazan and of Crimea, Khirgiz of the Volga, Cossacks of the Steppe, Turks, Poles, Lithuanians, Ger-
