But it seems to the writer rather that he was guided by a sure instinct when he left untouched the one thing in a Slavonic state, which was really Slavonic.
He and the long line of rulers behind him had been ruling by virtue of an authority established by aliens.

Russia had from the time of Rurik been governed and formed after foreign models.

Peter was at least choosing better models than his predecessors.

If it was an apparent mistake to build a modern, centralized state in the eighteenth century upon a social organization belonging to the eleventh century, it may be that in so doing, an inspired despot builded wiser than he knew.

May it not be that the final regeneration of that land is to come some day, from the leaven of native instincts in her peasantry, which have never been invaded by foreign influences and which have survived all the vicissitudes of a thousand years in Russia?
The _Raskolniks_, composed chiefly of free peasants and the smaller merchant class, had fled in large numbers from these blasphemous changes--some among the Cossacks, and many more to the forests, hiding from persecution and from this reign of Satan.