They were permitted to practice their ancient rites in the cities and to wear beards without molestation, upon condition of paying a double poll-tax.
The millions of _Raskolniks_ in Russia to-day still consider New Russia a creation of the evil one, and the Tsar as Antichrist.

They yield a sullen compliance--pray for the Tsar, then in private throw away the handle of door if a heretic has touched it.

It is a conservative Slavonic element which every Tsar since Mikhail Romanoff has had to deal with.
Not one of the reforms was more odious to the people than the removal of the capital from Moscow to St.Petersburg.

It violated the most sacred feelings of the nation; and many a soul was secretly looking forward to the time when there would be no Peter, and they would return to the shrine of revered associations.

But the new city grew in splendor--a city not of wood, to be the prey of conflagrations like Moscow; but of stone, the first Russia had yet possessed.