Any excess of atrocity, beyond a certain margin of tolerance, on the part of any one of its members is likely to work pecuniary mischief to the rest; and then, the bureaucratic conduct of affairs is also, after all, in an uncertain degree subject to some surveillance by popular sentiment at home or abroad.

The like appears not to hold true of the Turkish official organisation.

The difference may be due to a less provident spirit among the latter, as already indicated.

But a different tradition, perhaps an outgrowth of this lack of providence and of the consequent growth of a policy of "frightfulness," may also come in for a share in the outcome; and there is also a characteristic difference in point of religious convictions, which may go some way in the same direction.

The followers of Islam appear on the whole to take the tenets of their faith at their face value--servile, intolerant and fanatic--whereas the Russian official class may perhaps without undue reproach be considered to have on the whole outlived the superstitious conceits to which they yield an expedient _pro forma_ observance.