The diplomatic intercourse however was only occasional.

The Czar had no permanent minister here.

We had no permanent minister at Moscow; and even at Archangel we had no consul.
Three or four times in a century extraordinary embassies were sent from Whitehall to the Kremlin and from the Kremlin to Whitehall.
The English embassies had historians whose narratives may still be read with interest.

Those historians described vividly, and sometimes bitterly, the savage ignorance and the squalid poverty of the barbarous country in which they had sojourned.

In that country, they said, there was neither literature nor science, neither school nor college.