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INTRODUCTION.
vii

Revolt," by Edmund Noble; "The Jews of Barnow," by Karl Emil Franzos; "Russia, Political and Social," by L. Tikhanirov; "Called Back," by Hugh Conway; "Dead Souls," by Nikolai V. Gogol; "War and Peace," and "Anna Karenina," by Count Tolstoi; "A Hero of our Time," by M. V. Lermontoff; "Russia before and after the War," by the Author of "Society as it is in St. Petersburg," "The Encyclopaedia Britannica," "Russians of To-day," by the Author of "The Member for Paris;" "The Russian Peasantry," by Stepniak; "Stories from Russia, Siberia, Poland and Circassia," edited by Russell Lee; "Chambers' Encyclopaedia ;" George Kennan's Century papers on "Plains and Prisons of Western Siberia," and "Across the Russian Frontier;" Theodore Child's "Fair of Nijnii-Novogorod" in Harper's Magazine; The Times pamphlet (before mentioned), "Persecutions of the Jews in Russia, 1881;" "Venice," by Yriarte; "Venetian Life," by Howells; "Sketches from Venetian History;" "New Italian Sketches," by J. A. Symonds, and other miscellanous literature. It will be seen that I name these works without any view to classification or order. A foreign criticism upon the Venetian chapter of the story makes it desirable for me to state that the introduction of a Russian interest in the Royal Fêtes on the Grand Canal is pure invention. The pageantry is true enough; the presence of the King and Queen of Italy; the illumination and the rest; but the red gondola and the ghost of the lagoons belong to the region of fancy; though they might easily have formed part of the events of the time. I saw a dead swimmer towed into an English fishing port under very similar circumstances to those which I have described as occurring in the waters of the Adriatic.

With all due apologies for this personal note, I venture to express a hope that my readers may feel an interest in the Milbankes, the Forsyths, the Chetwynds, and the