tered conditions of modern life, it main- | the Middle Ages and in later days, it is tains unimpaired the ancient standard of lofty courage, of unstinted hospitality, and never-wearying zeal. There are recluses who carry asceticism, in the sense of selfdenial, as far as the brothers of St. Bernard; but there are none who, by foregoing their own delights, contribute so much to the welfare of their fellow-men. Few examples of sacrifice can surpass that of the young man who leaves the comfort of the pleasant valleys of Savoy and consecrates deliberately what measure of health and energy is meted out to him, to live on the lonely crest-more than eight thousand feet above the level of the sea — where summer, if it can be said to come at all, only dwells capriciously for three months in the year, and all the remaining nine are claimed by winter in its harshest and most gloomy form. It is not merely a question of altitude; many a high place, as Davos Platz shows, may be genial enough under the wintry sun; but the Hospice of St. Bernard has a bad pre-eminence, even among its peers, for the inclemency of its climate. The monastery is there because there lies the duty that the monks have vowed to fulfil. The Pass of Great St. Bernard does not compare in point of picturesqueness with many of its famous brother passes. The St. Gothard is incomparably finer; and the Simplon and the Cenis are more interesting. But in the fascination which historical association gives, it vies with the most romantic. The Romans used it as their highway northwards a century before the Christian

era.

The military importance of the road in imperial times is shown in the name of the town which may be regarded as the southern terminus of the strictly Alpine road. In the modern Aosta, a part of the old Latin name of the station, Augusta Prætoria Salossorum, is preserved. Long before the decline and fall of Rome its maintenance was an item in the military budgets of the emperors; and when the barbarians were masters of Italy, they used it in their turn. The Plan de Jupiter, a level space in the neighborhood, was the site of the temple of Jupiter Pœninus famous, if for nothing else, for the fact that it has given to the range the name of Pennine Alps, by which it is known to modern mapmakers. To pass over all the incidents which made the pass famous in

enough to recall that Napoleon crossed the barrier in 1800 with thirty thousand men; that the monastery was garrisoned (like many another sacred place) by the soldiers of France; and that some of the fiercest fighting of the campaign took place among the snowy wastes and in the bleak defiles. There is to this day a singular charm about the crossing of these giant walls, which separate the cold Teutonic lands of the north from the verdure and softness of the Italian south. The very hardships of the passage accentuate the sense of delicious surprise. The railways which have pierced the St. Gothard and the Cenis have, of course, destroyed for this unfortunate generation the whole imaginative pleasure. You go in at one end of a tunnel and you come out at another; you have your refreshments, and continue your journey. That is all. But it was not so with the scholar or the adventurer of medieval days. When the horrors and the dangers, both of which were very real, were surmounted, there burst upon him as a recompensing delight that first glimpse of the world of Latin romance, if he were coming from the German outer land, or that first look at the regions beyond the mountains if he were on his way from Rome or Florence to see what fortune would yield at Paris or at Bâle. For the men of those days the monastery was an institution of the highest political and international importance. Nobly did its inmates discharge their functions, and most generously, let us add, did the great ones of Europe attest their admiration of what they did and equip them for carrying on the noble work. Things have changed sadly since then, even for the monks of St. Bernard. The noble endowments have been curtailed, or, as blunt people would say, confiscated. travellers on whom it was once a pious exercise to bestow alms and the grace of timely shelter, have been succeeded by a horde of mere sightseers, who come and go, enjoy their meals, and grumble about their beds, and pass on, leaving to their homely entertainers by way of thank-offering hardly as much as would cover the bill for the worst night's lodging in the sorriest hotel. Still the work does not languish; nor has the necessity for heroism passed away.

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From The Contemporary Review. MYSTICAL PESSIMISM IN RUSSIA.

I.

PESSIMISM is a characteristic feature of all those epochs of history in which the mass of human suffering is at a maximum, and moral aspirations are entirely out of harmony with social conditions. Involved in an unequal conflict with their surroundings, men come to regard life as a terrible burden, and seek refuge in suicide, or in strange, mystical, and extravagant theories of society.

Russia is now passing through such a period; and it is the resultant pessimism and poetic melancholy which have at tracted so much interest in Europe during the past few years. A society in which the most remarkable writers fall into mystico-moral asceticism, like Count Leo Tolstoi, or into orthodox fanaticism like Dostoievsky, or into Panslavist mysticism like Aksakoff, is an unhealthy society a society which has, in a certain degree, lost its intellectual equilibrium.

the Skoptsy (mutilators), permitted themselves to be drawn away by their teaching and rites, built chapels, carried on a propa ganda, and gave asylum to a crowd of fanatics. People of all ranks of society took part in the meetings of the sectaries with unrestrained dancing, contortions, and hysterical sobbings.

The most fanatical and barbarous section of the Christs-the Skoptsy - has made a great number of proselytes even quite lately among the class of rich tradespeople in St. Petersburg and MosCOW. This fascination for the sect of the Skoptsy formed the point of departure for a series of sects and confraternities which gathered round them a large mass of people. Such a sect was that of Colonel Doobowits, which, towards the end of 1850, spread through the higher circles of society and preached mortification of the flesh; such was also, later on, the sect of the Apostles of the Last Days, preaching the end of the world; and lastly, the pietistic sect of Lord Radstock, which has in recent days made a crowd of converts, among whom are two very zealous apostles, the celebrated Richard Pashkoff and Aaron Korff, both exiles from their country. Nor can the celebrated Russian novelist, Count Leo Tolstoi, be passed over in silence, as the apostle of a new Christian religion based on social mysticism. He has attracted a considerable portion of that Russian society which, owing to the entire lack of political and social careers in Russia, seeks a sphere in various mystico-social theories. To suffer wrong without resistance, not to judge, not to kill, — such are the doctrines preached by Count Tolstoi. Therefore there must be no more tribunals, no more The spread of Freemasonry and of armies, no more prisons. The law of the mystical pietism in Russia at the end of world is to struggle for existence; the the last and the beginning of the present law of Christ is to sacrifice existence for century is well known. The archives of others. The Turk, the German, will not the tribunals show that princes and noble attack us if we are Christians if we do ladies, officers, state officials, and simple them good. Happiness and morality will serfs joined the sects of the Christs only be possible when all men shall have and the Skoptsy. The most aristocratic communion in the doctrines of Jesus houses were open to the apostles of these Christ, shall return to the natural life, to mystical sects. Noble families, such as community of goods. Towns must be those of the Princes Meshchersky, Golo- deserted, the people set free from the fac vine, Sheremetieff, and others, protected | tories, all must return to the country and

Russian life offers as vast a field to the psychologist as to the philosopher. In it are to be found rapid revulsions, from despairing materialism to sombre mysticism or to spiritualism. To-day educated people bow before the peasant, make him their ideal, carry themselves off in crowds into the country so as to share the labors and privations of the common people; and then to-morrow they suddenly abandon him and betake themselves enthusiastically to revolutionary conspiracies. Later on comes the turn of Slavophile chauvin ism, of the abstract cloudy ideas of socialism; and again suddenly faith in yesterday's ideal vanishes, and all is apathy and despair.

labor there with their own hands, each | are frequent, and men and women scream man having, as his ideal, himself to pro-like demoniacs, are convulsed, throw vide for all his wants. themselves on the ground, announce the end of the world, quit their fields and flee to desert places, where they seek solitude and salvation.

This tendency to mysticism has been demonstrated during the last twenty years by the successes of spiritism in the larger cities of Russia, such as St. Petersburg, Odessa, Moscow, Kiev, etc. Spiritist societies are always increasing in number; table-turning séances, where the spirits of ancient poets, warriors, kings, sages, are summoned to appear, attract numbers of people. Faith in sorcery and in the supernatural reigns still among all classes of society. In all the large towns one meets with a great number of people who gain their livelihood by predicting the future, or by practising chiromancy. A correspondent tells of a simple peasant woman in the province of Kostroma who enjoys immense popularity as a prophetess. The people of the neighboring towns and villages have the profoundest respect for her, and never undertake anything fresh without consulting her. Young men and women, old men, officials, peasants, come from all sides to learn from her their destiny, or to ask her help in gaining the affections of their beloved.

For more than fifty years past there has been observable among the Russians a sort of religious fermentation, taking the form of different sects, which number millions of adherents, all in quest of "truth," of "the true God," and of “salvation." And if pessimism is a characteristic mark of all Russian life, it is in certain mystic sects that it shows itself particularly strong. In these we see pessimism reach its furthest bounds, go so far as to abnegate life itself, often to the point of suicide. They say the world is plunged in sin, virtue has disappeared, the devil reigns over the earth, evil triumphs everywhere; the only means of salvation is to renounce society, to reorganize social life on a new basis, or voluntarily to embrace death.

I am going to describe one of these sects, which may give an idea of this religious and moral fermentation in the breast of the Russian people.

II.

Up to the present day a belief in destiny and in the evil eye is widespread. Quite lately the Russian papers had a story of a In the province of Perm, on the other chiromantist who had a great reputation side of the Kama, in the depths of the in the city of Novgorod. He was a re- forest, there was enacted about twenty tired officer in the Uhlans, who removed years ago a terrible drama, the principal hysteria by exorcising the evil spirit, and actor in which was a peasant named Khodnot only peasants but the leisured classes kine. Khodkine was to a certain degree believed in the sorceries of this magician, an educated man; he was passionately who cured by cabalistic formulæ paralyt-addicted to reading, and spent most of his ics, madmen, drunkards, and women of time over religious books, which he exbad life.

Now if these psychic phenomena are partially the outcome of abnormal conditions of political life which are oppressive in Russia, they are at the same time partially the resultants of the influence produced by the masses on the comparatively small group of the educated. Educated society in Russia is but as a small oasis in the midst of the immense desert of the total population, ignorant, superstitious, unhappy. Mystery, terror, uncertainty of the morrow have so wrecked the nerves of the people that hysterical epidemics

pounded after his own fashion. He soon came to the conclusion that the end of the world was at hand. He plunged more and more deeply into these ideas as he contemplated the unsatisfactory state of things surrounding him on the one hand, the degradation of the moral tone of the people, their drunkenness, their debasement of manners; and on the other hand, the violence and tyranny of the authorities who, arrogant and cruel, treat the people like a herd of cattle. Khodkine ended by persuading himself that the only way to save one's soul was to leave the