Excerpt from Russian Life: In Town and Country Russian life, the only phase of the national existence that the ordinary visitor ever sees, whether on business or pleasure bent, is the outgrt of the reforms instituted by Peter the Great, and copied from much that we are familiar with in Western Europe. The modern development of Russia has, it is true, grown with wonderful rapidity of late years, but it is almost entirely confined to the towns and the regions easily accessible by the railway. New railways are constantly being laid down, but Russia covers so vast an area that a glance at the map will sufi'ice to show how large a pro portion of the country must remain for many years outside their influence. Less than twelve per cent. Of the nation reside in towns, not eight per cent. Near enough to urban centres to be influenced by town life, while the remaining eighty per cent., people of every rank of life from nobles to peasants, dwell in regions that modern life and thought have as yet hardly touched to any appreciable extent. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.