We have many pictures of Russian life in Siberia drawn by capable writers—Tolstoy, Maxim Gorky, Stepniak, Lermontoff, Dostoieffsky, Tourgeneff, Kompert, Tikhomirov, and others—that little is required to describe it. It has been called the land "of persecution, stripes, murder, enforced penury and hunger, with debarred constitutional, social, and other rights." Will the Duma raise the people to the level of the masses of free countries, such as England and America?
The hero of this essay, Dmitri Ivanovitch Mendeléeff (Men-de-lay-ef as the Russians call him, with the accent on the penultimate), was born on 7th February 1834, at Tobolsk, at the conjunction of the rivers Tobol and Irtish in Siberia, and in later years became one of the most famous of chemists. His father was Principal of the Tobolsk Gymnasium, and here the son was educated until he entered the University of St Petersburg, aided by funds provided by a benefactor. Even in the inhospitable region of Tobolsk, the Government of the Czars had established a gymnasium, and there the great philosopher began his education. Thence he went to St Petersburg, and as far back as 1856 he graduated as a doctor of chemistry. Later he studied, at Paris, under Adolphe Wurtz. For a short time he was a teacher at Simferopol in the Crimea; and at Odessa he practised as a chemist. In 1859 he went to Heidelberg, where he established a private laboratory and did excellent work. In 1861,
