carcasses with flour, long enough! Rise, win glory and warlike
honours! You ploughmen, you reapers of buckwheat, you tenders of
sheep, you danglers after women, enough of following the plough, and
soiling your yellow shoes in the earth, and courting women, and
wasting your warlike strength! The hour has come to win glory for the
Cossacks!" These words were like sparks falling on dry wood. The
husbandman broke his plough; the brewers and distillers threw away
their casks and destroyed their barrels; the mechanics and merchants
sent their trade and their shop to the devil, broke pots and
everything else in their homes, and mounted their horses. In short,
the Russian character here received a profound development, and
manifested a powerful outwards expression.

[3] Cossack villages. In the Setch, a large wooden barrack.

Taras was one of the band of old-fashioned leaders; he was born for
warlike emotions, and was distinguished for his uprightness of
character. At that epoch the influence of Poland had already begun to
make itself felt upon the Russian nobility. Many had adopted Polish
customs, and began to display luxury in splendid staffs of servants,
hawks, huntsmen, dinners, and palaces. This was not to Taras's taste.
He liked the simple life of the Cossacks, and quarrelled with those of
his comrades who were inclined to the Warsaw party, calling them serfs
of the Polish nobles. Ever on the alert, he regarded himself as the
legal protector of the orthodox faith. He entered despotically into
any village where there was a general complaint of oppression by the
revenue farmers and of the addition of fresh taxes on necessaries. He
and his Cossacks executed justice, and made it a rule that in three
cases it was absolutely necessary to resort to the sword. Namely, when
the commissioners did not respect the superior officers and stood