Petersburg, to convict and punish the evildoers of the commissariat⁠—when in all the cities dinners with speeches were given to the heroes of Sevastopol, and when to them, with arms and legs torn off, toasts were drunk, on meeting them on the bridges and on the highways; that time, when oratorical talents developed so rapidly in the nation that a certain dram-shopkeeper everywhere and upon all occasions wrote and printed and recited by rote at dinners such strong speeches, that the guardians of the peace had to take repressive measures against the dram-shopkeeper’s eloquence⁠—when in the very English club a special room was set aside for the discussion of public matters⁠—when periodicals sprang up under the most diversified standards⁠—periodicals that evolved European principles on a European basis, but with a Russian world conception, and periodicals on an exclusively Russian basis, but with a European world conception⁠—when suddenly there appeared so many periodicals that all names seemed to be exhausted⁠— The Messenger , and The Word , and The Speaker