the master is of a good disposition, and gives them anything, or shows them any kindness, they receive it like a gift from Heaven, and are so grateful that no money could render them unfaithful. Some of them have had very little experience, and are wonderfully simple. A lady of my acquaintance told her maid she would soon be free, and it made her weep; she wept for hours and hours, as though she had lost some of her relations.

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To myself a woman said, ' Is it true the Emperor wishes we should be free?" I replied to her that the peasants would certainly be free in ten or twelve years. 'Oh, no!' she said, 'that will never be: they will talk of it a little, and after that they will forget.' But that same day the circular appeared, showing on what conditions the peasants would be emancipated, and I was obliged to tell her; she was so anxious about it, and asked with such eagerness, that I had to explain it all from beginning to end.

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I know a peasant who is more like a merchant. By only paying obrok he became rich enough to pay as much as £500 for his freedom, and then in a few weeks the rescript came out. If you could only have seen him! He did not believe anything of the kind could have happened, and for a few nights he could not sleep, being wild with himself that he had paid. When he related to me that he had paid just before Russia was to undergo such a change, I could not but laugh, and, at the same time, I could not but sympathize with him and pity him. * *

"What must civilized and highly-cultivated men, such as the musicians of S——, feel? B has forty men, who have to play sometimes when they are not quite disposed. L also has seven musicians, who see no society, because they live in the country, as if in a desert. They are far superior to their masters, and infinitely so to those who are considered their equals the other serfs. What, too, must that painter feel who finished his education at the Imperial Academy, and was really a great artist? His master liked foreign spirituous liquors very much, and

passed the greater part of his life in a state of intoxication. Sometimes, in that condition, he would be quite in a rage. with his serf-painter, that he would not paint him a devil, and said perpetually, that he regretted he had thrown so much money away for teaching him.

"Many of the serfs speak coolly and reasonably among themselves, and say,-- We have had patience enough to be slaves until now; ten years longer will not be much.' Ten or twelve years is the appointed time for them to pay for their land, huts, and cattle. They will not, I think, continue in their present position more than a year. After that they will be only like men in debt. Oukaz after oukaz appears on the subject; and it is evident that the Emperor is in earnest, and wishes there should be no delay. It may be difficult for the Emperor to carry out the change without any sort of tumult: but the great majority of the peasants will wait patiently. All writers and men of education support the Emperor; and the articles and books that are constantly appearing on the subject will be of great help to him. The opposition proceeds from the old Russian proprietors, but they are not important."

As many of the rich merchants of Moscow and St. Petersburg are, at the present moment, either serfs who have purchased, their own liberty, or actual serfs paying almost a nominal obrok, or poll-tax, to their proprietors, it may be inferred that one effect of the emancipation will be to add considerably to the number of the middle or trading class. This effect is, indeed, being already discounted. Witness the vast speculations that are being organized throughout Russia, and which are all based upon the hypothesis of an enormous increase in the commercial activity of the country. Many English journals discovered, some time since, that the Russians had no need of railways; but M. Kokoreff, a distinguished Russian merchant, thinks that the projected railways are not sufficient. He knows that facility of transport is of more importance to the country even than improved methods of production. The Russians

can afford, in some districts, to sweep excellent bone manure from their waste lands, and export it to Scotland; but they cannot afford, in others, to allow grain to rot in abundance on the ground where it has grown, because there are no means of conveying it to provinces where the inhabitants are, perhaps, dying for want of it. To improve the means of communication in the interior, and between the interior and the frontier, is the object of a gigantic association which M. Kokoreff is now endeavouring to form, and to which he himself subscribes no less than £80,000.

The fact is, the generality of Russians look upon the Emperor's reforms much more hopefully than Mr. Herzen, and the other writers in the Kolokol, seem inclined to do.. The latter, among other grievances, complain that Alexander II. is surrounded by advisers who belong to the old Russian system; whereas it is generally remarked, in Russia, how few of his father's advisers he has retained; and on this subject an anecdote is told, which, though in all probability untrue, nevertheless shows the popular feeling on the subject.

"How does it happen," the dowager empress is reported to have said to her son," that you have so little esteem for your father's memory, as not to retain his counsellors around you?"

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"My father," replied Alexander II., was a man of great genius, and it mattered little to him who were his ministers; but I, who do not pretend to have his abilities, am obliged to surround myself with capable men."

From this, it would appear that the Emperor is of the same way of thinking as the sculptor entrusted with the execution of the monument to Nicholas, and who listened patiently to a variety of suggestions from his friends as to the design, until at last one of them proposed that the late Emperor should be represented on a pedestal, with medallions of his principal ministers around the base.

F

"Very good," said the sculptor; "but too much like Kriloff's monument in the Summer Gardens."

The pedestal of Kriloff's monument is adorned with the portraits of the various zoological personages who figure in his fables!

(Extract from a Manifesto issued since the publication of the First Edition of this work.)

"In virtue of the new dispositions above mentioned, the peasants attached to the soil will be invested, within a certain term fixed by the law,* with all the rights of free cultivators.

And now, pious and faithful people, make upon thy forehead the sacred sign of the cross, and join thy prayers to ours to call down the blessing of the Most High upon thy first free labours, the sure pledge of thy personal wellbeing and of the public prosperity.

"Given at St. Petersburg the 19th day of February (March 3) of the year of grace, 1861, and the seventh of our reign.

"ALEXANDER."

CHAPTER VI.

PRIVATE LIFE OF A RUSSIAN NOBLEMAN.

EVERYONE who reads newspapers must be aware that a contest is going on just now in Russia between an old and a new party. Formerly such Russians as took part in the dangerous game of politics at all, used to be divided into the German and the Russian party; and as the beau rôle was always given to the former, we may safely assume this peculiar nomenclature originated with the Germans them

* Two years.

By

selves. German professors have undoubtedly been of much service to Russia; but the great majority of the Germans established in that empire have done nothing whatever to deserve the thanks of the people among whom they have gained their position. There are Germans in the army (none of whom have particularly distinguished themselves), hosts of Germans in the civil service, German stewards (much feared by the peasants), German apothecaries, German bakers, and German sausage-makers, but there never was any such thing as a German party, unless the immediate entourage of Count Nesselrode could be considered entitled to the name. The word German conveys no idea of progress to a Russian, whether he be a Revolutionist, like Mr. Herzen, or an Absolutist, like M. Gerebtzoff. the latter the Germans are regarded as intruders, who not only have no sympathy for the Russians, but are the natural enemies of all Slavonians; the former despises them as the most willing and convenient instruments of unscrupulous despotism. The most unpopular man in Russia at the accession of Alexander II. was a German minister, the notorious Kleinmichel, whom the new Emperor lost no time in dismissing. The Germans, moreover, have the credit in Russia of having constantly opposed the emancipation of the serfs, and they will probably long continue to uphold that official routine by which so many of them live. Of course there are enlightened and high-minded Germans in Russia, even in the civil service; but Kohl approaches the truth when he states that, for the most part, Germans are regarded by the Russians as little better than Tartars.

If I divide Russian parties into the new and the old, I find on one side the Emperor, with the Grand Duke Constantine as his lieutenant; all the authors, journalists, and professors of the country; and a constantly-increasing majority of the landed proprietors. This, of course, is the Reform party, which even includes a large number of the so-called "old Russian" party, as I shall presently explain.