Flannel and manufactured woollen goods are
very dear; for, though this is a wool district,
we have no hands to make woollen goods; and
the vexations which press, in spite of the many
late excellent reforms, upon our foreign trade,
are so numerous and so heavy that they have
nearly paralysed it. We are also a singularly
improvident and unpractical people, though
otherwise of fine intelligence and natural gifts.
For instance, a good stout warm pair of walking
shoes are by no means to be bought. I have
sent in vain to every shoemaker in a town of a
hundred and twenty thousand inhabitants; but
no such shoes could be found, either home-made
or imported. I sent down even to the marketplace,
beyond the city's limits, where the carters
and peasantry buy their wares, but I only
succeeded in getting a pair of shapeless and spongy
things which might have been worn out in
half-a-day's walk. Lackered boots and slippery
goloshes may be had in plenty, and so may the
high, hard, untanned knee-boots of the Mujik;
but those ill supply the place of a good
ankle-jack or a neat Balmoral. Thus, the gentleman
in his glittering hessians, and the clown with his
legs cased up to the thigh in untanned hides,
stride on through the mud bravely enough; but
the decent poor man is thrown out again, and
his single trashy pair of highlows once wet
through—as they can hardly fail to be the first
time he goes out—trot him on from one cold to
another throughout the winter. Such folks'
children die of preventible consumption every
year by the score and by the hundred.

The conditions in which the middle class live
generally, make the severity of the cold doubly
felt. The stifling air of houses made air-tight
for months to save fuel: clothes made of cloth
so porous that it might serve for a sponge or a
sieve, and so badly dyed and prepared, that it
burns the skin with chemicals, and shrinks at
the first shower, is soon spoiled, and is too
dear to be often replaced; this makes bad
defence against twenty-three degrees of cold; and
the food of the middle classes is worse than
their clothes. Ill-fed meat, and ill-fed poultry,
the art of cattle-feeding, having no honour
amongst us. Fish, scarce dear and bad (save
the sturgeon, prize of the first rich man's cook
in the market),eggs little used, bacon unknown,
long fasts, no good wholesome common drink,
no beer. But there is tea in plenty, with rum
in it; good tea, very different from the nasty
compound sold to old women in our villages.
Without this tea, which is the best thing which
belongs to him, no one can tell what would
become of the indigent Russian during a hard
winter. The wealthy, however, do not by any
means confine themselves to tea; and a glimpse
of our social state may perhaps be seen from
the published list of our imports. Wine stands
at the head of the account; woollen goods are
thirtieth; the thirty-first is jewellery; flannel
and cosmetics are about on a par.

The real Russian peasant deals best with the
cold. He faces it boldly from early childhood,
and rolls about in the snow almost as soon as
he is born. If this does not kill him, as it very
often does, he minds the cold but little after
such an education, and lives almost entirely
in the snow with impunity—a rubicund, frank-
faced, golden-bearded, good-hearted man, easily
moved to laughter or to anger. He is very
quick, bright-eyed, and intelligent, quite awake
—which the class immediately above him never
seem to be. He sleeps, indeed, on a stove, but
takes no care to shut up his house in the
daytime. He parboils himself in a vapour-bath
once a week, upon Saturdays, and then rolls
naked in the snow, after which, warming
himself well up again, he goes home and sleeps on
the stove, resuming his ordinary life next morning
without ill-effects from the boiling, living
long and living healthily. These peasants, who
resist the cold so successfully, eat little meat
but much corn. Near the coast they eat a good
deal of fish; oil and grease, but little. Their
houses are made with wood, coarsely hewn, and
the chinks filled up with weeds. The wooden
houses are very warm, but they swarm with
insects. Their floors are made of dung, laid
down fresh and mingled with earth. This
becomes very hard and even. It would make a
good warm dry flooring, but for the insects
which infest it. The peasants are frightened of
improving landlords who want to build them
brick cottages, for bricks are said to absorb
the cold. The fuel used by the peasantry is
made of coarse hay, and weeds grown on
marshy land, and the empty ears of maize,
which smoke very much, but give a good
heat; also a great deal of dry dung is used.
The diseases which appear chiefly to result
from the mode of life, are dropsy and scurvy,
which explains the tschee, and acid food, in
which the peasantry delight; Nature being a
good guide to remedies, if we only follow her
hints.

The bad state of most Russian roads in spring
and autumn occasions much travelling in winter.
The sledges glide with great rapidity over the
snow. There is little chance of a break-down,
and travelling, for those who can contrive to
keep themselves warm, is pleasanter in winter
than in summer. The precautions used against
the cold are very numerous. Writing-paper
wrapped round the skin of the feet, under the
stockings, is a good foot warmer. Cork soles,
covered with flannel, inside the boots, are also
good things. Wooden shoes are bad, because
the feet remaining long stiffly fixed in them
freeze sooner. If worn at all, they should be
stuffed with straw or hay. To grease the feet
well with tallow, then to wrap them in a coarse
linen cloth, and over that to wear a large pair
of felt boots is no bad protection. The felt
boots are good because they do not slip about
in the ice. Coachmen tallow their hair and
beards. Hay bound round the stirrups is useful
to horsemen. The best drink in very bad
weather is tea with ginger in it, the worst is
spirits, which often prove fatal to those who
are imprudent enough to drink them. The
best food is good hot börsch, an excellent national