world; their censorship excludes from them
the noblest literature; they have no common
ground of conversation left but the merits of
actors and actresses, the jests of the last farce
or trashy comedy, or the state of the opera,
- in which place, by-the-by, such operas as
William Tell and Massaniello are performed
with new libretti, from which all taint of a
love of liberty has been expunged. Feeling
the weakness of all this, and in a great many
cases secretly resenting it, the men shrug
their shoulders and say, "What would you
have? We must play cards and talk of the
odd trick." While our countrywoman was
staying with a friendly Russian lady, an old
gentleman called to borrow a few roubles,
got them, and departed. "Ah, poor man,"
said the lady, when he was gone, "think how
unfortunate he has been. He once possessed
fourteen thousand slaves, and he has lost
them all at cards." The English visitor expressed
regret that a man of his years should
be the prey of such a vice. "How old do
you think him?" was then asked. "Oh,
sixty at the least." "Sixty! He is past
eighty, only he wears a wig, paints his eyebrows,
and rouges to make himself look
younger."

The Russian ladies have little to do but
read dissolute French novels (which the censorship
does not exclude), dress and undress,
talk slander, and criticise the dresses of
themselves and one another. Their slaves
do all that might usefully occupy their hands,
and they are left to idlenes; which results
in a horrible amount of immorality. The
trading classes and officials talk almost exclusively
of money. The enslaved peasants,
bound to the soil, content when they are not
much beaten, sing over the whole country
their plaintive songs (they are all set in the
minor key), and each carries an axe in his
girdle; for which the day may come when he
finds terrible use.

At present, that day seems to be very distant.
The ignorant house slaves, like the
negroes holding the same rank elsewhere,
are treated as children. A new footman, in a
household which the Englishwoman visited-
a man six feet two out of his shoes- was
found to have an aptitude for breakage. He
was told one day that when next he let anything
fall he would be punished. On the day
following he dropped the fish-ladle in handing
fish at the beginning of dinner. He looked
dolefully at his master, expecting that blows
would be ordered. His mistress- put him in
the corner! Their ignorance is lamentable.
A Russian gentleman returned from abroad,
where he had seen better things, determined
to devote his life and fortune to the enlightenment
of his peasantry. Their priest taught
them that he was destroying ancient customs,
and that his design was to subvert
the religion of their forefathers. "The consequence
was that the slaves formed a
conspiracy against him, and shot him one
evening as he was reading a book in his own
sitting-room."

Sometimes they take vengeance upon an
oppressor; and terrible incidents of this kind
came within the experience of our countrywoman.
The heads of cruel masters are
sometimes cleft with the hatchet of the serf.
They are capable at the same time of strong
feudal attachments. It should be understood
that all the slaves in Russia are not poor.
Some of the wealthiest traders in St. Petersburg
are slaves to nobles who will not
suffer them to buy their freedom, but enjoy
the pride of owning men who themselves
own in some cases hundreds of thousands of
pounds capital. The inheritor of an estate
in which there were many well-to-do serfs
arrived at it for the first time one evening,
and in the morning found his house, as he
thought, besieged. His people had heard
that he was in debt; and their pride being
hurt at servitude to an embarrassed master,
they brought with them a gift of money
raised among themselves, not less than five-and-forty
thousand pounds, their free-will
offering, to make a man of him again. He
did not need this help, but the illustration
still remains of the great generosity of feeling
possible among this class of Russians.

The slaves detached from their lords, and
living in a comparatively independent state,
acknowledge their subjection to the soil by
payment of a poll-tax. Oppressive owners
often use this claim of poll-tax as a means of
devouring all the earnings of a struggling
slave. Our Englishwoman met with a poor
cook, who had served a seven years' apprenticeship
ticeship in a French house, and earned high
wages in a family, besides being allowed to
earn many fees by superintending public
suppers and private parties. There was an
upper servant under the same roof with him
whom this poor fellow strove to marry; but
much as he earned, he strove in vain to save.
Year by year the abrock or poll-tax was
raised in proportion to the progress that he
made; and the last time the English lady
saw him, he was sobbing bitterly over an
open letter- a demand from his proprietor
for more abrock, and an answer to a request
from Madame with whom he served that
she might buy his freedom, naming an impossible
sum that doomed him to continued
slavery.

There was a poor man in Twer, a slave,
born with a genius for painting that in any
civilised country would have procured for
him fame and fortune. His master, finding
how he was gifted, doomed him to study
under a common portrait-painter, and obliged
him then to pay a poll-tax, which he could
only raise from year to year by painting a
great number of cheap portraits- he who had
genius for higher and better things. "When
we last saw him," writes our countrywoman,
"he had pined into a decline; and doubtless
ere this the village grave has closed over his