villagers, after having eaten their dogs, their
cats, and the leather of their boots; after
being seen scraping together handfuls of
vermin to devour; after going out into the
woods, and gnawing the bark off the trees;
after swallowing clay and weeds to deceive
their stomachs; after lying in wait, with
agonised wistfulness for one solitary traveller
to whom they can lift their hands to beg alms;
after having undergone all this, they go out
from their famine-stricken houses into the
open fields and waste places, and those that are
sickening build a kind of tilt awning-hut with
bent twigs covered with rags, over those that
are sick, and they rot first and die
afterwards.  In famines such as these, the people
turn black, like negroes; whole families go
naked; and though, poor wretches, they
would steal the nails from horses' shoes,
the crank and staple from a gibbet, or
the trepanning from a man's skull, they
refrain wondrously from cannibalism, from
mutual violence, and from anything like
organised depredations on the highway;—
they fear the Czar and the police to the last
gasp. Nor, do I conscientiously believe,
if the richest shrines of the richest Sabors
of all Petersburg, Moscow, Kieff, and
Novgorod—heavy with gold and silver, and
blazing with costly jewels, were to be set up
in the midst of their breadless, kopeckless,
village, would they abstract one jewelled
knob from the crozier of a saint, one
tinselled ray from the aureole of the Panagia.
At last, when many have died, and many
more are dying, a stifled wail, which has
penetrated with much difficulty through the
official cotton-stuffed ears of district police
auditoria, district chambers of domains,
military chiefs of governments, and imperial
chancelleries without number, comes
soughing into the private cabinet of the Czar
at the Winter Palace or Peterhoff.  The
Empress, good soul, sheds tears when she
hears of the dreadful sufferings of the poor
people so many hundred versts off.  The
imperial children I have no doubt wonder why,
if the peasants have no bread to eat, they
don't take to plum-cake; the emperor is
affected, but goes to work; issues an oukase;
certain sums from the imperial cassette are
munificently affected to the relief of the most
pressing necessities.  Do you know, my reader,
that long months elapse before the imperial
alms reaches their wretched objects; do you
know that the imperial bounty is bandied—all
in strict accordance with official formality, of
the like of which I have heard something
nearer home—from department to department
—from hand to hand; and that to each set of
greasy fingers, belonging to scoundrels in gold
lace, and rogues with stars and crosses, and
knaves of hereditary nobility, there sticks a
certain per-centage on the sum originally
allocated.  The Czar gives, and gives generously.
The Tchinn lick, and mumble, and paw the
precious dole, and when, at last, it reaches its
rightful recipients it is reduced to a
hundredth of its size.  Do you know one of the
chief proverbs appertaining and peculiar to
Russian serfdom: it is this—"Heaven is too
high, the Czar is too far off." To whom are
the miserable creatures to cry? To Mumbo-
Jumbovitch their priest, who is an ignorant
and deboshed dolt, generally fuddled with
kvass, who will tell them to kiss St. Nicholas's
great toe? To the nearest police-mayor, who
will give them fifty blows with a stick, if
they are troublesome, and send them about
their business? To the Czar, who is so far
off, morally and physically? To Heaven?
Such famines as these have been in crown-
villages, on the great chaussée road from
Petersburg to Moscow.  Such famines have
been, to our shame be it said, in our own free,
enlightened, and prosperous United Kingdom,
within these dozen years.  But I am not
ashamed—no, pot-and-kettle philosophers,
sympathisers with the oppressed Hindoo—
no, mote-and-beam logicians full of condolence
with the enslaved Irishman—I am not
ashamed to talk of famines in Russia, because
there have been famines in Skibbereen, and
Orkney, and Shetland.  The famine-stricken
people may have been neglected, oppressed,
wronged, by stupid and wicked rulers; but I
am not ashamed—I am rather proud to
remember the burst of sympathy elicited from
the breasts of millions among us, at the first
recital of the sufferings of their brethren—
the strenuous exertions made by citizens of
every class and every creed to raise and send
immediate succour to those who were in
want.  We commit great errors as a nation,
but we repair them nobly; and I think we
ought no more to wince at being reminded of
our former backslidings, or refrain from
denouncing and redressing wrongs wherever
they exist, because, in the old time, we have
done wrongfully ourselves—than we ought to
go in sackcloth, in ashes, because Richard
the Third murdered his nephews, or abstain
from the repression of cannibalism in New
Zealand, because our Druidical ancestors
burnt human beings alive in wicker cages.*

* The impressions hereabove set down respecting
famine, and, indeed, most of the information on the
subject of the condition of the Russian peasantry which may
hereafter be found in those pages, are derived, not from
official documents, not even from the trustworthy pages
of M. de Haxthauson, who, though professedly favourable
to the Russian government, and painting, as far as he
can, couleur de rose, lets out some very ugly truths
occasionally; but from repeated conversations I have held
with Russian gentlemen, some high in office in ministerial
departments, some men of scientific attainment, some
university students, some military officers.  All the facts
I have rested my remarks upon have been told me with
a calm complacently indifferent air, over tumblers of tea
and paper cigarettes, and usually accompanied by a
remark of c'est comme ça.  And I think I kept my eyes
sufficiently wide upon during my stay, and was pretty
well able to judge when my interlocutors were lying, and
when they were telling the truth.

MONSTERS.

WITHOUT accusing Nature of ever being
unmindful of a purpose, I think I may be
allowed to say that she sometimes indulges
in vagaries, the motive for which it is not
always very easy to comprehend.  Her
creations are occasionally so strange, that one is
compelled now and then to inquire the object