may be called, though it is raised somewhat
above the level of the soil, as you shall hear
presently, is called the Balsehoï-Isba, or big
room; and sometimes, on the eternal lucus a
non lucendo, however sombre it may be, the
Beleeïa-Isba, or Chamber of Light. The
space at the end, partitioned off like a
churchwarden's pew, is considered as strictly
private,—there is no admittance except on
business. When I say private, I mean, of
course, to persons of the peasants' own
degree; the shaven-chins—by which title
the hirsute Moujiks sometimes designate
those whose nobility, official standing, military
employment, or foreign extraction,
entitle them to go beardless—enter where they
please, and do what they please, when they
deign to enter a peasant's house. And here
a parenthesis respecting beards. (One of
the last items of advice volunteered to me by
a very dear friend, just previous to leaving
England for Russia, was to let my beard
grow. I should find it so comfortable in
travelling, he said. I had all the wish,
though perhaps not the power to effect this
desirable consummation; but I very soon
found, on my arrival at St. Petersburg, that
if I wanted to be waited on with promptitude
in hotels, spoken to with civility
by police-officers, or received with politeness
in society, I must go with a smoothly-shaven
chin. Moustaches were generally
patronised, whiskers tolerated; but a beard—
the nasty Moujiks wore beards! The only
person moving in elevated Russian society,
six months ago, who ventured to set the
aristocratic squeamishness as to hairy chins
at defiance, was the American minister, who
was bearded like the pard. Then, in July,
came out Lord Wodehouse, our ambassador,
also wearing a beard of respectable dimensions;
and the enormous influx of strangers
into Moscow at the coronation fêtes, and the
cosmopolitan variety of aristocratic beards
wagged thereat, must by this time have
familiarised the Russians with the sight of hairy
chins unassociated with sheepskin coats and
baggy breeches.)

Why " deign " to enter? you may ask.
Why deign to do this or that? For I am
conscious of having repeated the locution
with considerable frequency. The fact is,
that the Russian peasant does not say of his
superior—and especially of his lord—that he
eats, or drinks, or sleeps; but that he deigns
to taste something; that he deigns to moisten
his lips; that he deigns to take some repose.
These words—he deigns—become at last so
natural to the serf in speaking of his master,
that it is anything but rare to hear from his
mouth such phrases as these: " The Barynn
deigned to have the measles. His excellency
deigned to tumble down-stairs. His lordship
deigned to die."  Isvolit Kapout! This, it
seems to me, is the converse to the historical
tournure de phrase of Lord Castlecomer's
mamma when his lordship's tutor happened
to break his leg, "which was so very
inconvenient to my Lord Castlecomer."  The
miserable condition of the souls attached to
the glebe is brought to your mind by a
hundred slavish proverbs and expressions.
Slavery is so well organised, and so saturates
the social system, that the very dictionary is
impregnated with slavish words. A people
philologically servile, and whose proverbs
exhale a spirit of dog-like obedience and
hopeless resignation, and sometimes abject
glorification of despotism, is indeed a rarity.
The miserable Africans, debased as they have
been by centuries of bondage, have no such,
popular sayings, if I remember rightly, as,
"Cow-hide am good for niggers;" "Woolly
head and scored back always go together;"
"Sky too high up, Canada too far off."  But
among the Russian peasants, these are a few
of the proverbs current and common: " A
man who has been well beaten is worth two
men who haven't been beaten." " Five
hundred blows with a stick will make a good
grenadier; a thousand a dragoon; and none
at all a captain." " 'Tis only the lazy ones
who don't beat us." Can anything be more
horrible than this tacit, shoulder-shrugging,
almost smirking acceptation of the stick as
an accomplished fact, —of the Valley of the
Shadow of Stick as a state of life into which
it has pleased God dto call them!  Again:
"Heaven is too high: the Czar is too far off."
This is simply Dante's Lasciate ogni speranza
Russianised.  Again: " All belongs to God
and the Czar."  "Though against thy heart,
always be ready to do what thou art ordered
to do."  " One can be guilty without guilt."
The last proverb, with the preceding one,
imply an abnegation of the duties and
responsibilities of manhood altogether. Its
application justifies a serf in robbing and murdering
at the command of his master; the serf is
guilty, but the onus of guilt is on him who sets
him on. There is one Russian proverb that
breathes something like a feeble consciousness
of the horrors of slavery, and the
corresponding blessings of liberty. " The bird is
well enough in a golden cage, but he is better
on a green branch." There is another
proverb I have heard, couched in a somewhat
similar spirit: "The labourer works like a
peasant [a slave],  but he sits down to table
like a lord."  This is too politically and
economically wise, I am afraid, to be genuine,
and has probably been invented ad hoc, and
placed in the mouth of the Moujik by some
anti-slavery philanthropists. In familiar
conversation you will sometimes hear a Russian
say: " Without cutting my head off, allow me
to say," &c. This is a pleasant reminiscence
of the formula anciently observed in
commencing a petition to the Czar: " Do not
order our heads to be cut off, O mighty Czar,
for presuming to address you, but hear us! '
The Russian equivalent to our verb " to
petition" is "to strike the ground with one's
forehead." And the " yes, sir," of a tchelovik,