while they are yet young. Their little Russian coats, short, and open before, are trimmed with fur, which is almost always hanging in rags. This costume would be pretty if it was less shabby, and if the effect was not generally spoilt by deformity or revolting dirtiness of person. The national head-dress of the Russian women is handsome, but it has become rare; being now only worn, I am told, by nurses, and by the ladies of the court on days of ceremony. It is a species of pasteboard tower, gilt, embroidered, and much widened at the top.
The accoutrements of the horses are picturesque, and the horses themselves show speed and blood; but the equipages that I saw this evening at the islands, not excepting those of the highest nobles, were not elegant, nor even clean. This accounts to me for the disorder and carelessness of the servants of the hereditary Grand Duke, and for the clumsiness and wretched varnish of that prince's carriages, which I noticed at Ems. Magnificence on a large scale, a gaudy luxury, gilded trappings, and an air of showy grandeur, are natural to the Russian nobles; but eleganee, carefulness, and cleanliness are things unknown. I have listened this evening to several curious traits, illustrative of what we call the slavery of the Russian peasants.
It is difficult for us to form a just idea of the real
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position of this class of men, who live in the possession of no acknowledged rights, and who yet form the nation. Deprived of every thing by law, they are still not so much degraded morally as they are socially. They have good mental capacity, and sometimes even elevation of character; but, nevertheless, the principle which chiefly actuates their conduct through life is cunning. No one has a right to reproach them with this too natural consequence of their situation. Ever on their guard against their masters, who are constantly acting towards them with open and shameless bad faith, they compensate themselves by artifice for what they suffer through inµistice. The relations between the peasantry and the owner of the soil, as well as their less immediate relations with the country, that is to say, with the Emperor, would alone be a subject worthy of a long sojourn in the interior of Russia.
In many parts of the empire the peasants believe themselves to belong to the earth, a condition of existence which appears to them natural, even when they have difficulty in understanding how man can be the property of man. In many other countries the peasants believe that the earth belongs to them. Such are the most happy, if they are not the most submissive, of slaves. Not unfrecruently the peasants, when about to be sold, send a deputation to some far off master, of whose character for kindness reports have reached them, imploring him to buy them, their lands, their children, and their cattle ; and if this lord, thus celebrated for his gentleness, (I do not say his justice, for the sentiment of justice is unknown in Russia,)—if this desirable lord has no money, they I 5
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provide him with it, in order to be sure of belonging only to him. The benevolent lord, therefore, buys his new serfs with their own money; after which he exempts them from taxes for a certain number of years; thus indemnifying them for the price of their bodies, which they have paid to him in advance, by furnishing the sum that represents the value of the domain to which they belong, and of which they have, as it were, obliged him to become the proprietor.
The greatest misfortune which can happen to these vegetating; men is to see their native fields sold. They are always sold with the glebe, and the only advantage they have hitherto derived from the modern ameliorations of the law, is, that they cannot now be sold without it. This provision is, however, notoriously evaded. Instead, for instance, of selling an entire estate, a few acres are often sold with one or two hundred men per acre. If the government becomes aware of such collusion it punishes the guilty parties, but it has seldom an opportunity of interfering; for between the crime and the supreme authority, that is, the Emperor, are a whole multitude of people interested in concealing and perpetuating abuses. The proprietors surfer as much as the serfs from this state of tilings, especially those whose affairs are deranged. Estates are difficult to sell; so difficult, that a man who owes debts and is willing to pay them, is finally obliged to have recourse to the Imperial Bank, where he borrows the sum which he requires, the Bank taking his property in mortgage. By this means the Emperor becomes treasurer and creditor of all the Russian nobility; and the latter, thus curbed by supreme power, are placed in a
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situation which makes the fulfilment of their duties towards the people impossible.
On a certain day a nobleman declares his intention of selling an estate. The news of this project throws the country into alarm. The peasants send to their lord a deputation of the elders of their village, who throw themselves at his feet, imploring with tears that they may not be sold.
' Is that all ? ' cry the deputies; ' we then are wealthy enough to enable you to keep us.' Whereupon, of their own free will, they raise their rent to double the amount which they have paid from time immemorial.' Other peasants, with less gentleness, and greater craft of character, revolt against their masters, solely with the hope of becoming serfs of the crown. This is the highest ambition of the Russian peasant.
To emancipate suddenly such men would be to set the country on fire. The moment that the serfs, separated from the land to which they are attached, were to see it sold, let, or cultivated without them, they would rise in a mass, crying that they were despoiled of their goods.
It is but a short time ago that, in a remote village which was on fire, the peasants, who complained of the tyranny of their master, availed themselves of the disorder they had perhaps caused purposely, to seize his person, impale it, and roast it in the flames of the conflagration. For such acts the Emperor i 6
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usually orders the transportation of the entire village to Siberia. This is called in Petersburg
When I reflect upon these, and a thousand other cruelties, which, with greater or less secrecy, take place daily in the bosom of this immense empire, where the distances equally favour oppression and revolt, I am ready to conceive a hatred against the land, the government, and the entire population : an indefinable sense of uneasiness
