agents, and foreign skill, without themselves
deriving any sort of material or moral benefit,
England could not long tolerate so great a
blunder. This, however, is the state of things
in Russia. Several great fortunes have been
made by machine-makers and capitalists, and
very nice pickings have been obtained by agents
and superintendents, many of whom went to
Russia poor and left it rich. But that it has
benefited the Russian people, or in any way
whatever added to their comfort or improvement,
I do not believe. The poor baron has received
more "abrok" from his serfs employed at these
places, because they got better wages and paid
him accordingly, and this has enabled him to
live in ease and frivolity without working his
lands. The free people, and the serfs under
easy and rich masters, have had more money to
drink, they have forgotten their patriarchal
simplicity and virtues, if they ever had any, and
have learnt all the low vices and drunken habits
engendered wherever masses of both sexes of
ignorant and debased people mix together—as
is the case in mills and factories in Russia—
without law, religion, or morality to guide
them.

In the interior of the country a considerable
number of these "fabrics" as they are called,
are the grossest sinks of immorality, tyranny,
and wickedness. But there are a few both in
Moscow and Petersburg under management, so
far as interior arrangements are concerned, that
fully equals that of the best regulated establishments
in England. In St. Petersburg particularly,
there are the Kolingkin Bridge Works,
that might challenge competition with any mill
in existence.

The father of Russian cotton and flax-spinning
and other manufactures was General Wilson.
This gentleman is mentioned by Dr. Clarke in
his travels in Russia as a prominent character,
and as one who had even then effected great
things, and he occupied an exalted position at
the time of the doctor's visit. The writer of
these notes knew General Wilson for many
years, and enjoyed his hospitality, advice, and
friendship on many occasions. A few lines he
thinks due to one of the worthiest helpers in
good work ever possessed by the Russian Czars,
especially since the main facts can be given as
they came straight from himself.

General Wilson left Scotland in the ninth year
of his age, after having gone through a course of
study at the High School of Edinburgh, to which
city his parents belonged. He was the son of
an ingenious blacksmith, where also his
grandfather had lived as the " King's smith," at the
old Mint in the Canongate. His parents went
to Russia during the reign of the Empress Catherine,
who, whatever her faults in other respects,
never failed to encourage foreigners of merit
who would settle in her dominions. In Russia
the young Wilson grew and exhibited talents of
no ordinary kind, which soon attracted the notice
of General Gascoigne, who had some time before
been brought from the Carron Iron Works to
instruct the Russians in the art of casting cannon.
Appointed interpreter and secretary to this
general, Wilson passed rapidly through various
grades and ranks, until he became his assistant
in the Imperial Establishment of Engineering at
Colpino. When Gascoigne died, he succeeded
him in the imperial direction of those immense
works, from which a great portion of the armament
of the Russian navy has been supplied.
He also became, under Marie Feodorovna (the
Emperor Paul's wife), the originator and
superintendent of the Foundling Hospital, and of
the large flax and cotton manufactory at
Alexandroffsky, each the first institution of its kind in
Russia. Here, amidst inconceivable difficulties,
and in the face of prejudice and opposition
before which most men would have quailed, did
this persevering Scotchman lay the foundation
of that manufacturing enterprise by which Russia
is either to gain or lose. He has enjoyed the
esteem and respect of the successive sovereigns
whom he has served, and from each of whom he
has received abundant and tangible proofs of
confidence in the highest of those ranks and
orders which the law of Russia affords to a
foreigner. After having been in the imperial
service for nearly eighty years, and in supreme
command for sixty-eight, he is now, at the age
of ninety, laid on the shelf, and lives in retirement
on an ample pension from the present
emperor.

Not only did General Wilson originate and
carry out the imperial manufactories, which at
the outset were designed for models, but he
was the mainspring of many private industrial
enterprises which have since grown to huge
dimensions. He was the first man among four
who started the monster Kolinkin Cotton Works,
and is at the present time chairman of their
board of directors. Another, and now a larger
establishment, owes its existence chiefly to the
name and influence of General Wilson—namely,
that belonging to Messrs. Steiglitz and Craig.
The most admirable feature in General Wilson's
whole career has been his incorruptibility in the
midst of the notorious dishonesty of Russian
functionaries. He has been pointed out as the
man who never took and never offered a bribe,
and though rich, is not enormously so, as he
no doubt might have been had he acted
differently. Unmarried and a bachelor, he has
devoted much of his later years to his books, his
library being one of the best in Russia. He is
now nearly blind, but his appetite for information
is still as strong as ever, and he pays a
young man of good education to read for him
every day.

A friend supplies me with notes of his own
experience to the following effect: I was in
18—chief engineer at the large cotton works at
C—, a day's journey from a chief city in Russia.
The managing partner on the spot employed two
assistants (English), carder and spinner, also a
sub-director under himself. The sub-director
was a man of some education and considerable
general knowledge, and had at one time
possessed a mill of his own, but from some cause
had been unfortunate, and was now obliged to