dust. The long line of hothouses, meant to be
filled with grapes, and pines, and exotics, are
hardly recognisable. A few oxen are tethered
in the apartment meant to be a billiard-room.
Here and there are some bare poles standing
at regular intervals. They were once
young trees, planted to make a lordly avenue
leading to a portico, long ago blown down.
Inside the house, everything is upon the same
extensive principle. No moderately near-
sighted person could distinguish objects for
more than half the length of any of the
principal rooms. It would cost the yearly rent
of two hundred acres of Russian land, at the
current value of four shillings an acre, to heat
any one of the rooms properly; so that they
are all as damp and cold as an ice-house. Not
a door nor a window will close. The flooring
has never been put down, and some of the
planks and squares of fine wood are rotting in a
lumber-room, whence now and then a mujik
carries off a few for fuel, or the land agent
contrives to find a use for them. Nothing about
the house is complete. There is a wide stone
staircase leading from a banquet-hall to a
ballroom. It has no hand-rail. Some of the
walls of the state apartments are gilded and
richly decorated, but in the chief drawing-
room, which is the finest of all, the large
French windows have never been put in, and
the spaces where they ought to be are loosely
boarded, so that the rain comes through. There
are a few servants about. They are like the
other villagers. The men among them can
with difficulty be distinguished from the women.
Both are rolled up in untanned sheepskins; both
wear the same thick knee-boots, without which
it would be impossible to wade through the
mud of the streets; both leave only the face
visible; both smell equally strong of vodki and
bad tobacco; both look equally red, raw,
pinched, and uncomfortable. There is little
furniture in the house, perhaps none. If
there be any, it will probably be found to
consist of some gilded chairs and sofas, never
used, but stowed away and motheaten; with a
three-legged stool and a common deal table in
the same room with them, for use. The stables
are empty; the wine-cellars are empty. When
the prince comes down on a restless flying visit
once in three or four years, he brings his
own bed and provisions, and puts up at the
house of his agent, where he is sure of warm
dry shelter. While he stays, there is nothing for
him to do. No shooting, no fishing, no riding,
no neighbours, no quarter sessions. So he
smokes all day as he wanders with his agent
about the sheep-folds and barns; takes as much
money as he can possibly get; and then manages
to convey himself clear off in the night, when the
villagers are in bed, for fear he should be asked
for any of it back again. The priests will be
sure to get some of it, but nobody else has
a chance; and the great man's visit, which
seldom lasts more than thirty hours, leaves no
trace whatever behind it. Many of the
villagers, perhaps, never saw him before, and
will never see him again. Some of the
old folk, maybe, remember when he was
whisked away suddenly one day as a child
to be educated at St. Petersburg; but this may
have been before many of the present generation
were born. The prince has lived so long
abroad since then, that he cannot, and even will
not if he can, speak his own language. He
still looks upon the peasantry on his estate as
mere goods and chattels, knowing nothing of
their wants, wishes, lives, or deaths.

They are tolerably shrewd, too, on their side
of the question. To rent some of the best corn-
land in the world at four shillings an acre for
virgin soil is no bad speculation at present
prices, and a very few years would, and
probably will, see Russian tenant-farmers grow
rich. They must certainly become so, but
for their incurable habits of waste and
drunkenness. However, as the tenant-farmer is quite
a novelty in Russia, it is to be hoped that he
will soon begin to try and educate himself
beyond that pitiful period in civilisation when
drunkenness is not shamed away by the general
condemnation and good sense of a people.

The Russian peasant of the south is, moreover,
a queer fellow in several other respects
besides his shrewdness in dealing with his
landlord. He firmly believed that when he was
emancipated from serfdom he might live all his
life in idleness, his late master being bound by
the State to provide for all his wants. It was a
long time before he could get over his surprise
at finding that he had to work for a living. So
he will not work. Thus, most of the agricultural
labour in the corn districts has been performed
by hired gangs brought from a distance by
contractors. Contracting to supply labourers has
become so profitable a business, that it has
given rise to all sorts of abuses and frauds.
The Boyards have been entirely at the mercy of
contractors, and have been either obliged to
submit to any conditions imposed upon them,
or leave their lands altogether untilled.
Moreover, as the contractors have naturally
insisted on being paid in advance, and in metallic
money, owing to the rapid fluctuations in the
currency, and as coin is a scarce commodity
among the landowners, thousands of acres of
good soil have been thrown out of cultivation,
and those which have been sown have not paid
the expenses of farming. Formerly, every
landowner could get his land tilled by his serfs,
without any money payment at all. Now, all
who have not been able to command capital
have been ruined. Most of the small estates,
including all under ten thousand acres, have
been either sold or abandoned, and mortgagees
who have foreclosed on many of the large ones,
supposed to be only pledged for a third of their
value, have been unable to realise their advances.
The best land in the best and most fertile districts,
therefore, may be purchased for from thirty
shillings to three pounds an acre, farm-buildings and
livestock included. Another observable effect of
the emancipation has been the large increase of
marriages. Formerly no serf could marry without