Free Russia - free ebook by William Hepworth Dixon

FREE RUSSIA.

BY WILLIAM HEPWORTH DIXON. AUTHOR OF "FREE AMERICA." "HER MAJESTY'S TOWER." &amp;c. NEW YORK HARPER &amp; BROTHERS, PUBLISHERS. FRANKLIN SQUARE. 1870. 1870....

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PREFACE.

Svobodnaya Rossia— Free Russia—is a word on every lip in that great country; at once the Name and Hope of the new empire born of the Crimean war. In past times Russia was free, even as Germany and France were free. She fell before Asiatic hordes; and the Tartar system lasted, in spirit, if not in form, until the war; but since that conflict ended, the old Russia has been born again. This new country—hoping to be pacific, meaning to be Free—is what I have tried to paint. My journeys, just complet

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CHAPTER I. UP NORTH.

"White Sea!" laughs the Danish skipper, curling his thin red lip; "it is the color of English stout. The bed may be white, being bleached with the bones of wrecked and sunken men; but the waves are never white, except when they are ribbed into ice and furred with snow. A better name is that which the sailors and seal-fishers give it—the Frozen Sea!" Rounding the North Cape, a weird and hoary mass of rock, projecting far into the Arctic foam, we drive in a south-east course, lashed by the wind an

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CHAPTER II. THE FROZEN SEA

At Cape Intsi we pass from the narrow straits dividing the Lapp country from the Samoyed country into this northern gulf. About twice the size of Lake Superior in the United States, this Frozen Sea has something of the shape of Como; one narrow northern bay, extending to the town of Kandalax, in Russian Lapland; and two southern bays, divided from each other by a broad sandy peninsula, the home of a few villagers employed in snaring cod and hunting seal. These southern bays are known, from the r

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CHAPTER III. THE DVINA.

By the Maimax arm we steam through the delta for some twenty miles; past low, green banks and isles like those in the Missouri bed; though the loam in the Dvina is not so rich and black as that on the American stream. Yet these small isles are bright with grass and scrub. Beyond them, on the main-land, lies a fringe of pines, going back into space as far as the eye can pierce. The low island lying on your right as you scrape the bar is called St. Nicolas, after that sturdy priest, who is said to

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CHAPTER IV. ARCHANGEL.

On passing up the Dvina from the Polar Sea, your first experience shows that you are sailing from the West into the East. When scraping the bar, you notice that the pilot refuses to drop his lead. "Never mind," he says, "it is deep enough; we shall take no harm; unless it be the will of God." A pilot rarely throws out his line. The regulation height of water on the bar is so and so; and dropping a rope into the sea will not, he urges, increase the depth. When climbing through the delta, you obse

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CHAPTER V. RELIGIOUS LIFE.

A friend is one day driving me from house to house in Archangel, making calls, when we observe from time to time a smart officer going into courtyards. "This man appears to be dogging our steps." "Ha!" laughs my friend; "that fellow is an officer of police." "Why is he following us?" "He is not following us; he is going his rounds; he is warning the owners of all good houses that four candles must be lighted in each front window to-night at eight o'clock." "Four candles! For what?" "The Emperor.

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CHAPTER VI. PILGRIMS.

Next to his religious energy, the mastering passion of a Russ is the untamable craving of his heart for a wandering life. All Slavonic tribes are more or less fond of roving to and fro; of peddling, and tramping, and seeing the world; of living, as it were, in tents, as the patriarchs lived; but the propensity to ramble from place to place is keener in the Russ than it is in the Bohemian and the Serb. A while ago the whole of these Slavonic tribes were still nomadic; a people of herdsmen, drivin

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CHAPTER VII. FATHER JOHN.

Stung by this news of the pilgrim-boat having sailed, and haunting, unquietly, the Pilgrim's Court in the upper town, I notice a good many sheepskin garbs, with wearers of the burnt and hungry sort you meet in all seasons on the Syrian roads. They are exceedingly devout, and even in their rags and filth they have a certain grace of aspect and of mien. A pious purpose seems to inform their gestures and their speech. Yon poor old man going home with his morsel of dried fish has the air of an Arab

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CHAPTER VIII. THE VLADIKA.

"You have a letter of introduction to the Archimandrite of Solovetsk?" asks Father John, as we are shaking hands under the pilgrim's lamp. "No! Then you must get one." "Why? Are you so formal when a pilgrim comes to the holy shrine?" "You are not quite a pilgrim. You will need a room in the guest-house for yourself. You may wish to have horses, boats, and people to go about. You will want to see the sacristy, the jewels, and the books. You may like to eat at the Archimandrite's board." "But how

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CHAPTER IX. A PILGRIM-BOAT.

A lady, who knows the country, puts up in a crate such things as a pilgrim may chance to need in a monastic cell—good tea, calf's tongue, fresh butter, cheese, roast beef, and indispensable white bread. These dainties being piled on a drojki, propped on pillows and covered with quilts—my bedding in the convent and the boat—we rattle away to the Pilgrim's Wharf. Yes, there it is, an actual wharf—the only wharf in Archangel along which boats can lie, and land their passengers by a common sea-side

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CHAPTER X. THE HOLY ISLES.

Chief in a group of rocks and banks lying off the Karel coast—a group not yet surveyed, and badly laid down in charts—Solovetsk is a small, green island, ten or twelve miles long, by eight or nine miles wide. The waters raging round her in this stormy sea have torn a way into the mass of stones and peat; forming many little coves and creeks; and near the middle, where the convent stands, these waters have almost met. Hardly a mile of land divides the eastern bay from the western bay. Solovetsk s

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CHAPTER XI. THE LOCAL SAINTS.

This exclusion of women from the Holy Isle was the doing of Savatie, first of the Local Saints. Savatie, the original anchoret of Solovetsk, was one day praying near a lake, when he heard a cry, as of a woman in pain. His comrade said it must have been a dream: for no woman was living nearer to their "desert" than the Karel coast. The saint went forth again to pray; but once again his devotions were disturbed by cries and sobs. Going round by the banks of the lake to see, he found a young woman

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CHAPTER XII. A MONASTIC HOUSEHOLD.

My letter from his Sanctity of Archangel having been sent in to Feofan, Archimandrite of Solovetsk, an invitation to the palace arrives in due form by the mouth of Father Hilarion; who may be described to the lay world as the Archimandrite's minister for secular affairs. Father Hilarion is attended by Father John, who seems to have taken upon himself the office of my companion-in-chief. Attiring myself in befitting robes, we pass through the Sacred Gates, and after pausing for a moment to glance

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CHAPTER XIII. A PILGRIM'S DAY.

A pilgrim's day begins in the early morning, and lengthens late into the night. At two o'clock, when it has hardly yet grown dark in our cells, a monk comes down the passage, tinkling his bell and droning out, "Rise and come to prayer." Starting at his cry, we huddle on our clothes, and rush from our hot rooms, heated by stoves, into the open air; men and women, boys and girls, boatmen and woodmen, hurrying through the night towards the Sacred Gates. At half-past two the first matins commence in

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CHAPTER XIV. PRAYER AND LABOR.

But if the hours given up to prayer at Solovetsk are many, the hours given up to toil are more. This convent is a hive of industry, not less remarkable for what it does in the way of work than for what it is in the way of art and prayer. "Pray and work" was the maxim of monastic houses, when monastic houses had a mission in the West. "Pray and work," said Peter the Great to his council. But such a maxim is not in harmony with the existing system; not in harmony with the Byzantine Church; and wha

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CHAPTER XV. BLACK CLERGY.

All men of the higher classes in Russia talk of their Black Clergy as a body of worthless fellows; idle, ignorant, profligate; set apart by their vows as unsocial; to whom no terms should be offered, with whom no capitulations need be kept. "Away with them, root and branch!" is a general cry, delivered by young and liberal Russians in the undertone of a fixed resolve. The men who raise this cry are not simply scoffers and scorners, making war on religious ideas and ecclesiastical institutions. O

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CHAPTER XVI. SACRIFICE.

Sacrifice is a cardinal virtue of the Church. To the Russian mind it is the highest form of good; the surest sign of a perfect faith. Sacrifice is the evidence of a soul given up to God. A child can only be received into the church through sacrifice; and one of the forms in which a man gives himself up to heaven is that of becoming insane "for the sake of Christ." Last year (1868), a poor creature called Ivan Jacovlevitch died in the Lunatic Asylum in Moscow, after winning for himself a curious

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CHAPTER XVII. MIRACLES.

Yet the gift of miracles is greater than the gift of sacrifice. The Black Clergy stand out for miracles; not in a mystical sense, but in a natural sense; not only in times long past, but in the present hour; not only in the dark and in obscure hamlets, but in populous places and in the light of day. At Kief a friend drives me out to the caves of Anton and Feodosie, where we find some men and women standing by the gates, expecting the father who keeps the keys to bring them and unlock the doors.

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CHAPTER XVIII. THE GREAT MIRACLE.

So soon as news arrived in the winter palace that an English fleet was under steam for the Polar seas, the War Office set to work in the usual way; sending out arms and men; such arms and men as could be found and spared in these northern towns. Six old siege-guns, fit for a museum, were shipped from Archangel to the convent, with five artillerymen, and fifty troopers of the line, selected from the Invalid Corps. An officer came with these forces to conduct the defense. Just as the English ships

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CHAPTER XIX. A CONVENT SPECTRE.

A land alive with goblins and sorceries, in which every monk sees visions, in which every woman is thought to be a witch, presents the proper scenery for such a legend as that of the convent spectre, called the Spirit of the Frozen Sea. Faith in the existence of this phantom is widely spread. I have met with evidences of this faith not only in the northern seas, but on the Volga, in hamlets of the Ukraine, and among old believers in Moscow, Novgorod, and Kief. All the Ruthenians, most of the Don

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CHAPTER XX. STORY OF A GRAND DUKE.

When Alexander the First—elder brother of Constantine and Nicolas—died, unexpectedly, at Taganrog, on the distant Sea of Azof, leaving no son to reign in his stead, the crown descended, by law and usage, to the brother next in birth. Constantine was then at Warsaw, with his Polish wife; Nicolas was at St. Petersburg, with his guards. Constantine was called the heir; and up to that hour no one seems to have doubted that he would wear the crown, in case the Emperor's life should fail. There was, h

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CHAPTER XXI. DUNGEONS.

My mind being full of this story, I keep an eye on every gate and trap that might lead me either up or down into a prisoner's cell. My leave to roam about the convent-yards is free; and though I am seldom left alone, except when lodged in my private room, some chance of loitering round the ramparts falls in my way from time to time. The monks retire about seven o'clock, and as the sun sets late in the summer months, I stroll through the woods and round by the Holy Lake, while Father John is layi

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CHAPTER XXII. NICOLAS ILYIN.

Leaving Solovetsk for the south, I keep the figure of this aged prisoner in my mind, and by asking questions here and there, acquire in time a general notion of his course of life. But much of it remains dark to me, until, on my return from Kertch and Kief to St. Petersburg, the means are found for me of opening up a secret source. The details now to be given from this secret source—controlled by other and independent facts—will throw a flood of light into some of the darkest corners of Russian

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CHAPTER XXIII. ADRIAN PUSHKIN.

Except the fact of their having been lodged in the Convent of Solovetsk in neighboring cells, under the same hard rule, Adrian Pushkin and Nicolas Ilyin have nothing in common; neither age nor rank; neither learning nor talent; not an opinion; not a sympathy; not a purpose. Pushkin is young, Ilyin is old. Pushkin is of burgher, Ilyin of noble birth. Pushkin is uneducated in the higher sense; Ilyin is a scholar to whom all systems of philosophy lie open. Pushkin is not clever; Ilyin is considered

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CHAMPIONS OF THE HOLY SPIRIT.

Though standing first in the official list, the Champions of the Holy Spirit are one of the less important sects. They write nothing, and never preach. The only book which contains their doctrine is "The Dukhobortsi," written by a satirist and a foe! Novitski, a professor in the University of Kief, having heard of these champions from time to time, threw what he learned about them into a squib of some eighty pages; meaning to laugh at them, and do his worst to injure them, according to his light

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MILK DRINKERS.

The Milk Drinkers are of more importance than these Champions of the Holy Spirit. Critics dispute the meaning of Molokani. The original seats of the Milk Drinkers are certain villages in the south country, lying on the banks of a river called the Molotchnaya (Milky Stream); a river flowing past the city of Melitopol into the Sea of Azof, through a district rich in saltpetre, and pushing its waters into the sea as white as milk. But some of the secretaries whom I meet at Volsk, on the Lower Volga

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FLAGELLANTS.

The Flagellants are older in date, stronger in number than the Champions and the Milk Drinkers. They go back to the first year of Alexie (1645); to a time of deep distress, when the heads of men were troubled with a sense of their guilty neglect of God. One Daniel Philipitch, a peasant in the province of Kostroma, serving in the wars of his country, ran away from his flag, declared himself the Almighty, and wandered about the empire, teaching those who would listen to his voice his doctrine in t

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EUNUCHS.

A more singular body is that of the Beliegolubi (White Doves), called by their enemies Skoptsi (Eunuchs). These people "make themselves eunuchs for the kingdom of heaven's sake," and look on Peter the Third, whom they take to be still alive, as their priest and king. They profess to lead a life of absolute purity in the Lord; spotless, they say, as the sacrificial doves! The White Doves are believed to live like anchorites; all except a few of their prophets and leading men. They drink no whisky

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LITTLE CHRISTIANS.

In the past year (1868) a new sect broke out in Atkarsk, in the province of Saratof, and diocese of the Bishop of Tsaritzin. Sixteen persons left the Orthodox Church, without giving notice to their parish priest. They set up a new religion, and began to preach a gospel of their own devising. Saints and altar-pieces, said these dissidents, were idols. Even the bread and wine were things of an olden time. They had a call of their own to teach, to suffer, and to build a Church. This call was from C

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HELPERS.

A few months ago the Governor of Kherson was amused by hearing that some villagers in his province had been arrested by the police on the ground of their being a great deal too good for honest men. It was said the men who had been cast into prison never drank, never swore, never lied, owed no money, and never confessed their sins to the parish priest. Nobody could make them out; and the police, annoyed at not being able to make them out, whipped them off their fields, threw them into prison, and

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NON-PAYEES OF RENT.

Near Kazan I hear of a new sect having sprung up in the province of Viatka, which is giving the ministry much trouble. It may have been the fruit of poor Adrian Pushkin's labor (though I have not heard his name in connection with it); the main doctrine of the Non-payers of Rent being the second article of Pushkin's creed. The canton of Mostovinsk, in the district of Sarapul, is the scene of this rising of poor saints against the tyrants of this world. Viatka, lying on the frontiers of Asia, with

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COUNTERS.

In the province of Saratof, a wild steppe country, lying between the lands of the Kalmuks and the Don Kozaks, I hear of a new sect, called the Counters or Enumerators (Chislenniki). The high-priest of this congregation is one Taras Maxim, a peasant of Semenof, one of the bleak log villages in the black-soil country. Taras speaks of having been out one night in a wood, when he met a venerable man, holding in his hands a book. This book had been given to the old man by an angel, and the old man of

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NAPOLEONISTS.

In Moscow I hear of a body of worshippers who have the singular quality of drawing their hope from a foreign soil. These men are Napoleonists. Like all the dissenting sects, they hate the official empire and deride the Official Church. Seeing that the chief enemy of Russia in modern times was Napoleon, they take him to have been, literally, that Messiah which he assumed to be, in a certain mystical sense, to the oppressed and divided Poles; and they have raised the Corsican hero into the rank of

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CHAPTER XXVII. THE POPULAR CHURCH.

"These secret sects and parties would be curious studies—and little more—if they stood apart, and had to live or die by forces of their own. In such a case they would be hardly more important than the English Levellers and the Yankee Come-outers; but these Russian dissidents are symptoms of a disease in the imperial body, not the disease itself. They live on the popular aversion to an official church. It is not yet understood in England and America that a Popular Church exists in Russia side by

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CHAPTER XXVIII. OLD BELIEVERS.

The new service-books and crosses were ordered to be used in every Church. The Church which used them was declared official, orthodox, and holy. Every other form of public worship was put under curse and ban. Princes, Vladikas, generals, all made haste to pray in the form most pleasing to their Tsar. Cajoled and terrified by turns, the monks became in a few years orthodox enough; and many of the parish priests, on being much pressed by the police, marched over to the stronger side. Not all; not

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CHAPTER XXIX. A FAMILY OF OLD BELIEVERS.

In the forest village of Kondmazaro lives a family of Old Believers, named Afanasevitch; two brothers, who till the soil, fell pines, and manufacture tar. Their house is a pile of logs; a large place, with barn and cow-shed, and a patch of field and forest. These brothers are wealthy farmers, with manly ways, blue eyes, and gentle manners. Fedor and Michael are the brothers, and Fedor has a young and dainty wife. The family of Afanasevitch is clerical, and the two men, Fedor and Michael, were br

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CHAPTER XXX. CEMETERY OF THE TRANSFIGURATION.

Four or five miles from the Holy Gate, beyond the walls of Moscow, in a populous suburb, near the edge of a pool of water, lies a field containing multitudes of graves—the graves of people who were long ago struck down by plague. This field is fenced with stakes, and part of the inclosure guarded by a wall. Within this wall stand a hospital and a convent; hospital on your left, convent on your right. A huge gateway, built of stones from older piles, and quaintly colored in Tartar panels, opens i

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CHAPTER XXXI. RAGOSKI.

Ragoski, another cemetery of the Old Believers, in the suburbs of Moscow, has a different story, and belongs to a second branch of the Popular Church. There is a party of Old Believers "with priests" and a party "without priests." Ragoski belongs to the party with priests; Preobrajenski to the party without priests. One party in the Popular Church believes that the priesthood has been lost; the other party believes that it has been saved. Both parties deny the Orthodox Church; but the more liber

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CHAPTER XXXII. DISSENTING POLITICS.

The revolution made by Nikon, ending in the rupture of his Church, gave vast importance to dissenting bodies, while opening up a field for missionaries and impostors of every kind. Before his reign as patriarch, the chief dissidents were the Eunuchs, the Self-burners, the Flagellants, the Sabbath-keepers, and the Silent Men; all of whom could trace their origin to foreign sources and distant times. They had no strong grip on the public mind. But, in setting up a state religion—an official religi

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CHAPTER XXXIII. CONCILIATION.

One point has been gained in the mere fact of the imperial minute having drawn a distinction between things which may be thought and things which may be done. The right of holding a particular article of faith stands on a different ground to the right of preaching that article of faith in open day. The first is private, and concerns one's self; the second is public, and concerns the general weal. What is private only may be left to conscience; what is public must be always subject to the law. Th

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CHAPTER XXXIV. ROADS.

A man who loads himself with common luggage would find these Russian roads rather rough, whether his journey lay through the forest or across the steppe. An outfit for a journey is a work of art. A hundred things useful to the traveller are needed on these roads, from candle and cushion down to knife and fork; but there are two things which he can not live without—a tea-pot and a bed. My line from the Arctic Sea to the southern slopes of the Ural range, from the Straits of Yeni Kale to the Gulf

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CHAPTER XXXV. A PEASANT POET.

In the grass-grown square of Archangel, between the fire-tower and the court of justice, stands a bronze figure on a round marble shaft; a figure showing a good deal of naked chest, and holding (with a Cupid's help) a lyre on the left arm. A Roman robe flows down the back. You wonder what such a figure is doing in such a place; a bit of false French art in a city of monks and trade! The man in whose name it has been raised was a poet; a poet racy of the soil; a village genius; who, among merits

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CHAPTER XXXVI. FOREST SCENES.

From Holgomory to Kargopol, from Kargopol to Vietegra, we pass through an empire of villages; not a single place on a road four hundred miles in length that could by any form of courtesy be called a town. The track runs on and on, now winding by the river bank, now eating its way through the forest growths; but always flowing, as it were, in one thin line from north to south; ferrying deep rivers; dragging through shingle, slime, and peat; crashing over broken rocks; and crawling up gentle heigh

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CHAPTER XXXVII. PATRIARCHAL LIFE.

"No horses to be got till night!" "You see," smirks the village elder, "we are making holiday; it is a bridal afternoon, and the patriarch gives a feast on account of Vanka's nuptials with Nadia." "Nadia! Well, a pretty name. We shall have horses in the evening, eh? Then let it be so. Who are yon people? Ha! the church! Come, let us follow them, and see the crowning. Is this Vanka a fine young fellow?" "Vanka! yes; in the bud. He is a lad of seventeen years; said to be eighteen years—the legal a

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CHAPTER XXXVIII. VILLAGE REPUBLICS.

A village is a republic, governed by a law, a custom, and a ruler of its own. In Western Europe and the United States a hamlet is no more than a little town in which certain gentlefolk, farmers, tradesmen, and their dependents dwell; people who are as free to go away as they were free to come. A Russian village is not a small town, with this mixture of ranks, but a collection of cabins, tenanted by men of one class and one calling; men who have no power to quit the fields they sow; who have to s

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CHAPTER XXXIX. COMMUNISM.

Such cases of village justice are not rare. Should a man have the misfortune, from any cause, to make himself odious to his neighbors, they can "cry a meeting," summon him to appear, and find him worthy to be expelled. They can pass a vote which may have the effect of sending for the police, give the expelled member into custody, and send him up to the nearest district town. He is now a waif and stray. Rejected from his commune, he has no place in society; he can not live in a town, he can not e

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CHAPTER XL. TOWNS.

A town is a community lying beyond the canton and volost, in which people live by burgher right and not by communal law. Unlike the peasant, a burgher has power to buy and sell, to make and mend, to enter crafts and guilds; but he is chained to his trade very much as the rustic is chained to his field. His house is built of logs, his roads are laid with planks; but then his house is painted green or pink, and his road is wide and properly laid out. In place of a free local government, the town f

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CHAPTER XLI. KIEF.

Kief, the oldest of Russian sees, is not in Russia Proper, and many historians treat it as a Polish town. The people are Ruthenians, and for hundreds of years the city belonged to the Polish crown. The plain in front of it is the Ukraine steppe; the land of hetman and zaporogue; of stirring legends and riotous song. The manners are Polish and the people Poles. Yet here lies the cradle of that church which has shaped into its own likeness every quality of Russian political and domestic life. The

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CHAPTER XLII. PANSLAVONIA.

Until a year ago, these Panslavonic dreamers were a party in the State; and even now they have powerful friends at Court. Their cry is Panslavonia for the Slavonians. Last year the members of this party called a congress in Moscow, to which they invited—first, their fellow-countrymen, from the White Sea to the Black, from the Vistula to the Amoor; and next, the representatives of their race who dwell under foreign sceptres—the Czeck from Prague, the Pole from Cracow, the Bulgar from Shumla, the

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CHAPTER XLIII. EXILE.

A week before the last rising of the Poles took place, an officer of high rank in the Russian service came in the dead of night, and wrapped in a great fur cloak, to a friend of mine living in St. Petersburg, with whom he had little more than a passing acquaintance— "I am going out," he said, "and I have come to ask a favor and say good-bye." "Going out!" "Yes," said his visitor. "My commission is signed, my post is marked. Next week you will hear strange news." "Good God!" cried my friend; "thi

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CHAPTER XLIV. THE SIBERIANS.

"He is one of the Siberians," says my comrade of the road, after quoting some verses from a Polish poet. "One of the Siberians?" "Yes," replies the Pole. "In these countries you find a people of whom the world has scarcely heard; a new people, I might say; for, while in physique they are like the fighting men who followed Sobieski to the walls of Vienna, they are in mind akin to the patient and laborious monks who have built up the shrines of Solovetsk. Time has done his work upon them. A sad an

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CHAPTER XLV. ST. GEORGE.

St. George is a patron saint of all the Slavonic nations; whether Wend or Serb, Russine or Russ, Polack or Czeck; but he is worshipped with peculiar reverence by the elder Russ. His days are their chief festivals; the days on which it is good for them to buy and sell, to pledge and marry, to hire a house, to lease a field, to start an enterprise. Two days in the year are dedicated in his name, corresponding in their idiom and their climate to the first day of spring and the last day of autumn; d

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CHAPTER XLVI. NOVGOROD THE GREAT.

Sitting at my window, gazing into space—in front of me that famous tower of Yaroslav, from which once pealed the Vechie bell; and, lying beyond this tower, the public square, the bridge, the Kremlin walls, Sophia's golden domes, and that proud pedestal of the present reign, which tells of a Russia counting already her thousand years of political life—I fall a dreaming of the past, until the sceneries and the people come and go in a procession; not of dead things, but of quick and passionate men,

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CHAPTER XLVII. SERFAGE.

Serfage has but a vague resemblance to the system of villeinage once so common in the West; and serfage was not villeinage under another name. Villeinage was Occidental, serfage Oriental. Villein, aldion, colonus, fiscal, homme de pooste, are words which, in various tongues of Western Europe, mark the man who belonged to a master, and was bound by law to serve him. Whether he lived in England, Italy, or France, the man was stamped with the same character, and laden with the same obligation. He w

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CHAPTER XLVIII. A TARTAR COURT.

In that gorgeous chamber of the Kremlin known as the treasury of Moscow, stands an armed and mounted figure, richly dight, and called a boyar of the times of Ivan the Fourth. Arms, dress, accoutrements, are those of a mirza, a Tartar noble; and an inscription on the drawn Damascus blade informs the pious Russian that there is but One God, and that Mohammed is the prophet of God! Yet the figure is really that of a boyar of the times of Ivan the Fourth. No prince in the line of Russian rulers is s

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CHAPTER XLIX. ST. PHILIP.

Early in the reign of Ivan the Fourth (1539), a pilgrim, poor in garb and purse, but of handsome presence, landed from a boat at the Convent of Solovetsk. He came to pray; but after resting in the island for a little while, he took the vows and became a monk. Under the name of Philip, he lived for nine or ten years in his lowly cell. The monks, his brethren, saw there was some mystery in his life; his taste, his learning, and his manner, all announcing him as one of those men who belong to the h

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CHAPTER L. SERFS.

Boris Godunof, general, kinsman, successor of Ivan the Fourth, reduced the principle of serfage into legal form (1601). An able and patriotic man, Godunof, designed to colonize his bare river-banks and his empty steppe. He meant no harm to the rustic—on the contrary, he hoped to do him good; his project of "fixing" the rustic on his land was treated as a great reform; and after taking counsel with his boyars, he selected the festival of St. George, the patron of free cities and of the ancient Ru

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CHAPTER LI. EMANCIPATION.

On the day when Alexander the Second came to his crown (1855), both lord and serf expected from his hands some great and healing act. The peasants trusted him, the nobles feared him. A panic seized upon the landlords. "What," they cried, "do you expect? The country is disturbed; our property will be destroyed. Look at these louts whom you talk of rendering free! They can neither read nor write; they have no capital; they have no credit; they have no enterprise. When they are not praying they are

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CHAPTER LII. FREEDOM.

"What were the first effects of emancipation in your province?" I ask a lady. "Rather droll," replies the Princess B. "In the morning, the poor fellows could not believe their senses; in the afternoon, they got tipsy; next day, they wanted to be married." "Doubt—drunkenness—matrimony! Yes, it was rather droll." "You see, a serf was not suffered to drink whisky and make love as he pleased. It was a wild outburst of liberty; and perhaps the two things brought their own punishments?" "Not the marry

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CHAPTER LIII. TSEK AND ARTEL.

The obstacles which lie in the way of a peasant wishing to become a townsman are very great. After he has freed himself from his obligations to the commune and the crown, and arrived at the gates of Moscow, with his papers in perfect order, how is a rustic to live in that great city? By getting work. That would be the only trouble of a French paysan or an English plough-boy. In Russia it is different. The towns are not open and unwalled, so that men may come and go as they list. They are strongh

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CHAPTER LIV. MASTERS AND MEN.

Not in one town, in one province only, but in every town, we find two nations living in presence of each other; just as we find them in Finland and Livonia; an upper race and a lower; a foreign race and a native; and in nearly all these towns and provinces the foreign race are the masters, the native race their men. On the open plains and in the forest lands this division into masters and men is not so strongly marked as in the towns. Here and there we find a stranger in possession of the soil;

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CHAPTER LV. THE BIBLE.

A learned father of the ancient rite made some remarks to me on the Bible in Russia, which live in my mind as parts of the picture of this great country. I knew that our Bible Society have a branch in Petersburg, and that copies of the New Testament and the Psalms have been scattered, through their agency, from the White Sea to the Black; but, being well aware that the right to found that branch of our Society in Russia was originally urged by men of the world in London upon men of the same clas

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CHAPTER LVI. PARISH PRIESTS.

In this empire of villages there is a force of six hundred and ten thousand parish priests (a little more or less); each parish priest the centre of a circle, who regard him not only as a man of God, ordained to bless in His holy name, but as a father to advise them in weal and woe. These priests are not only popular, but in country villages they are themselves the people. Father Peter, the village pope, is a countryman like the members of his flock. In his youth, he must have been at school and

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CHAPTER LVII. A CONSERVATIVE REVOLUTION.

In the great conflict between monks and parish priests, the ignorant classes side with the monks, the educated classes with the parish priests. The Black Clergy, having no wives and children, stand apart from the world, and hold a doctrine hostile to the family spirit. Their rivals—though they have faults, from which the clergy in countries more advanced are free—are educated and social beings; and taking them man for man through all their grades, it is impossible to deny that the parish priests

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CHAPTER LVIII. SECRET POLICE.

The new principle of referring things to a popular vote is coming into play on every side; nowhere in a form more striking than in the courts of law. Some twenty years ago the administration of justice was the darkest blot on Russian life. What the Emperor had to meet and put away, on this side of his government, was a colossal evil. In a country over which the prince has to rule as well as reign, a good many men must have a share in the exercise of irresponsible and imperial power—more perhaps

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CHAPTER LIX. PROVINCIAL RULERS.

Russia is divided into provinces, each of which is ruled by a governor and a vice-governor named by the crown. A dozen years ago the governor and his lieutenant was each a petty Tsar—doing what he pleased in his department, and answering only now and then, like a Turkish pasha, by forfeiture of office, for the public good. Charged with the maintenance of public order, he was armed with a power as terrible as that of the imperial police—the right to suspect his neighbor of discontent, and act on

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CHAPTER LX. OPEN COURTS.

Offenses like those of A—— (some twelve years old), in which a great offense was proved, yet justice was defeated more than half, in spite of the imperial wishes, led the council of state into considering how far it would be well to replace the secret commissions by regular courts of law. The public benefits of such a change were obvious. Justice would be done, with little or no respect to persons; and the Emperor would be relieved from his direct and personal action in the punishment of crime.

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CHAPTER LXI. ISLAM.

Kazan is the point where Europe and Asia meet. The paper frontiers lie a hundred miles farther east, along the crests of the Ural Mountains and the banks of the Ural River; but the actual line on which the Tartar and the Russian stand face to face, on which mosque and church salute the eye together, is that of the Lower Volga, flowing through the Eastern Steppe, from Kazan to the Caspian Sea. This frontier line lies eastward of Bagdad. Kazan, a colony of Bokhara, an outpost of Khiva, was not ver

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CHAPTER LXII. THE VOLGA.

From Kazan to the Caspian Sea, the Volga flows between Islam and Christendom. One small town, Samara, has been planted on the eastern bank—a landing-place for Orenburg and the Kirghiz Steppe. All other towns—Simbirsk, Volsk, Saratof, Tsaritzin—rise on the western bank, and look across the river towards the Ural Ridge. Samara is a Kirghiz, rather than a Russian town, and but for the military posts, and the traffic brought along the military roads, the place would be wholly in Moslem hands. Samara

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CHAPTER LXIII. EASTERN STEPPE.

The main attempt to colonize any portion of the Eastern Steppe with Christians was the planting of a line of Kozak camps in the countries lying between the Volga and the Don—a region in which the soil is less parched, the sand less deep, the herbage less scanty, than elsewhere in these sterile plains. But even in this favored region the fight for life is so hard and constant, that these Kozak colonists hail with joy the bugles that call them to arm and mount for a distant raid. A wide and windy

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CHAPTER LXIV. DON KOZAKS.

Since the flight of their countrymen under Ubasha, the Kalmuks have been closely pressed by their Moslem foes. Their chief tormentors came from the Caucasus; from the hills of which countries, Nogays and Turkomans, eternal enemies of their race and faith, descended on their pasture lands, drove out their sheep and camels, broke up their corrals, and insulted their religious rites. No government could prevent these raids, except by following the raiders home. But then, these Nogays and Turkomans

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CHAPTER LXV. UNDER ARMS.

An army is in every state, whether bond or free, a thing of privilege and tradition; and in giving a new spirit to his Government, it is essential that the Emperor should bring his army into some closer relation to the country he is making free. The first thing is to raise the profession of arms to a higher grade, by giving to every soldier in the ranks the old privilege of a prince and boyar—his immunity from blows and stripes. A soldier can not now be flogged. Before the present reign, the arm

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CHAPTER LXVI. ALEXANDER.

The Crimean war restored the people to their national life. "Sebastopol!" said a general officer to me just now, "Sebastopol perished, that our country might be free." The Tartar kingdom, founded by Ivan the Terrible, reformed by Peter the Great, existed in the spirit, even where it clothed itself in Western names and forms, until the allies landed from their transports. Routed on the Alma, beaten at Balaclava, that kingdom made her final effort on the heights of Inkermann; hurling, in Tartar fo

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