Imatges de pàgina
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"The long line of hothouses, meant to be filled with grapes, and pines, and exotics, are hardly recognizable. 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 nearsighted person could distinguish objects for more than half the length of any of the prin

staircase leading from a banquet-hall to a ball-room. It has no hand-rail. Some of the walls of the state apartments are gilded and richly decorated, but in the chief drawingroom, 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 sheep

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skins; 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, uncomfortable and pinched. There is little furniture in the house, perhaps none. 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 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 neighbors, 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

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PUPILS OF THE FOREST CORPS.

cipal 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

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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 folks, 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 civilization when drunkenness is not shamed away by the general condemnation and good sense of a people."

effect-immunity from toil being thought by the freedmen the height of liberty. In our own country, likewise, this sentiment prevailed, to a great extent, though it was soon set right. The writer quoted says:

"The Russian peasant of the south is 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

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PUPILS OF THE MICHAELOFF ENGINEER AND ARTILLERY SCHOOLS.

We are made acquainted with some of the effects attending upon immediate emancipation. Ignorance of the nature of freedom, from long deprival of it, is the parent of all sorts of vague and indefinite ideas regarding its privileges and responsibilities. It was thus when the English emancipation act went into

living. So he will not work. Thus, most of the agricultural labor in the corn districts has been performed by hired gangs brought from a distance by contractors. Contracting to supply laborers 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

moved, every marriageable man, woman or child rushed into matrimony. A chance meeting in the street, a short acquaintance, or no acquaintance at all-the faintest shadow of a pretext was sufficient. No sooner had the inhabitants of any village obtained their liberty than they made haste to barter it away with each other, and as many of the newly married people as possible flocked into the towns, where life is comparatively easy and the most unskilled work highly paid, so that the villages have become more thinly peopled than before."

The writer goes on to say: "The whole civilization of the empire is concentrated in less than half a dozen large cities. All the rest, steppe, and hamlet, and market-town are as wild and wretched as when Rurik first founded Ladoga on the banks of the Volkhof, or his victorious cymbals sent dismay into the fierce hearts of the Varangians and the hordes of the Tschuder. It is to a German that this great empire is about to owe her final liberation from barbarism. Baron Ungern Sternberg has at last solved the great difficulty created by the want of hands in a country of such vast extent, and maintaining so large an army with so scanty a

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PUPILS OF THE INSTITUTE OF ARTS, GYMNASIUM AND COMMERCE. population. Although

of their value, have been unable to realize 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 live stock included. Another observable effect of the emancipation has been the large increase of marriages. Formerly no serf could marry without the permission of his lord, and many of the worst of the old feudal customs long forgotten in Western Europe existed in full force among the Boyards. Immediately, however, all restrictions on marriage were re

harassed by the un

generous envy and detraction which attend like a shadow upon merit the baron has at last organized a comprehensive system of military labor, which has created railroads for Russia. At first he began with mere convicts and men under punishment; but his sagacity and management were so admirable, he soon acquired so perfect a command over his workmen by a judicious system of rewards and punishments, that his opponents were forced to admit the success of his experiment. The baron's workmen began to be numbered by thousands; and as it was found that men

could not do the work of navvies without being well fed and clothed, it was looked upon as a pleasant change from foetid barracks, bad rations, and hard drill, to good quarters and plenty. The system has not been fairly at work more than three years; but it has succeeded for a time, at least, in turning even the bane of a large standing army into a blessing.

"The hamlets of the corn districts are already waking up into new life at the sound of the railway whistle, and the frauds which have hitherto kept the price of Russian wheat up to quotations altogether arbitrary and fictitious, will soon be a thing of the past. The merchants of Odessa and Taganrog will sink into mere brokers and shipping agents when the large producers of grain in Podolia and Volhynia can come directly in contact with the buyers of Mark-lane; and the network of railways, now extending so rapidly, will soon yield the Russian farmer a better profit than he has been ever yet able to realize upon wheat grown at less than half of the present prices.

The religion of Russia is of an exceedingly varied character,the Greek church greatly preponderating. A considerable proportion of the less civilized tribes continue, more or less, addicted to their heathen superstitions; the Jews in all

ing its various minute, and too often superstitious and even ridiculous ceremonies. In its general toleration of all other sects it contrasts favorably with popery, though it lays itself open to the charge of intolerance towards its own members by refusing to allow them, under any circumstances, to quit its communion. The Greek church strongly resembles the Roman in doctrine, but differs essentially from it in government and discipline; by rejecting the claims of the pope, acknowledging the emperor as its temporal head, and submitting to be governed by a supreme synod, composed partly of lay mein

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parts of the country, except IMPERIAL UNIVERSITY, LAW AND SURGERY SCHOOL STUDENTS.

the centre, from which they

are specially excluded, have their synagogues; and freely perform their rites; Lutheranism is professed by the great body of Germans and Swedes; and the Roman Catholics form a preponderating majority in Poland. These, however, are the only important deductions to be made from the almost universal ascendancy of the Greek church, which possesses numerous important privileges as the religion of the state, and is strong in the affections of the great body of the people, who give a very implicit, if not enlightened assent to all its dogmas; and not only willingly perform, but appear to take wonderful delight in perform

bers; in permitting, or rather requiring, the marriage of the secular clergy; forbidding the use of images or corporal representations of any kind, except pictures, which it uses lavishly; and, more important than all, in permitting the free circula tion of the Scriptures in the vulgar tongue. In form it is an episcopacy, composed of forty dioceses; of which four are governed by metropolitans, sixteen by archbishops, and twenty by bishops. The churches are extremely numerous, and generally the best-constructed and most conspicuous edifices in all towns and villages,and remarkable for the number or enormous magnitude of their bells.

PARLOR MAGIC.

The illustration shows a simple way of making illuminating gas by the means of a tobacco pipe. Bituminous coal contains a number of chemical compounds, nearly all of

THE MIMIC GAS-HOUSE.

which can, by distillation, be converted into an illuminating gas; and with this gas nearly all our cities are now lighted in the dark hours of night. To make it as represented in our engraving, obtain some coal dust (or walnut or butternut meats will answer), and fill the bowl of a pipe with it; then cement the top over with some clay, place the bowl in the fire, and soon smoke will be seen issuing from the end of the stem; when that has ceased coming, apply a light, and it will burn brilliantly for several minutes; after it has ceased, take the pipe from the fire and let it cool, then remove the clay, and a piece of coke will be found inside; this is the excess of carbon over the hydrogen contained in the coal, for all the hydrogen will combine with carbon at a high temperature, and make what is called hydro-carbons-a series of substances, containing both these elemental forms of matter.

ABYSSINIA.

The bad conduct of a little king may make his fame and that of his country as distinguished as though he had done great things, and Theodore of Abyssinia is likely to prove the truth of this remark. Who has thought of the kingdom of Abyssinia except as a blot on the map, a province of Africa given to crocodiles and gorillas, or an uncivilization about as bad? No one cared to think anything about it, until King Theodore, upon the death of Prince Albert, with great audacity, addressed an autograph letter to Queen Victoria, proposing himself as a substitute for the deceased Prince in her affections. The proposition was very cautiously declined, but the African royal blood could not brook refusal, and the slighted king retaliated by imprisoning the ambassadors of her Britannic Majesty and threatening them with death. Remonstrances were sent by other agents, who were in turn shut up, and the great kingdom of Great Britain was treated as contemptuously as though it were some inferior tribe incapable of opposing the royal Theodore's will. Of the fate of the parties imprisoned, not much is known. It is said that they still live, but that his black majesty

keeps them among his jewels, closely about his person, with a disposition to "work them off" in the event of English retaliation. Nearly four years have elapsed since the commencement of the outrage, and, as might be supposed, England chafes under the insult, at last resolving upon redress through arms, and the invasion of King Theodore's dominion by way of the Red Sea, employing Indian troops for the purpose, under command of Sir Robert Napier.

Abyssinia is a tract of country in Eastern Africa, with an area estimated at 282,000 square miles, and a population supposed to amount to three millions and a half. It is an interior country, its nearest approach by water being the Red Sea, which is from forty to ninety miles distant. It is watered by confluents of the Nile, which are not navigable. The country is composed of several nominally connected but practically independent States, the three principal ones named Shoa, Tigre, and Amhara; over these is an hereditary king, a regular descendant from Solomon and the Queen of Sheba, and this distinguished race is equal to any demand upon it. The emperor gets only some

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