Perhaps, after having spoken so much about the past history of the noblesse, I ought to endeavour to cast its horoscope, or at least to say something of its probable future. Though predictions are always hazardous, it is sometimes possible, by tracing the great lines of history in the past, to follow them for a little distance into the future. If it be allowable to apply this method of prediction in the present matter, I should say that the Russian noblesse will assimilate with the other classes rather than form itself into an exclusive corporation.

Hereditary aristocracies may be preserved, or at least their decomposition may be retarded where they happen to exist, but it seems that they can no longer be created. In Western Europe there is a large amount of aristocratic sentiment, both in the nobles and in the people, but it exists in spite of rather than in consequence of actual social conditions. It is not a product of modern society, but an heirloom that has come down to us from feudal times, when power, wealth, and culture were in the hands of a privileged few. If there was ever in Russia a period corresponding to the feudal times in Western Europe, it has long since been forgotten.

There is very little aristocratic sentiment either in the people or in the nobles, and it is difficult to imagine any source from which it could now be derived. More than this, the nobles do not desire to make such an acquisition. In so far as they have any political aspirations, they aim at securing the political liberty of the people as a whole, and not at acquiring exclusive rights and privileges for their own class.

In that section which I have called a social aristocracy, there are a few individuals who desire to gain exclusive political influence for the class to which they belong, but there is very little chance of their succeeding. If their desires were ever by chance realised, we should probably have a repetition of the scene which occurred in 1730. When, in that year, some of the great families raised the Duchess of Courland to the throne, on condition of her ceding part of her power to a supreme council, the lower ranks of the noblesse compelled her to tear up the constitution which she had signed. Those who dislike the autocratic power dislike the idea of an aristocratic oligarchy infinitely more. Nobles and people alike seem to hold instinctively the creed of the French philosopher, who thought it better to be governed by a lion of good family than by a hundred rats of his own species.

Is then the wealth of Russia to be looked for in her middle class? Far from it; Russia hardly possesses a middle class, and she is certainly taking the very worst way to supply herself with one. The natural middle class, for such a country, would consist of the traders who supplied the Empire with those comforts and luxuries which are produced so easily in many portions of the world, and furnished many of them so cheaply to the poorest household in this country. Read what M. A. Leroy Beaulieu says, in his article already alluded to, about sugar. If there were a reasonably organised system of trade, sugar would not be as cheap in Russia as it is here, but would nevertheless be very cheap, and sugar I take as a type of a whole class consisting of hundreds of articles. Then there would be the persons employed in collecting for export the products in which Russia can undersell the world in the markets of Europe. Next would come those employed in the transit trade with Asia, and lastly the whole enormous army of bankers, lawyers, engineers, and professional men of every sort and kind, who always spring up in a nation engaged in pursuits which accord with its character and

circumstances. Let Russia but adopt a reasonable commercial policy, and she will soon have plenty of wealth in her middle class.

The reasonable commercial policy for Russia would be to make Europe produce for her use all those things for the production of which Europe has greater facilities than she has.

England, Belgium, and Westphalia should supply every market, from Wilna to Kuldja and Kashgar, while on every package of goods the Russian merchant should get his profit; nor would any Chancellor of the Exchequer in the West have a right to murmur if on every package the Russian government got, through its customs department, a small profit also, although the most advanced school of financiers might be able to show it a more excellent way.

On the other hand, Russia should produce for Europe all those things which a country of her magnificent extent and peculiar resources is calculated to produce. From the north she should send us for generations to come a constant supply of timber, from the eastern provinces the best cattle and horses, without the cattle plague, in addition to her present exports. From the south she should send more and better corn. In fact, the whole of her energy should be devoted to fighting where she must be strong instead of where she must be weak.

Again, her railway system should be so arranged as to make her in all time to come the great carrier between Europe and Asia north of the Himalaya and the other central ranges.

She should make a trade between England and any part of Central Asia through India an impossibility, not by custom-house vexations, but by showing the English manufacturer that it is his interest just as much as hers to send his goods by the northern route. She ought to be able in time to carry passengers from England to the north-western parts of India, as far as the Oxus, saying to them there, 'Now, ladies and gentlemen, it is for your own government to see you safe within the Circular Road at Peshawur.' This policy would be highly consonant with the genius of the most important part of her people, for the inhabitants of Great Russia, the nucleus of the Empire, are the most naturally pacific of mankind.

Such being the policy that is prescribed by circumstances and common sense, what does Russia do? She organises her whole national life as if she were to be habitually not at peace but at war with other nations. By an elaborate system of protective duties she is attempting to rear up a number of industries for which she is wholly unsuited. She is taxing her people heavily to fill the pockets of a few capitalists, many of them not even Russian subjects, but men who one after another disappear from those northern lands, and spend the money extracted from the pocket of the Russian consumer in this or that Scotch or English county.

Such a system can only have one of two results. Either the freeVOL. I.-No. 1.

G

trade party will sooner or later succeed in showing to their countrymen the insanity of the course which their government is pursuing, and then, after much individual disaster, the government, sadder and wiser, will adopt the only course that can lead to national prosperity-the course of finding out and following the natural aptitudes of its people and of the soil on which they live-or it will persevere in its present course, and then there will be in the long run no resource but the hardly honourable one of a national bankruptcy. Russia will in fact have to follow the precedent which Turkey recently set at so opportune a moment for her northern neighbour, and in the meantime she will see other nations, who have adopted a wiser commercial policy, leave her ever further and further behind.

But if the wealth and power of the nobility and of the middle class cannot support the government in any very far-reaching schemes of ambition, perhaps the Church can. That may be doubted. Rich the Russian Church is assuredly not. If the Church of England were disendowed, not after the gentle fashion of 1869, but as a church would be disendowed in Russia if the government had a mind to disendow it, we might certainly fight a couple of very handsome wars with the proceeds; but what was to be done in the way of disendowment in Russia was done long ago, and the white or secular clergy, at least, live in the most evangelical poverty. As for the black or regular clergy, their monasteries might be expropriated with little loss to the public, no doubt, for they are not a valuable class, but the money profits of the transaction would not be very great.

Yet, although quite unable to do much in the way of those benevolences which were so pleasant to our mediæval kings, the Church may perhaps be a great help to the government in other ways. Well, that it certainly is.

Firstly, it is very probable that it has had something to do with the gentleness and docility which are so characteristic of a large portion of the Russian people.

Secondly, the connection of the Church with the State enormously strengthens the latter for internal purposes with all the orthodox, and after every deduction has been made for heretics, schismatics, and persons of other faiths, the orthodox are in an overwhelming majority..

Thirdly, the ecclesiastical connection of the Church in old days with Constantinople, and its instinctive hostility to those who hold that city, are a support to the government in any designs which it cherishes on the south bank of the Danube.

But is the Russian Church of any use to the government in working for the enlightenment of the people even in the humblest way? No one, I fear, dare answer that question in the affirmative.

Travellers are unanimous in describing the vast majority of the Russian clergy as very little above the peasantry amongst which they

live. It would be easy to multiply illustrations, but we content ourselves with only one, partly because the scene which we are going to relate is amusing in itself, and partly because it gives us an opportunity of calling attention to a singularly bright first-hand little book called Sketches of Russian Life before and during the Emancipation of the Serfs: 6

All but the tall priest then threw their cards on the table, and rose, saying, ‘A fresh deal after service.'

'No, no,' he said, 'keep your hand, partner; I shall keep mine-it is a good one— and we shall play the game after our return. Here, Vassili, give me a towel-wet. That will do. Now my robes-there, that comb. And now go every one to your posts.'

Thus saying, he proceeded with a firm step to the church by the private entrance already mentioned.

As he left the room I saw him place his good hand of cards within his sacred robes, under the inside fastening. He was evidently determined not to lose sight of his trumps, and carried them off on his person into the church. I ran round to the front entrance, and was just in time to witness the commencement of the service. It is a wonder judgment did not fall on the chief priest; and it did in a way. At one part of the service, just as he was stepping on the platform, he put his hand inside his robe to pull out his handkerchief, and as he drew it out the cards came also unbidden, and fell scattered over the altar floor. This would have paralysed any ordinary man, but that priest never moved for a moment. He looked coolly at the cards, then steadily at the people, as much as to say, 'You all see that take notice of it; I shall tell you about that by-and-by.' He then continued the services. At the close he pointed to the cards, then beckoned a little peasant boy with a short shirt of coarse linen and trousers to match, not very clean, who had been crossing and bending beside a poor peasant woman, his mother. 'Come here.' The boy went.

Turning to the congregation, he said, 'I shall give you a lesson you will not forget for some time. You see these cards lying on the floor? Do you think I put them there for nothing? We shall see. What is your name, my boy?'

'Peter Petrovitch.'

'Well, Peter Petrovitch, go and pick up and bring it to me. There, that will do. card is this?'

one of those cards you see on the floor, Now tell me, Peter Petrovitch, what

'The ace of spades,' said the boy with ready knowledge.

'Very good, Peter Petrovitch; bring me another. What card is that?' 'The queen of spades,' said Peter.

'How well you know them, Peter! Bring me another. And what may that be?' 'The ten of hearts.'

'That will do, Peter, the son of Peter. Now turn round and look at this picture. Can you tell me what saint it represents ? '

The boy scratched his head, then shrugged his little shoulders, lifting the up to his ears, then scratched his head again, and said—

'That will do, Peter, the son of Peter; you may go to your mother.' Turning

• Chapman & Hall, 1866.

to the people, he continued, 'Do you know now for what purpose I put these cards. on the floor? Do you not think shame of yourselves? Tell me, say, is it not disgraceful and scandalous that that nice white-haired little boy can tell me in a moment the name of every card in the pack, and he does not know the name of one of the blessed saints? O shame, shame on ye, so to bring up the young after all the good teaching I have given ye! Go away and learn the lesson I have given you this blessed day. Don't forget it, and force me to bring cards into this holy place again. Vassili, put the other cards up, and keep them for me.'

So with solemn step he left the church, to play out his interrupted game.

This story is perhaps not to be taken all too literally, but it is typical.

We are far indeed from wishing it to be understood that cardplaying to excess is the peculiar weakness of the Russian country clergy. Drunkenness has probably a far better claim to that distinction, but as a body they may be safely asserted to be far inferior to anything that has existed for some generations in the British Isles, France, or Germany. To find a parallel, we must turn to such books as that in which Mr. Barkley, a very strong friend of the Bulgarians, lately described the clergy who minister to that people. When we cite such accounts as his, or the very humorous one in the book of Messrs. St. Clair and Brophy, we are assured by our anti-Turks that all the degradation described is due to Turkish barbarity, and that the drunken priest lying amongst the nettles during what ought to be the time of service is only the natural result of Ottoman conquest. Those who think it is, after studying any tolerable account of Russia, are heartily welcome to their opinion.

Of course it would be grossly unfair to say that all Russian priests are of this low type. I have myself come into contact with Russian priests of a very different kind, but nevertheless the lower type is disastrously common, so common as to be a distinctly minus quantity in estimating the moral and material resources of the Empire.

Mr. Wallace's testimony is to the following effect:

I have frequently spoken on this subject with competent authorities, and nearly all have admitted that the present condition of the clergy is highly unsatisfactory, and that the parish priest rarely enjoys the respect of his parishioners. In a semi-official report, which I once accidentally stumbled upon when searching for material of a different kind, the facts are stated in the following plain language: 'The people (I seek to translate as literally as possible) do not respect the clergy, but persecute them with derision and reproaches, and feel them to be a burden. In nearly all the popular comic stories, the priest, his wife, or his labourer is held up to ridicule, and in all the proverbs and popular sayings, where the clergy are mentioned, it is always with derision. The people shun the clergy, and have recourse to them, not from the inner impulse of conscience, but from necessity.'

And why do the people not respect the clergy? Because it forms a class apart; because, having received a false kind of education, it does not introduce into the life of the people the teaching of the Spirit, but remains in the mere dead forms of