feigned ignorance to the accounts the one would give of

the other.

The Germans would always assure me, that I could have no conception of the ruin and disorder which prevailed universally on Polish estates and the Poles would draw laughable pictures of the length to which German proprietors carried economy.

Now, on this point there can be no doubt, that in a mercantile point of view the Germans make a much more profitable concern of their estates than the Poles. If the one end and object of possessing an estate be to screw as much out of it as possible, then I must allow that the Germans carry on their business on the most approved principle. If, on the other hand, it is desirable that an estate should not be managed on precisely the same principles as a small shop, then the Polish and English method is to be preferred. In point of fact, not a few of the German proprietors in the Grand Duchy of Posen are shopkeepers, or their descendants, who have been imported into the country by the Prussian Government. These are they who proclaim all over Germany the rottenness of Polish institutions. And why? Simply because the old Polish aristocracy holds aloof from them, and will not visit them.

Now is this surprising? If we consider that county families in England will often have nothing to say to wealthy tradesmen, their own countrymen, who settle down beside them, is it astonishing that the Polish landed gentry refuse to associate on equal terms with vulgar foreigners who are their enemies?

I do not hesitate to express myself with some vehemence, because of the extreme contempt with which

Germans in Posen and Galicia (where you may count the non-Polish proprietors on your fingers) invariably speak of their Polish neighbours. The tone of the German press in these two provinces is offensive to the last degree, not to say scurrilous. If in Poland the Germans have to do with a civilization inferior to their own, that accidental circumstance surely does not justify the contemptuous light in which they affect to regard everything Polish. It is just this offensive bearing which renders Germans at bottom more deeply hated in Poland than Russians. If the Russians hang, shoot, flog, and exile the Poles, they at least do not affect to despise them, and it may yet happen that the inhabitants of Posen and Galicia will throw themselves into the arms of the Russians (as the Marquis Wielopolski would persuade them) to be avenged on Germany. For there exists between the Poles and the Germans a deep-seated hatred of race, whereas Poles and Russians have at least so much in common, that they are both Sclaves. Even the peasants in Posen and Galicia, in which latter province they have been completely won over by the Austrian Government, call each other German dog (pies niemecki) when they wish to convey the greatest possible insult.

Before I have done with the subject of Polish character, I must not omit to mention another point wherein they may be likened to Englishmen. I allude to their love of self-government and hatred of bureaucracy. The Germans in Posen and Galicia reproach the Poles with an unwillingness to serve the State. As far as it goes, the reproach is just; but this unwillingness arises from two very natural causes. First, the Poles

feel an abhorrence of taking their orders from Berlin and Vienna even more than from St. Petersburg. Secondly, they cannot bring themselves to become the mere bit of the bureaucratic machine, which is required of every Austrian or Prussian employé. The Pole, like the Englishman, prizes his individuality beyond everything, and prefers to stand or fall on his own responsibility. On the other hand, the German, with his exaggerated love of order and authority, is always ready to shape himself to the bureaucratic mould. To him, to be a man is nothing, and to be a "Herr Regierungsrath" everything. Give him a bit of ribbon to stick in his button-hole, a gold-lace cap, before which the inferior herd shall bow down, and an unlimited supply of execrable tobacco, and he will live and die happy.

That, besides the taste, the Poles possess also a capacity for self-government has been amply proved of late years. Take, for instance, the Crédit Fonciers of the kingdom of Poland, Posen and Galicia, which have been almost exclusively managed by Polish directors with great success. To so dangerous an extent was the Crédit Foncier, or Landschaft of the Grand Duchy of Posen, considered to have developed a capacity for business among the Polish landed proprietors, that the last application of the directors for the royal sanction to a fresh issue of papers was refused at Berlin, and the Government has started a Landschaft of its own. The directors of the Polish Landschaft were elected from among the proprietors whose lands were mortgaged in the Landschaft; but there was an odour of self-government about this, which was

very offensive to the official nostril, so the whole concern was knocked on the head, and will cease to exist in a few years. In the meantime the Government has set going a "Königliche Landschaft" with directors nominated by itself.

Again, I may instance the Agricultural Society of the Kingdom of Poland as a proof that the Poles are capable of doing something for themselves. Now of this society, which was ably presided over by Count André Zamojski, and consisted of not less than 4,000 members, it is not too much to say that it contained within itself the means of regenerating Poland. Its operations were conducted on the most liberal and enlightened principles, and the last vestiges of serfdom in the kingdom of Poland (abolished since 1807) would have disappeared before it. Already the peasant was personally free, but in many districts he still performed corvée instead of paying a money rent for his land.

Now, the Russian Government watched with great anxiety the beneficent operations of this society, to the foundation of which the Emperor Alexander had, as he was subsequently persuaded, in an unlucky moment, given his consent. It soon became clear that no time was to be lost in giving the death-blow to a society containing in it the germs of so much Polish life. Accordingly, Count André Zamojski was sent for to St. Petersburg, where he received sentence of banishment; and the Agricultural Society was summarily closed. This event shortly preceded the outbreak of the insurrection.

CHAPTER IV.

CRACOW.

It was after dark, in the evening of April 1st, 1863, that the train which had conveyed me from Vienna drew into the Cracow terminus. The monotony of a thirteen. hours' railway journey had been somewhat relieved by the novelty of observing for the first time a Sclavonic population by the side of the German. For in Moravia, as in Bohemia, although the towns are to a considerable extent Germanized, the country has remained Sclavonic. Only the peasants who have served in the army, or been brought much into contact with Germans in the towns, have any knowledge of the German language, the rest speaking Moravian and Bohemian respectively-languages which so nearly resemble Polish, that a knowledge of Polish will enable you to understand them both to a considerable extent. Readers of Mr. Carlyle's "Frederick the Great," will remember how he abuses the unfortunate Czechs, or Bohemians, for not understanding his beloved "Teutsch." According to Mr. Carlyle, nonTeutsch speaking races are in a "parlous state." Moravia and Bohemia in the south, and the Wend country and Upper Silesia-where the peasants speak a corrupt Polish -in the north of Germany, serve as it were, as steppingstones from Germany proper to Poland.