as the scene of all pleasure and refinement, and he therefore takes little pains to render his countryhouse elegant or luxurious. He has no country amusements to tempt guests to his house; no grouse, no pheasants, no fox-hunting; for few Russians have any taste for field-sports.

Neither has he any higher inducements to attach him to his estate. He has few public duties to perform n; no influence beyond his absolute authority over his serfs, no family pride in his inheritance. No one has an independent position of his own, he is but what it pleases the Emperor to make him.

The estate of the father must, at his death, be always* subdivided among his children, it therefore is useless to expend money in creating or embellishing a place which the son, to whom it will hereafter belong, will probably not have the means of keeping up. Why should any one build a house suited to a fortune of five thousand a year, when the son who inherits it will have but one thousand, and his successor perhaps but two hundred?

The consequence of this system, and of the indefinite multiplication of titles, is, that there is no independent hereditary aristocracy in Russia, no in

*The law apportions one-seventh of a man's landed property to his widow for ever, one-fourteenth to each daughter, and the remainder in equal portions among his sons. Every one is, therefore, but a life-tenant on his estate; yet such is the inconsistency of the law, that he may waste it or cut down timber, as he pleases; or he may sell it and dispose of the money as he chooses, both in his lifetime and by will.

fluence of property, no respect or attachment to families in their own neighbourhood.

The inhabitants of the country consist of the owners of the soil and the serfs. The owner looks upon his estate, not with the pride and pleasure of an English gentleman, but simply as the source of a certain annual revenue; and his serfs know, that so long as he is their master, they must fear his power and labour for him; and that, if the estate passes into other hands, they must do the same to-morrow for their new lord. Where there is slavery on one side and despotism on the other, voluntary and sincere attachment need not be looked for, or if found, must be regarded as exceptions to a general rule.

Among those of the same class, the question is, not who a man may be by birth, talent, or merit, but what the Emperor has made him; whether he wears the epaulettes of a General or of a subaltern.

The result of all this, and of the habits which naturally are formed under such circumstances, is, that the handsome, substantial, well-arranged countryseat is unknown in Russia, and the utmost that is attempted is the beauty of the villa, not of the chateau. In fact, all idea of the latter is done away by the want of the park or well wooded lawn, or of any ornamental ground beyond the garden, which is merely divided by a fence from a high-road, a dirty village street, or an open plain, without there being any illusion or any attempt to conceal the boundary.

The garden itself is generally in proportion to the place too large for dress-ground, and is kept in but a slovenly manner; it has, moreover, one natural deficiency which an Englishman cannot help remarking, in the total absence of evergreens, and the less hardy plants and trees, excepting those which are kept under glass in the winter.

For the interior arrangement of the houses, the custom is to have as many rooms as possible, opening en suite. If the reception-rooms are on the first floor, the ground tier is low and reserved for servants' rooms, offices, &c. The kitchen is generally in a detached building.

The bed-room of the master and mistress of the house is usually connected with the drawing-room or saloon, by folding doors, which stand open all day, so that any one who pleases may enter.* Sometimes a folding screen runs across the room, so as to conceal the bed, washing-stand, &c., and sometimes when the lady has a separate dressing-room, the bed is exposed without hangings, but covered by a handsome silk quilt, while the toilette-table displays the usual silver boxes and cut-glass bottles, which belong to a handsome dressing-case.

* In the bed-room is usually a little open cupboard, which is filled with images, little black and brown faces set in gold and silver frames; before which a lamp or two is kept burning. In the corner of every room in the house is hung an image. For this reason it is considered extremely disrespectful to keep on a hat for a moment on entering a house, or even a shop.

The rooms by no means boast the same comfort and luxury of furniture which exists in England ; the sofas are stiff and hard, and the chairs and tables heavy and clumsy, castors being seldom used; and the walls, instead of being papered or painted, are in general merely white-washed or coloured. I do not mean to say that elegant furniture is unknown in Russia, but that it is not generally diffused as in England. Indeed its preposterous expense must confine it to the houses, and for the most part to the town-houses of a very few rich people. Gams, of Petersburg, will fit up a house with the utmost luxury and good taste, but then his charges will be double what would be paid to a first-rate London upholsterer. Refinement cannot be considered as naturalized in any country till it can be obtained at a reasonable price, and can therefore become habitual to the people.

To return to Russian rooms. The floors are generally bare, with the exception of a small carpet in one corner; they are composed of neatly inlaid wood, or boards painted in imitation of a parquet.

Almost every apartment, without excepting the bed-rooms, is a passage; and this is an inconvenience to which Russians do not appear at all sensible. Since there are no bells, except one sometimes, which communicates from the saloon into the anteroom, the servants cannot live in one part of the house and their masters in another, an arrangement

so materially contributing to the comfort of both, nor can the.doors be shut on all that ought to lie behind the scenes. Here the footman must be close to the saloon, the valet must be within call of his master, and the maids must be next door to their mistresses bed-room; and each in general sleeps by night where he or she sat by day.

Having described the Russian gentleman's residence, we now come to the consideration of his property, which he reckons, not by the annual income of his estate, but by the number of souls, that is of male peasants, which it contains, for the fair sex is never counted in the census. A Russian, instead of an estate worth so many thousand roubles a-year, talks of possessing so many hundred souls. This is the term always used in speaking of the peasants, and its restriction to the male sex is one of the many Russian customs which betray an Asiatic origin.

Early marriages are much encouraged among the serfs, as it is the great object of most landed proprietors to increase the population on their estates. The marriage of girls of all ranks under the age of sixteen years is now forbidden by law, and the punishment for such a marriage, even if the offence is not discovered for years after its commission, is the separation of the husband and wife, with the imprisonment of the latter in a convent for life.