religion in itself, nor the state church and clergy, form such strong holds and props of absolutism and of the division into castes in Russia, as is perhaps the case in other countries of Europe. On the contrary, the clergy, and above all, the monks, are rather a menacing cloud on the autocratic horizon, and the autocracy is aware of this fact. Not that it can be expected that the initiative of general emancipation will ever issue from the order of the priesthood; but whenever it shall come, the clergy will rather foster than oppose it, provided that it bear, what is beyond a doubt, a national character."

Aug. How are the clergy organized?

Ed. They form two classes. White, or secular. Black, or monks. The white clergy must be married. They supply the parochial ministers, and all dignataries but bishops. A bishop must be a monk, and unmarried. But it is a singular thing, that though it is indispensable that a white clergyman should be married, if his wife die, he cannot marry again, but must enter a monastery.

Emm. How he must value his wife!

Ed. Yes, Count Gurowski adds, "Thus a priest takes most devoted care of his wife, to the utmost of his means and power. It is therefore proverbial among the people, 'to be as happy as the priest's wife.""

Aug.. I believe there are no middle classes in Russia.

Ed. You are mistaken. This work enters fully into the system of the “Bourgeoisie.” It shows how they are heavily shackled, and to a greater degree oppressed and deprived of individuality and liberty in body as well as in mind. They form a middle class, as elsewhere. In the official language they are called citizen burghers. They live in cities, towns, and boroughs, all under similar organizations; devoted exclusively to trade, manufactures, and other working professions. They are governed by institutions of a communal nature. "Obstructed in any free movement, heavily chained by laws based on the spirit of caste, they can by no means move onwards, but are forced to labour for ever in the same arena as in a treadmill, fettered perpetually to the same spot. If the citizen burgher wishes to change his legal domicile, to remove his establishment from one city or region to another, he is obliged to go through various oppressive formalities. Impediments meet him at every footstep; permission, assent, admission; there is nothing like freedom. With the exception of a very small number among the whole who reach the region of special privileges, the vast majority of this class are, by the law of caste, almost absolutely prevented from giving a substantial, mental, and intellectual development to their children, by a thorough education. The impediments

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thrown in their way extend almost equally to both sexes. women may be said to be subjected to a mental stupor. In the elementary, or common schools, the teaching is limited to reading, writing, arithmetic, and occasionally to burning incense at the altar of Czarism. In such schools the girls of the burghers can be taught; but there is no possibility of any further education. With the exception of St. Petersburgh, Moscow, and Odessa, and a few other cities, there exists no public boarding schools where young girls can be instructed. The government holds all in its grasp, and regards it as an axiom, 'that the higher branches of education are not only unnecessary, but a nuisance to this class.' Thus, for the children of common burghers, neither high schools nor universities are accessible. The press, crushed as it is, cannot exercise any beneficial stimulus. A dull, leaden pressure, grinds and destroys every intellectual germ. No career opens freely, easily, before the burgher, even if well educated. The higher powers of mind, if even laboriously developed by him, cannot be freely exercised; and if accidentally they find a sphere, very soon they become productive only of disappointment, mortification, disgust, with the existing state of things, and finally they open to him the road to Siberia."

Aug. The schoolmaster is not abroad in Russia, it seems.

Ed. Then they are harassed by official regulations, in their business. Whatever they undertake requires a "concession. Every commercial enterprise brings them within the grasp of greedy officials, and they are "plucked to the last feather." If they contract for any public work, they must divide the profits with the greedy jackals around them, happy if they escape with a whole skin. In this manner, notwithstanding the monied wealth accumulated in the empire, which is far more than sufficient to construct railroads in various directions, foreign loans are necessary, as the home-capitalist has no wish to share in an enterprise where the government is the exclusive man. ager."

Aug. Do the citizens manage to keep some of their wealth from the "jackals"?

Ed. Yes, they get money, but cannot use it freely. They cannot own landed estates with serfs, and without them the land is nearly worthless. Just in the same way, they cannot use their riches to educate their children.

Aug. They might send them abroad.

Ed. No, the law prohibits the burgher from travelling in foreign countries without a permission, which is seldom granted, and only for commercial affairs, or on account of health. But, further, even in the city where he lives, the burgher cannot gratify all his tastes. A species of sumptuary law regulates his

expenditure. He or his family must not use a carriage with two horses; only with one. Sometimes this is evaded, but only by

bribing the police.

Aug. There is one advantage in the burghers not owning serfs, that these two classes will not be antagonistic.

Ed. So our author observes. "The burghers form with the peasants, a dense unit through the whole empire, whatever may be the artificial classifications dividing them. This mass is

opposed and averse to nobility. Thus the Russian burgher is not a middle class, uniting two extremes. He belongs wholly to the people, to its holy cause. One cannot err in asserting, that in any future struggles for regeneration, the Russian bourgeoisie will stand foremost, strengthening and not palsying the efforts for a large and radical emancipation."

Aug. I suppose this Count is sanguine about a revolution? Ed. He has not the slightest doubt of it, though he cannot conjecture its epoch. He expects a sort of democratic triumph, and that government by "Communes" (to which system he devotes a chapter) will be its form.

Aug. This appears reasonable enough, as a reaction from despotism.

Emm. But who is to make this reaction?

Ed. "The social upheaving will come from below. The real people will rise, stirred up by the consciousness of their impre scriptible rights. They will act for themselves. The revolution will be at once social, and not merely political. There will be no class to turn the common efforts to its own especial benefit, and there will not appear those locust-like swarms of old respectabilities, political speculators, that curse of European revolutions. The people will find and give the solution for all emergencies. In Russia, neither the people, nor even any class now above it, are entangled in, or encumbered with, any social or political formulas. This is one of the boons for the future, derived from the now all-crushing, all-levelling, all-stifling, and destroying despotism. Common, original reason, will be enabled to act freely."

Aug. Perhaps, too freely.

Ed. Gurowski is outspoken enough :-"This social commotion will crush to atoms the artificial structure now pressing upon the people; despotism, privilege, Czar, and nobility, will be overrun by the same destructive hand; and with them will disappear their accessories. Nothing will be done by halves; that mode being repulsive to the national character, and nowhere known in the history of Russia."

N the middle of the dreary little settlement, Tasman's Peninsula-when visited by the very lively author, Colonel Mundy-which consists of the Commissary's quarters and a few huts-we found a couple of low trucks on four wheels, with two benches in each; and standing near these not elegant vehicles, eight convicts, dressed in the grey and yellow garb of doubly dyed disgrace and crime; another, in grey, unvariegated, was in attendance as head man of the gang. These were to be our teams!

Dividing ourselves into two parties, Dr. and Mrs. and I got into one, and two tolerably weighty gentlemen into the other. Upon this the prisoners seized certain bars crossing the front and back of the carriages, and after pushing them with great toil up a considerable plane, reached the top of a long descent, when getting up their steam, down they rattled at tremendous speed-tremendous at least to lady-like nerves—the chains round their ancles clinking and clanking as they trotted along; and as soon as the carriages in their headlong race down the hill exceeded the possible speed of that slowest of all animals, man, at a word from their leader the runners jumped upon the sides of the trucks, in rather unpleasant proximity with the passengers, and away we all went, bondsmen and freemen, jolting and swaying in a dreadful manner, although a man sitting behind contrived, more or less, to lock a wheel with a wooden crowbar, when the descent became so rapid as to call for remonstrance.

Accidents have not unfrequently occurred when travellers by this rail have encouraged, or not forbidden the men to abandon the trucks to their own momentum down the hills; for there are several sharpish turns in the line, and the tramway is of the rudest construction.

One of the highest public officers in the colony met, as I was told, with a tremendous upset on this railway. Rolling without much damage into the ditch, he was picked up by the "canary birds," who placed him upon his legs, and amid a thousand expressions of contrition, set to work to brush the dirt off his clothes; and so officious were they, that on his first reference to his pockets neither watch nor purse was to be found.

Halfway we halted at a police station, to grease the wheels and breathe the men; and then proceeded with renewed vigour. The distance of our starting point in Norfolk Bay to Long Bay-an arm of Port Arthur