strength of his magnificent voice, " People,
on your knees! " That the thousands, as
one, knelt down and bowed their foreheads
to the dust; that the Czar then pronounced
a short allocution to them, bidding them ask
pardon for their sins, telling them how
wicked they were; how good he was; that,
while he was speaking, some cat-like police
agents glided in among the people and took,
without a shadow of resistance, some
hundreds of prisoners, who were noiselessly
removed to suffer the Pleidi, or the Battogues,
and to be afterwards sent to Siberia;—
and that the trick was done. Yet I have
heard, in Russia, Russians say that the Czar
Nicholas, like Sir Robert Peel—THE Sir
Robert Peel, I mean— was so constitutionally
timorous, that a spaniel yapping about his
heels, or a monkey leaping on to his shoulder,
was sufficient to throw him into an agony of
terror. To my mind, the artilleryman, who,
meeting the Bengal tiger, stooped down and
looked at that beast from between his legs,
so that the terrible tiger, not knowing what
on earth the strange animal gazing at him
could be, howled in affright, took to his paws,
and enjungled himself in the rattle of a
snake's tail, was the only compeer I have
ever heard of, worthy to rank, for real
courage and presence of mind, with him
who bade the people who had massacred
the doctors fall on their knees; and was
obeyed.

The Tchorni-Narod can assert their
individuality sometimes, therefore; but, it is
only transiently and spasmodically; and the
fit is followed by pitiable reaction. It has
been before observed, that an enraged sheep
is for the moment nearly as troublesome a
customer to deal with as a roaring lion.
Almost always the Russian peasant takes his
thrashing, and general ill-treatment, quietly:
nay, will thank his corrector, and kiss the rod.
He will not cry out: " How long, O Lord!
How long? " but will bear (as a rule) his
to us intolerable miseries, as long as that
miserable life of his endures. But, times
will come when the sheep goes furious. He
has the gids—to speak as a shepherd. Then
he rages; then he storms; then he whirls
round; then he butts forward in a
momentarily potent frenzy; and then woe-betide
bourmister and Starosta—commander of
punishment and executant of punishment:
woe-betide even the noble Boyard; for Ivan
Ivanovitch will rend him asunder, and spare
not his noble wife, nor his noble daughters,
nor the very children that are unborn; and
after this comes, speedily, reaction, and
repentance, and a dreadful retribution on the
part of outraged authority.

As I have pointed out, a riotous crowd
—a crowd, indeed, at all in St. Petersburg or
Moscow, is a novelty and an event to be
remembered, and made a thing historical
of—will my reader ask any Russian
acquaintance to relate a few anecdotes of
the peasant crowds, who, from time to time,
gather themselves together down south—
towards the east, or in the far west of the
gigantic empire—in governments you never
heard of, in provinces you never dreamed of.
You shall hear how some delicate countess
who has been the belle, not only of the salons
of the northern capital, but of Paris, and
London, and Vienna; who has retired, after
some love-pique against a chargé-d'affaires,
or some scandal with her husband, to her
vast estates, hundreds of versts beyond
Moscow, and has there devoted herself to
the task of torturing her slaves; has
invented and practised such unheard-of
cruelties upon her bower-maidens and her
wretchedest dependents, down to her cooks
and scullions, that some direful evening
there has been a crowd; that the crowd
have poured boiling oil on her, and have hung
her up by the hair of her head, while they
have scarified her by drawing infuriated cats
over her; that they have plucked out her
nails and her eyes, and singed her before a slow
fire, and finally, have hacked her to pieces
with hatchets, and eaten her brains.* That
after the frightful retaliation had been
committed came reaction, and terror, and abject
cringing. The general commanding the
provincial government came down; there was
a reign of terror; many were beaten to
death; more had their nostrils torn out, and
were sent to Siberia, there to work in the
mines and in chains, as slaves, for life.
* At Bagatoi, in the government of Kowrsk, in eighteen hundred and fifty-four.

You don't see these narratives in the
Journal de St. Petersburg, or in the Abeille
du Nord, or in the Invalide Russe, among the
catalogue of recent promotions in the
illustrious orders of St. Anne, St. Wladimir, and
St. Alexander Nevskoï, or among the official
despatches announcing new victories over
the Circassians. They do occur though,
from time to time. The government keep
them dark; and you hear them after
dark, in subtle whispers, as "cette chose
terrible qui est arrivé dernièrement "—that
terrible event in the government of Orel, or
Kharkoff, or Tamboff, which has happened
lately, and which is so very regrettable;—but
which will happen again and again, I opine,
as long as the Tchorni-Narod, the Black
People of Russia, are ground down and
oppressed, as they are in this present era of
Grace.

SONG OF AN EXILE.

IN mine own land, across yon weary waters,
Green wave the oaken bow'rs!
Amid those bow'rs mine own land's stately daughters
Walk o'er the summer flow'rs!

In mine own land, far o'er those blood-red waves,
Where sinks the sun to rest,
Lie cool and still my fathers' mossy graves,
In our Isle of the breezy West.