tion has been largely remitted. Yet, the military class has, all this while, been quite as miserable as any civilians are now. The soldiery loathe their fate: the administration of their department is completely disorganised, and from the most depressed private serving on the Asiatic frontier to the princely commander who levies homage in St. Petersburg, every soldier knows that the army is in a desperate state, and the world is saying every day that Russia is no longer, practically considered, a great military power. After all the filching of the soldier’s bread and dram, and warm coats, and straw and fuel and medicine, and the starving of his horse, and the stopping of his pay, there come the shame and grief of the world’s compassion, and the fearlessness of Europe. The discontent of the army is known to be so great that a wide-spread suspicion exists in Russia that the matches which have kindled flames from the Black Sea to the Gulf of Finland, have come out of the pockets of long grey coats.
There are persons yet more aware than the soldiery of the decline of their country in European estimation. The nobles have, for a whole generation, been learning more of what the world is like beyond their frontier; and they find their position in strong contrast to that of a genuine aristocracy. They are not of ancient stock; they are not of natural growth; they were till lately liable to the knout; and, as I need not add, they have no sacred heritage of personal honour as a ground of prestige. There are many and great advantages in being a noble in Russia; but it is not a thing to be proud of. The more these nobles travel, the more keenly they feel their inferiority to every primitive aristocracy; and they learn at the same time that while the dignity of their order has somewhat improved at home, the repute and influence of their country have, in a much greater proportion, declined abroad. With no political career open to them, and their territorial prospects spoiled by the curse of serfage, which could neither go on nor be got rid of, the class of nobles was far from happy before their Emperor called upon them to deal with that curse of serfage. At present we see some of them glad that the hour has come, and loyally devoted to work out the scheme, while more are reluctant, angry, sullen, or immovable; and all are in difficulties about land and money.
That part of their order which constitutes the bureaucracy is in the direst confusion. For years they have fought, tooth and nail, against the reform of their insufferable official vices; and they have made the Emperor and all his subjects their victims. If he had been resolute enough to stake everything on a reform of his administration throughout the empire, he and his people might have got safely through their crisis; the serfs might have been freed without serious mischief, and a foundation would have been laid for the growth of a middle class. But the Emperor vacillated: he let incorrigible functionaries remain, and take the charge of his reforms: he dismissed them and appointed better; and now again he has turned back to the old system. The functionaries, meantime, are grasping what they can of wealth and power, venturing the most desperate frauds, tyrannies, and open defiance, aware that they must overrule the Emperor or perish.
The clergy are the lowest in the world out of Thibet. The bishops are the most slavish of courtiers before the nobles, and the most vulgar of tyrants among their clergy. The clergy are a very suffering class,—not only ignorant and oppressed, but painfully abased. In a Protestant country, where the clergy of all sects deal with ideas as the basis of sentiments, it is scarcely possible to conceive of the way in which the ministers of a purely ritual religion are regarded, as in the Greek Church or in Buddhist society. Perhaps the clergy in Russia are less affected by recent events than any other class. Nobody thinks of raising them: they can hardly sink lower in fortunes and repute. It must, however, make some difference to them whether the landowners are keeping open house, or shutting up and going away; or whether the peasants are in their ordinary mood, or mutinous and menacing; and whether the commune is prosperous and merry, or full of gloom and strife. The clergy, therefore, are not much happier than other people just now.
Next to the nobles, the most miserable class would seem to be the traders. We cannot call them the middle class, because there is nothing in Russia which corresponds to our conception of that broad, rich, all important element of modern society. There are a few wealthy traders who may be serfs or free, as may happen. The freest and richest have no social or political function or interest. They have no objects in common with their neighbours, and are not included in any organisation whatever. In their one object,—of making their fortunes, they are now baffled. It was bad enough formerly, while making their fortunes, to be subject to the intolerable extortions and insults of the whole body of public functionaries; but there was always the hope of a time when abuses would come to an end, and law become a real safeguard to the citizen; and there was a commerce going on by which traders could compensate themselves for their losses by official oppression: but now there is nothing doing. There is no money; there is no credit; whole streetsful of traders are bankrupt; and those who have not yet failed see nothing before them but a state of barter. In many places it is a complete deadlock about money; and if the townspeople want food, and the landed gentry want clothes, they must manage to exchange the one for the other. Moreover, the merchant is afraid to see any customer enter, lest he should leave a trail of fire behind him: every one who comes in is watched and followed, at the risk of mortal offence; and if the day is got through without arrest, bad debts, incendiarism, pillage, or other hardship, the night may sweep away everything. Flames break out in a dozen places in a bazaar or market; and by the morning, one, two, or three hundred shops and warehouses may be mere smouldering ruins.
There remain the two opposed social elements,—the free intellectual order and the peasants.
Careless observers might suppose the latter to be the happiest class in Russia now. We may hope that they will be; but they are not very lighthearted at present. What their misery was
