and a few fragments of road serving as drives in the immediate vicinity of these towns, there are no roads at all in Russia that are roads in any civilized sense. The post-roads of the empire are clearings through wood, with boughs of trees laid here and there, tracks over steppes and through morasses. There is every-where the grandeur of nature; but it is the grandeur of its solitudes. A few huts surround government post-stations, and small brick houses at intervals of fifteen or twenty miles along the routes are the halting-places of gangs destined for Siberia. A few log-huts, many of them no better than the wigwams of red Indians, some of them adorned with elegant wood tracery, a line of such dwellings, and commonly also a row of willows by the wayside, indicate a Russian village. A number of churches and monasteries with domes and cupolas, green, gilt, or dark blue, studded with golden stars, and surmounted each by a cross standing on a crescent; barracks, a government school, and a post-office; a few good houses and a great number of huts-constitute a Russian provincial town, and the surrounding wastes or forests shut it in. The rapid traveler who follows one of the two good lines of road, and sees only the show-places of Russian civilization, may be very much deceived. Yet even here he is deceived only by a show. The great buildings that appear so massive are of stuccoed brick, and even the massive grandeur of the quays, like that of infinitely greater worksthe Pyramids-is allied closely to the barbarous. They were constructed at enormous sacrifice of life. The foundations of St. Petersburg were laid by levies of men who perished by hundreds of thousands in the work. One hundred thousand died of famine only. sia as clocks do in England. With us time is valuable; with them appearance. They care not though it be mainly false appearance." They even paint their faces. The lower classes of women use a great deal of white paint, and, as it contains mercury, it injures alike health and skin. A young man paying his court to a girl generally presents her with a box of red and white paint to improve her looks; and in the upper classes ladies are often to be seen by one another, as they arrive at a house, openly rouging their faces before entering the room. These are small things, indicative of an extensive principle. Peter the Great undertook to civilize Russia by a coup-de-main. A walk is shown at St. Petersburg along which he made women march unvailed between files of soldiery to accustom them to go unvailed. But civilization is not to be introduced into a nation by imperial edict, and ever since Peter the Great's time the Russian empire has been laboring to stand for what it is not; namely, the equivalent to nations that have become civilized in the slow lapse of time. It can only support, or attempt to support, this reputation by deceit. It must hide, or attempt to hide-and it has hidden from many eyes with much success its mass of barbarism, while by clever and assiduous imitation, as well as by pretensions cunningly sustained, it must put forward a show of having what it only in some few directions even strives to get. The Russian ladies have little to do but read dissolute French novels-which the censorship does not exclude-dress and undress, talk slander, and criticise the dresses of themselves and one another. Their slaves do all that might usefully occupy their hands, and they are left to idleness; which results in a horrible amount of immorality. The trading classes and officials talk almost exclusively of money. The enslaved peasants, bound to the soil, content when they are not much beaten, sing over the whole country their plaintive songs-they are all set in the minor key-and each carries an ax in his girdle; for which the day may come when he finds terrible use. The civilization of the Russian capital is not more than skin-deep. One may see this any day in the streets. The pavements are abominable. Only two or three streets are lighted with gas; in the rest oil glimmers. The oil lamps are the dimmer for being subject to the peculation of officials. Three wicks are charged for, and two only are burnt: the difference is pocketed by the police. All the best shops are kept by foreigners, the native Russian shops being mostly collected in a central bazar, Gostinoi Dwor. The shopkeepers appeal to the ignorance of a half-dren. A new footman, in a household which barbarous nation by putting pictures of their trades over their doors; and in his shop a Russian strives to cheat with oriental recklessness. Every shop in St. Petersburg contains a mirror for the use of customers. "Mirrors," says the Englishwoman, “hold the same position in Rus At present that day seems to be very distant. The ignorant house slaves, like the negroes holding the same rank elsewhere, are treated as chil the Englishwoman visited-a man six feet two out of his shoes-was found to have an aptitude for breakage. He was told one day that when next he let any thing fall he would be punished. On the day following he dropped the fish-ladle in handing fish at the beginning of dinner. He looked dolefully at his master, expecting that blows would be ordered. His mistress-put him in the corner! Their ignorance is lamentable. A Russian gentleman returned from abroad, where he had seen better things, determined to devote his life and fortune to the enlightenment of his peasantry. Their priest taught them that he was destroying ancient customs, and that his design was to subvert the religion of their forefathers. "The consequence was that the slaves formed a conspiracy against him, and shot him one evening as he was reading a book in his own sitting-room." Sometimes they take vengeance upon the oppressor; and terrible incidents of this kind came within the experience of our country woman. The heads of cruel masters are sometimes cleft with the hatchet of the serf. They are capable at the same time of strong feudal attachments. It should be understood that all the slaves in Russia are not poor. Some of the wealthiest traders in St. Petersburg are slaves to nobles who will not suffer them to buy their freedom, but enjoy the pride of owning men who themselves own in some cases hundreds of thousands of pounds capital. The inheritor of an estate in which there were many well-to-do serfs arrived at it for the first time one evening, and in the morning found his house, as he thought, besieged. His people had heard that he was in debt; and their pride being hurt at servitude to an embarrassed master, they brought with them a gift of money raised among themselves, not less than five-and-forty thousand pounds, their free-will offering, to make a man of him again. He did not need this help, but the illustration still remains of the great generosity of feeling possible among this class of Russians. his proprietor for more abrock, and an answer to a request from madame with whom he served that she might buy his freedom, naming an impossible sum that doomed him to continued slavery. There was a poor man in Twer, a slave, born with a genius for painting that in any civilized country would have procured for him fame and fortune. His master, finding how he was gifted, doomed him to study under a common portrait- | painter, and obliged him then to pay a poll-tax, which he could only raise from year to year by painting a great number of cheap portraits-he who had genius for higher and better things. "When we last saw him," writes our countrywoman, "he had pined into a decline; and doubtless ere this the village grave has closed over his griefs and sorrows, and buried his genius in the shades of its eternal oblivion.” The Englishwoman was present once when a bargain was struck for a dressmaker. A gentleman had dropped in to dine; the host mentioned that his wife wanted a good dressing-maid. The guest recommended one, skillful in dressmaking, with whom he thought his wife would part. "Well," the other said, "her price?" "Two hundred and fifty silver roubles." That was more than could be given; but the bargain finally was struck for a hundred roubles and an old piano. Such a servant must be content to submit to much oppression. The mistress who parts with you in the drawing-room with a smile, may be met ten minutes afterward in the garden, her face inflamed with rage, beating a man before her, one of the serfs employed upon the grounds. A lady who lost much money at the gamblingtable, being pressed to pay a debt of honor, reliv-membered that she had not a few female servants who possessed the most beautiful hair. She ordered them all to be cropped and their hair sold for her benefit, regardless of the fact that together with their hair she robbed them of their reputations; cropped hair being one of the marks set on a criminal. The slaves detached from their lords, and ing in a comparatively independent state, acknowledge their subjection to the soil by the payment of a poll-tax. Oppressive owners often use this claim of poll-tax as a means of devouring all the earnings of a struggling slave. Our Englishwoman met with a poor cook, who had served a seven years' apprenticeship in a French house, and earned high wages in a family, besides being allowed to earn many fees by superintending public suppers and private parties. There was an upper servant under the same roof with him whom this poor fellow strove to marry; but much as he earned, he strove in vain to save. Year by year the abrock or poll-tax was raised in proportion to the progress that he made; and the last time the English lady saw him, he was sobbing bitterly over an open letter-a demand from The boxing of the ears of maids is not below the dignity of any lady; but when the maid is not a Russian, there may be some danger in the practice. A princess whose hair was being dressed by a French waiting-maid, receiving some accidental scratch, turned round and slapped the face of her attendant. The Frenchwoman had the lady's back hair in her hands at the time, and, grasping it firmly, held her head fast, while she administered a sound correction on the cheeks and ears of her highness with the back of her hair-brush. It was an insult that could not be resented publicly. A lady of her highness's blood could not let it be said that a servant had given her a beating, and she, therefore, bribed the Frenchwoman by money and kind treatment to hold her tongue. and had seized him and given him a taste of Our country woman, visiting a monastery, was invited to eat ices in the garden. She saw how the spoons were cleaned behind the busheslicked and wiped. Such ice-eating, with the spoon-licking in the background, is typical of the sort of elegance and polish Russia has. Yet blows do not count for much in Russia; from the highest to the lowest, all are liable to suffer them. A lady of the highest rank, using the lady's privilege of chattering in the ear of the Emperor at a masked ball, let fall some indiscreet suggestions. She was followed home by a spy; summoned next day to Count Orloff's office; pointed to a chair; amicably interrogated; presently let quietly down into a cellar, where she was birched by some person unseen. This lady, whose story we have heard before, the Englishwoman often met; her sister she knew well; and she had the anecdote from an intimate friending of the family. One day the Englishwoman saw an officer boldly pocket some of his neighbor's money while playing at cards. Another slipped up his sleeves some concert tickets belonging to her friend. She and her friend both saw him do it. One day a young officer called while they were at dinner; was shown into one of the drawingrooms, and departed with a lady's watch. Noth was said to the police, out of respect to his uncle, who is of rank. Ladies going to a party will sometimes steal the papers of kid gloves and the hair-pins left on the toilet-tables to supply those who happen to come unprovided. Our countrywoman went to visit an old lady; and, as all the drawing-rooms were thrown open for the reception of visitors, thought it no sin to walk from one room to another for the purpose of examining some pictures. The old lady rose and followed her, watching her movements so closely that she returned to her seat greatly amazed. "You must not be surprised at it, my dear," said a friend, after she got home again; are lost in such parties from the too great admiration of the visitors." The knout, the emblem of Russian barbarism, falls not only on the slave or the criminal. A poor student of more than ordinary talents had, by great perseverance, twice merited a prize; but he was regarded with jealous hostility by a certain professor, whom he was too poor to bribe. Twice cheated, the poor fellow made a third effort, though barely able to sustain himself in his humble lodging till the period of examination came. His future hung upon the result; for upon his passing the ordeal with credit depended his access to employment that would get him bread. He strained every nerve, and suc-"for really you do not know how many things ceeded well. All the professors testified their approbation except one, whose voice was necessary to complete the votes. He rose, and with- The officers just mentioned were men holding held his suffrage upon false grounds, that cast employments under government. So much has dishonor on the young man's character. It was been made notorious during the present war of his old enemy; and the poor boy-a widow's the extent to which the Russian government sufson-with starvation before him, and his hopes fers from the peculation and falsehood of officials all cast to the winds, rushed forward by a sud- in all grades that one illustration in this place den impulse of despair, and struck his persecutor. will be sufficient, and we will choose one that He was arrested, tried, and condemned, by the illustrates at the same time another topic. The Emperor himself, to receive a thousand lashes railway to Warsaw is dropped, because the money with the knout. All the students and professors needed for it is absorbed by war; the only Ruswere ordered to be present at the execution of sian railway line is that between the two capitals, the sentence. Long before it was complete, of St. Petersburg and Moscow. When it was nearly course, the youth was dead; but the full number finished, the Czar ordered it to be ready for his was completed. Many students who were made own use on a certain day. It was not really spectators of the scene lay on the ground in finished; but over several miles of the road, since swoon. From another eye-witness, the English- the Czar must be obeyed, rails were laid upon woman heard of the presence of a line of car- whatever contrivance could be patched up for riages, filled with Russian ladies, at a similar the occasion. The Imperial neck was risked by scene, the victims being slaves who had rebelled, the Russian system. While this railway was in because a master introduced upon his ground course of construction, the fortunes made by ena box in which to thrash them by machinery,gineers and government officials on the line of road was quite astonishing: men of straw rapidly acquired estates. Government suffered and-the serfs. Our country woman living once in a province through which the railway runs went by train to a picnic. At the station four hundred workmen were assembled, who asked eagerly whether the governor was of the party. No, they were told, but his wife was. Her, then, they begged to see. To her they pleaded with their miserable tale for interference in their behalf. For six weeks they had been paid no wages, their rations were bad, and a fever like a plague had broken out among them, of which their companions perished by scores, to be buried, like so many dogs, in morasses along the line. Their looks confirmed their tale. The criminal employers were upon the spot, and acted ignorance and sympathy, making at the same time humane speeches and promises, which the poor men received by exchanging looks of profound despair with each other. Of course, the poor fellows continued to suffer. THE LAW STUDENT. BY REV. CHARLES COLLINS, D. D. "Whom the gods love, die young,' was said of yore, THE HE above strain from a noble harp, now, alas! silent forever, is poetical, albeit no sentiment of Christian piety breathes through the mellifluous lines. An early grave! What solemn interest, what associations of melancholy thought rush into the mind almost unbidden, and cluster around the narrow home where sleeps the dust of the early dead! The opening flower, nipped just when its partially unfolded petals gave promise of the brightness and beauty to come! The heart, glowing with life, and swelling with all the delightful anticipations of the future, stricken with the fatal arrow, just at the moment of seizing the promised enjoyment! The long-cherished expectation of usefulness and honor blighted and dissolved forever! The yearnings of the young heart after the prizes of manly toil, and the outgoings of affections, tender and vigorous, as yet unscathed by the scorching blasts of the world, sending forth their tendrils like the vine, and laying hold on all surrounding objects— all bitterly crushed, and crushed forever! Then there is the system of espial. In addi- | tion to the secret police-the accredited spiesthere is said to be a staff of eighty thousand paid agents, persons moving in society; generals, tradesmen, dressmakers, people of all ranks; who are secretly engaged in watching and betraying those with whom they live. The consequence is, that nobody dares speak his earnest thoughts, even to his familiar friend. Men say what they do not think, affect credit of government reports which they know to be audacious lies, and take An early grave is dark and cheerless, indeed, pains to exhibit themselves as obedient subjects. if no light penetrates it but the flickering ray of Of the Greek form of religion we say nothing. a godless philosophy. We may, indeed, thus Let the Russians bow before the pictures of their escape the trials and mortifications incident to saints. We will quote only an anecdote told in mature life; but poor is the consolation if the this book, of a poor wandering Samoyde, a fish-youthful traveler on this long journey is not proeating savage from the borders of the Arctic Ocean. He asked whether his visitor was Russian, and being answered no, lifted up some skins in his tent which covered pictures of saints, and pointing to them with disdain, said, "See! there are Russian gods, but ours," raising his hand heavenward, “is greater. He lives-up there!"-Household Words. vided with a heavenly companion. The Chris- Perhaps there is truth in the heathen maxim, that an early death is evidence of the favor of Heaven. Yet the ways of Providence are dark and inscrutable. Sometimes the young may be taken away by death in order to remove them from the evil to come. Sometimes the cup of iniquity even of the young is filled. Sometimes it may THE Gospel is the fulfillment of all hopes, the be God's discipline for the salvation of the old. perfection of all philosophy, the interpretation Who is wise to understand the counsels of the of all revelations, the key to all the seeming Almighty? It is Christian, however, to believe contradictions of the physical and moral world. that Infinite Goodness always holds the rod. Since I have known the Savior every thing is "Whom the Lord loveth he chasteneth, and scourgeth every son he receiveth." We rejoice THE GOSPEL. clear.-Von Muller. in the Christian's hope. It is full of comfort, big with immortality, glorious. Its brightness penetrates the dark vail. It builds a bridge across the mighty chasm. It clothes all the attributes of the Godhead with the habiliments of mercy, and enlists them on the side of erring, penitent humanity. In the ear of the dying saint, when his frail bark first launches on the stormy wave of his final passage, it whispers, "I will never leave thee, nor forsake thee." The distant shore it clothes with brightness and beauty, where happy spirits gather to give joyous welcome to the stranger just landed from his perilous voyage, and conduct him to the bright realms of his heavenly abode. Reflections similar to these, with a sad admixture of pleasure and pain, passed through my mind, when, in company with a friend, I took a stroll through the village cemetery of Carlisle, in the autumn of 1852. We had then, after many years' separation, just come together in the providence of God to sustain official relations with each other. At times I love to visit such places, and indulge in the solemn and pious reflections which the dead and their memorials are calculated to awaken. To me there is always a holy influence which comes up from the grave. I never visit these places without feeling that I become thereby a better man. And, surely, if, as the poet says, there are "Sermons in stones, books in running brooks, And God in every thing," there are sermons-eloquent sermons in the speaking marble and countless mounds of an ancient burial-ground-the city of the dead. It is the place to cure a worldly spirit and rebuke our pride. Here we approach nearer the spiritual world than any where else; and if our hearts are open to instruction, we shall find no difficulty in catching the voice that comes up from all these silent sleepers, telling us of God, and uttering in our ear lessons of duty, which it is the highest wisdom to know, as well as the highest virtue to practice. How little congenial these holy places may be to those who are absorbed in the world, or how much soever these feelings may be derided by the gay and thoughtless, I nevertheless love to cherish them. It is not sadness. It is not melancholy. It engenders no superstitious gloom. It leads me, for the time, away from the world, and opening the fountains of thought and feeling, I seem to be in another world, communing with God, and talking with the spirits around me. In such a place faith can scarcely fail to become purged of some of its worldliness, and to lay hold of Hope the invisible with still stronger grasp. and Joy-twin-spirits in the sisterhood of heavenly graces-chastened and purified by this contact with the spiritual and unseen, become more sweetly qualified to bear us company in our pilgrimage on earth. We feel, indeed, as did Peter, and James, and John, on a certain occasion, and cry out, "Lord, it is good for us to be here." In the cemetery of Carlisle is something to excite more than ordinary interest. Here are sleeping in silence, which nothing shall disturb but the archangel's trumpet, many who in life enjoyed a name among men. They were found in the higher walks of professional and literary life. Their Country called them to her councils, and Education, Divinity, Medicine, and Law acknowledged the eminence of their virtues and the greatness of their attainments. But here they lie promiscuously mingled with the unlettered sons of toil, whose name, perhaps, never traveled beyond their native village, but whose hearts were the equal abode of love, and the equal centers of domestic affection. The great leveler hath leveled all. The artificial distinctions of life which kept them separate when above ground keep them separate no longer. The fulsome marble may tell its tale of flattery, but all are sleeping where "Precedency's a jest, and vassal and lord, As we wandered over these consecrated grounds, we at length came upon the object of our search. It was a plain obelisk of white marble, bearing this inscription: CHARLES A. LEE. Born in Maryland, in Carlisle, On the reverse side was the following: He was A Graduate of the Wesleyan University, and a Student of Law in Dickinson College. It was the grave of a classmate and mutual friend, from whom we had parted many years before, in the heyday morning of life-when we had finished our studies at the Wesleyan University, and were about to take our places in the walks of life. We saw him for the last time on Commencement day. What melancholy interest gathered around that humble grave! what |