live in the country, but leave their villages and their wives behind them to work for a time at the factories. Their wages amount to about £2, 10s. monthly. Barracks are provided for the workmen. The work is continued by relays day and night. Out of 280 work-days, about 30 are fast or feast days, in which no work is done. The Russians have hitherto been unable to make good factory machinery; any who have succeeded, apparently, in doing so, have really been indebted to England for its chief portions. The habits and morals of the working classes are of the lowest possible description. It would be impossible to publish in these pages the unquestionable facts illustrative of their depraved condition. Virtue and truth seem scarcely known. As regards stealing, not one working man or woman is ever permitted to pass | out of the premises without being carefully searched by persons, employed for this purpose.* In spite of this, they manage to pilfer cotton and other articles. Baths are regularly taken weekly, but during the other days their persons are filthy. They lie on bare boards, and never change their clothes. When a new and commodious lodginghouse was built for the workmen of a well-conducted factory at Alexandrofski, near St. Petersburgh, the workmen, after examining it, sent a deputation to the manager, who was my informant, asking him what additional wages he meant to give if they went to his new house!

*

But I have been given to understand that the habits of even the middle and higher classes of society in Moscow and St. Petersburgh, with some exceptions, is said to be as polluted as that of the serfs. The moral leprosy is covered with silk garments, and splendid uniforms, and highly respectable outsides, but there it is, nevertheless, in all its vileness. I have never in Austria or France heard, from those best informed as to the state of national morality, of more corruption than exists in Russia. But it is impossible to enter into details on this topic.

Few things gave me a more painful impression of the morality of the people than the Asylum in Moscow-and there is one as great in St. Petersburgh--for poor children. The building is magnificent, the education given in it excellent, and all its arrangements princely. Any child brought to it is at once received. I witnessed the process. Two women of the working-classes brought each a child. The clerk handed a ticket, with a number attached to it, to be tied round its wrist; a corresponding number was inscribed in the ledger. No questions were asked. The women delivered up their children with more indifference than most people would part with a cat or dog. The children are next day baptized and vaccinated, and though they may be afterwards claimed, yet the vast majority never are. About sixty children are each day thus received at this one institution. There were in the house about 800 infants, under the care of several hundred nurses. The whole number of children under the charge of the institution

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Respect them! that certainly they do not. The gross and prevailing superstitions of the masses lead them, of course, to idolize them in their official capacity as representatives of Heaven, having power to save or destroy; but when the idols are disrobed of their garments, and appear as men, they are lightly esteemed. One never meets a Pope in society. The nobleman who would ask him to come to his house to baptize his child, would never receive him at his table, but, as a matter of course, send him to the servants' hall, to be supplied with food and abundance of drink.” "Are they immoral, then?"

"Not in one sense, I believe; for every parish priest must marry, and when his wife dies, he retires to a monastery."

Mr. G.-"I and my friend here have travelled over a great part of Russia, and have resided, during the last nineteen years, several months at a time, in about fourteen provinces, and I can honestly declare that I never knew one parish Pope who was not either a drunkard or a gambler. This may seem to you a dreadful exaggeration, but such has been the result of our observation."

Mr. W.-"But why should this surprise you? They are taken from among the poor. They are miserably paid. Their education is wretched. No mental labour or earnest religious duties of any kind are given them to perform. They are mere machines dressed in splendid robes, spending hours every day in bowing, crossing, walking in procession, mumbling the prayers of a long wearisome liturgy as rapidly as is possible for the muscles; blessing pilgrims, exorcising evil spirits, baptizing infants, or administering the sacrament of the Eucharist to them with a spoon. All this endless routine of dull, dead ceremonies, on Sundays, week days, feast-days, fast-days, with days for blessing fruit-trees, and the waters, and the anniversary services in the grave-yards, when all feast and get drunk over the graves of their households; think of all this among a people who cannot read, and have no Bible if they could, and without the slightest control from public opinion, or opposi

printed and published in modern Russ, and in various sizes. The Old Testament is also being translated into Russ, but is not yet finished. The fact that the Greek Church is thus faithfully translating, and honestly circulating the Bible, affords the best ground for hoping that it may gradually reform itself "according to the word." To all these hopeful signs may be added the fact, already alluded to, of the parish priests being necessarily married men. By and by the rule may be relaxed which now compels them, when they become widowers, to retire to a monastery, and never to marry again.

But to pass for a moment from the Church to the State. One necessarily hears a good deal about the late war, with its effect on the nation. The drain of men and money must have been enormous. Half a million of the former, and a million and a half of the latter, were the estimates made by several intelligent residents whom I met at Peterhoff, and who had been in the country during the terrible struggle. I was struck by the want of silver coin in the country when making small purchases in MosCOW. Several times I was obliged to forego my purchases from want of small coin, as the shopkeepers would not change the ruble note (3s.) for silver; most of the bullion had been exported during the

war.

The authentic anecdotes related of the late Emperor during that trying time make it more than likely that his mind was latterly affected. His fits of ungovernable passion, even with old Nesselrode, were notorious. The victory on the Alma, which Nicholas at first would not believe, abusing the officer who brought him the despatch, was known by him for some days before it was made public. An American gentleman, who saw him almost daily among his troops, told me, that so changed had he become during that short period, that, without his knowing the cause, he had remarked to several friends that the Emperor must be severely ill, and that he looked like a dying

man.

The effect of his death was as if some great weight had been taken off society. All acknowledged his power, and felt the presence of a giant among them. But there was an intolerable sense of bondage experienced by all. Liberty of speech was impossible. But since the accession of the present Emperor, men can breathe and speak without fear of a secret police, of secret agents, or of a journey to Siberia. In fact, politics are now discussed, not only among private friends, but among strangers, with perfect freedom. The liberty of the press is every day becoming more unshackled. The police laws, also, which affected the admission, residence, and departure of strangers, are being almost entirely done away with, and brought into harmony with the usages of other European countries. Let us not forget at what a late period of history Russia has entered the European family of nations. The good old General Wilson, with whom I conversed at Alexandrofski, had himself conversed with the great Catherine, who ascended the throne only thirty-seven years after the death of Peter the Great, who was almost the founder of the present Russian Empire.

With a powerful and great government, an edu

cated people, a reformed Greek Church, and an open Bible, what may not Russia yet become! We may rejoice in the prospect for the sake of our common humanity. The immense boundaries of Russia extend almost with an unbroken stretch over a hundred degrees of longitude, from the Baltic to the Rocky Mountains, and embrace more than the half of the northern portion of the habitable globe. They descend from the snows of the Arctic Ocean to the burning steppes of Asia. She reigns supreme over a vast and busy popula tion, as well as over hordes of roving barbarians. Her means of internal communication by her gigantic rivers; the facilities afforded by her plains and forests for railways and telegraphs; her immense mineral riches and boundless plains of fertile soil; her unassailable military position when on the defensive; her almost unlimited command of men to supply her armies; the subtlety, perseverance, and governing power of her officials, and the hardihood of her people-all promise a future for Russia, which, without affording any great cause of alarm to Europe, affords great cause of joyful anticipation to herself, and to all who wish civilisation to supplant barbarianism. And if to this is added the hope of Christian truth imbuing a Church whose authority is acknowledged by eighty millions of the human race, we may well look with profound interest on all that is taking place in Russia, and from our hearts wish her God-speed in the cause on which she has entered. As it is, can history show a more unexpected and unlikely combination of events, than the fact of the same year, and, we believe, the same day, witnessing the most despotic nation in the world freeing its serfs, and the model republic breaking up, in order that its Southern Confederation may hold its slaves by a tighter grasp, and bind them by a firmer chain?

If my readers are not wearied of my travelling gossip, I shall have another talk with them on the journey home. I am glad, however, to be out of Russia, and perhaps so are they! *

NORMAN MACLEOD.

For the information of such of my readers as may wish to learn what provision is made to supply the ordinances of religion to British residents in there is a chapel in connexion with the Church of St. Petersburgh and Moscow, I may here state that England in Cronstadt, St. Petersburgh, and Moscow, The venerable and excellent Dr. Law has discharged his duties with great fidelity in St. Petersburgh for upwards of forty years, and is still hale and hearty. Mr. M'Sweeny, of Cronstadt, himself an ex-officer of the British Navy, is admirably fitted, in every respect, for the position he occupies. There is a "British-Amercan" chapel in St. Petersburgh, which is "independent" in its government, and is intended to meet the wants of those who are not disposed to accept of the services of There is another in the same the Episcopal church. "connexion" at Alexandrofski, a busy, manufacturing,

small town, five miles from the capital. These chapels are attended by men of various sections of the Protestant Church-Presbyterian, Methodist, and Congrega tional; and the clergymen who minister in them are most catholic in their sentiments, liberal in their government, and faithful in their ministrations. As St. Petersburgh, amount to about 5000 souls, there is the British residents, including children, in and around work to do more than sufficient to occupy the labours of all the clergy.

the

It is a beautiful, a generous, a wealthy, and believing age. When I hear accounts of its increase of population, I say, Go on and prosper. When I hear accounts of its increase of wealth, I likewise say, Go on and prosper. The larger and richer the field, the better will it be for the reaper.

When I look around me at the world of the present hour, I pity the condition of those of my class (the class that is too wise to steal, too clever to work, and that has intellect enough to scheme), whose misfortune it was to live in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. I am filled with commiseration for my ancestors, when I think what ingenuity, in those days, may have been allowed to perish in silent neglect, or may have been rewarded in a very partial and inadequate man

ner.

I am the inventor of those three once popular names—the "Druids' Ointment," the "Druids' Lotion," and the "Druids' Pill." I lived for years magnificently upon those names; I realized a handsome fortune by them; and I sold their copyright, though somewhat worn and tarnished, for a sum that would open the eyes of any plodding, every-day trader. That copyright term has expired, the names themselves have almost expired, and I am perfectly at liberty to write as I now do. First of all, I feel it my duty to record, in the most honest and unequivocal manner, what that pill, that lotion, and that ointment really were not. The pill was not made of old leather breeches, forty years behind the fashion, which were rescued from the moths and rats of an old slopseller's warehouse, at a nominal price per ton, and chopped and ground to powder by the aid of machinery. The pill was not made with equal mixtures of tan-dust, and gum Arabic (pronounced "marrowback"), and the sweepings of a saw-pit. It was not made, on any occasion during my proprietorship, with old felt hats of a past generation, discarded and "jobbed off" like the aforesaid leather breeches. Of course, I am only answering. for the medicine while it was in my hands, and under my management. I sold it, with all letters, testimonials, etc., on the seventeenth of July

substance, though still retaining the name, after that period I have no authority nor desire to state. The lotion was not a very important, or much demanded division of my medicinal stock-in-trade, and it was not manufactured by a combination of Spanish liquorice and thin barley-water. The ointment, which stood next to the pills, and almost equalled them in its sale, was neither rejected railway-cart grease, condemned butter, nor the re-appearance of a bankrupt pomatum-maker's stock, that had been bought for a mere trifle at the assignee's sale. Each and all of these stories about my medicines were the idle fabrications of diners-out and professional funny dogs, who often took the remedies in full faith which they openly affected to despise. So have I known many noisy sceptics with a strong and secret superstitious belief in the coarsest and vulgarest of miracles.

Having described what the pill, the ointment, and the lotion, were not, I can soon state, in a very few words, what they really were. They were incapable of hurting a child. The flour which composed the pill, and the lard which composed the ointment, were the finest and purest that could be purchased in the market, while the lotion was nothing more than weak tobacco-tea, as any one ought to have discovered in a moment with the least sense of smell.. A little jalap was sometimes mixed in the pills, to act as an aperient upon those whose faith required quickening.

These were slender materials, it would seem, with which to build up a fortune, and they would not have gone far without other things to help, them. The first step of importance was to invent a taking title, and here I found, by experience, that I had been peculiarly happy. I sank all personal considerations, all the pleasure of being decorated with foreign orders and foreign diplomas (both of which are to be purchased in the market), all the delight of advertising my own name, and being known as the benefactor of my species. I stood, like Junius, the shadow of a shade, and gave up everything for the remote and venerable Druids. It was not De Jones's marvellous discoveries that were healing the awfullest of sore legs, purifying the most obstinately stagnant blood, and renovat-, ing the most shattered constitution. It was the pill that had been handed down from the dim old. mystic days, when Stonehenge was a busy temple, and not a deserted wilderness; it was the ointment that had followed the pill, at a decent