ensities
of the small owners were best represented by nearly fifty thousand men
possessing less than twenty serfs each.[K]

[Footnote K: Gerebtzoff, _Histoire de la Civilisation en
Russie_,--Wolowski, in _Revue des Deux Mondes_,--and Tegoborski,
_Commentaries on the Productive Forces of Russia_, Vol. I. p. 221.]

The serfs might be divided into two great classes. The first comprised
those working under the old, or _corvee_, system,--giving, generally,
three days in the week to the tillage of the owner's domain; the second
comprised those working under the new, or _obrok_, system,--receiving
a payment fixed by the owner and assessed by the community to which the
serfs belonged.

The character of the serfs has been moulded by the serf-system.

They have a simple shrewdness, which, under a better system, had made
them enterprising; but this quality has degenerated into cunning and
cheatery,--the weapons which the hopelessly oppressed always use.

They have a reverence for things sacred, which, under a better system,
might have given the nation a strengthening religion; but they now stand
among the most religious peoples on earth, and among the least moral. To
the besmutted picture of Our Lady of Kazan they are ever ready to burn
wax and oil; to Truth and Justice they constantly omit the tribute of
mere common honesty. They keep the Church fasts like saints; they keep
the Church feasts like satyrs.

They have a curiosity, which, under a better system, had made them
inventive; but their plough in common use is behind the plough described
by Virgil.

They have a love of gain, which, under a better system, had made them
hard-working; but it takes ten serfs to do languidly and poorly what
two free men in America do quickly and well.

They are naturally a kind people; but let one example show how serfage
can transmute kindness.

It is a rule well known in Russia, that, when an accident occurs,
interference is to be left to the police. Hence you shall see a man
lying in a fit, and the bystanders giving no aid, but waiting for the
authorities.

Some years since, as all the world remembers, a theatre took fire in St.
Petersburg, and crowds of people were burned or stifled. The whole story
is not so well known. That theatre was but a great temporary wooden
shed,--such as is run up every year at the holidays, in the public
squares. When the fire burst forth, crowds of peasants hurried to the
spot; but though they heard t