nners
and customs; for Nikolsk being under the dominion of his autocratic
majesty the emperor of all the Russias, instead of the mild,
constitutional government of Queen Victoria, there is no great
discrepancy between Nikolsk and any equally out-of-the-way town in
England. It has the same dearth of excitement, the same monotonous
uniformity of life; it lives in the same profound ignorance of the
great incidents that the drama of human existence is developing on the
theatre of the world at large; it has its priest, its doctor, its
lawyer, its post-office where a seal is not so sacred as it might be,
or rather where the problem of getting at the news, without breaking
the wax, has been successfully solved; it has the same thirst for
scandal, the same intense interest for the most contemptible
trivialities, the same constantly impending danger of suicide from
ennui, did not human nature adapt itself to its environments, and sink
into pettiness as naturally as though there were no such things as
towns and cities, and enlarged views of man and nature in the world:
all these it has the same as any British Little Pedlington. Then it
has its circles of social intercourse, as rigidly defined and as
intensely venerated as the rules of court precedence. The difference
in the social scale between a landowner, a tenant, a member of the
professions, a tradesman, a publican, a sweep, and a beggar, is
accurately prescribed and religiously observed--with this addition,
however, that in Nikolsk the owners of land are also owners of the
serfs upon the land, and that the numerous representatives of that
most centralised of all governments cut an important figure in the
snobberies of the place. In fine, there is one little English word
that describes Nikolsk completely, and that is--_dull_. It is
dull--beyond comprehension dull. No town in the universe can be
duller; because, from its quintessential dulness, there is but one
step to total inanition.

Thus, in Nikolsk, the ancient saying, that there is nothing new under
the sun, was daily and hourly verified. Week after week, and year
after year, the governor pillaged the people; the inspector of
charities pillaged the charities; the inspector of nuisances
sedulously avoided inspecting at all, lest, by removing them, the need
for his services should cease; the landowner ground down the serfs;
the tax-assessor ground the landowners; and everybody, in return for
the favours a paternal govern