easant. On the one hand, they
received from the master a monthly allowance of food and a yearly
allowance of clothes, and they were obliged to live in the immediate
vicinity of the mansion-house; but, on the other hand, they had each a
separate house or apartment, with a little cabbage-garden, and commonly
a small plot of flax. The unmarried ones lived in all respects like
ordinary domestic servants.

* Those proprietors who kept orchestras, large packs of
hounds, &c., had sometimes several hundred domestic serfs.

The number of these domestic serfs being generally out of all proportion
to the amount of work they had to perform, they were imbued with a
hereditary spirit of indolence, and they performed lazily and carelessly
what they had to do. On the other hand, they were often sincerely
attached to the family they served, and occasionally proved by acts
their fidelity and attachment. Here is an instance out of many for which
I can vouch. An old nurse, whose mistress was dangerously ill,
vowed that, in the event of the patient's recovery, she would make a
pilgrimage, first to Kief, the Holy City on the Dnieper, and afterwards
to Solovetsk, a much revered monastery on an island in the White Sea.
The patient recovered, and the old woman, in fulfilment of her vow,
walked more than two thousand miles!

This class of serfs might well be called domestic slaves, but I must
warn the reader that he ought not to use the expression when speaking
with Russians, because they are extremely sensitive on the point.
Serfage, they say, was something quite different from slavery, and
slavery never existed in Russia.

The first part of this assertion is perfectly true, and the second
part perfectly false. In old times, as I have said above, slavery was a
recognised institution in Russia as in other countries. One can hardly
read a few pages of the old chronicles without stumbling on references
to slaves; and I distinctly remember--though I cannot at this moment
give chapter and verse--that one of the old Russian Princes was so
valiant and so successful in his wars that during his reign a slave
might be bought for a few coppers. As late as the beginning of last
century the domestic serfs were sold very much as domestic slaves
used to be sold in countries where slavery was recognised as a legal
institution. Here is an example of the customary advertisement; I take
it almost at random from the Moscow Gazette of 1801:--"TO BE SO