the crops and take measures against approaching famine, and, in short,
to undertake, within certain clearly defined limits, whatever seems
likely to increase the material and moral well-being of the population.
In form the institution is Parliamentary--that is to say, it consists
of an assembly of deputies which meets regularly once a year, and of
a permanent executive bureau elected by the Assembly from among its
members. If the Assembly be regarded as a local Parliament, the bureau
corresponds to the Cabinet. In accordance with this analogy my friend
the president was sometimes jocularly termed the Prime Minister. Once
every three years the deputies are elected in certain fixed proportions
by the landed proprietors, the rural Communes, and the municipal
corporations. Every province (guberniya) and each of the districts
(uyezdi) into which the province is subdivided has such an assembly and
such a bureau.

Not long after my arrival in Novgorod I had the opportunity of being
present at a District Assembly. In the ball-room of the "Club de la
Noblesse" I found thirty or forty men seated round a long table covered
with green cloth. Before each member lay sheets of paper for the purpose
of taking notes, and before the president--the Marshal of Noblesse for
the district--stood a small hand-bell, which he rang vigorously at the
commencement of the proceedings and on all the occasions when he wished
to obtain silence. To the right and left of the president sat the
members of the executive bureau (uprava), armed with piles of written
and printed documents, from which they read long and tedious extracts,
till the majority of the audience took to yawning and one or two of the
members positively went to sleep. At the close of each of these reports
the president rang his bell--presumably for the purpose of awakening the
sleepers--and inquired whether any one had remarks to make on what
had just been read. Generally some one had remarks to make, and not
unfrequently a discussion ensued. When any decided difference of opinion
appeared a vote was taken by handing round a sheet of paper, or by the
simpler method of requesting the Ayes to stand up and the Noes to sit
still.

What surprised me most in this assembly was that it was composed partly
of nobles and partly of peasants--the latter being decidedly in the
majority--and that no trace of antagonism seemed to exist between the
two classes. Landed proprietors and their ci-devant se