f the Provincial Executive Bureau, and is now director of
a bank in St. Petersburg.

To the right and left of the president--who is Marshal of Noblesse for
the province--sit the members of the bureau. The gentleman who reads
the long reports is my friend "the Prime Minister," who began life as
a cavalry officer, and after a few years of military service retired
to his estate; he is an intelligent, able administrator, and a man of
considerable literary culture. His colleague, who assists him in reading
the reports, is a merchant, and director of the municipal bank. The next
member is also a merchant, and in some respects the most remarkable
man in the room. Though born a serf, he is already, at middle age, an
important personage in the Russian commercial world. Rumour says that
he laid the foundation of his fortune by one day purchasing a copper
cauldron in a village through which he was passing on his way to St.
Petersburg, where he hoped to gain a little money by the sale of some
calves. In the course of a few years he amassed an enormous fortune; but
cautious people think that he is too fond of hazardous speculations, and
prophesy that he will end life as poor as he began it.

All these men belong to what may be called the party of progress, which
anxiously supports all proposals recognised as "liberal," and especially
all measures likely to improve the condition of the peasantry. Their
chief opponent is that little man with close-cropped, bullet-shaped head
and small piercing eyes, who may be called the Leader of the opposition.
He condemns many of the proposed schemes, on the ground that the
province is already overtaxed, and that the expenditure ought to be
reduced to the smallest possible figure. In the District Assembly
he preaches this doctrine with considerable success, for there the
peasantry form the majority, and he knows how to use that terse, homely
language, interspersed with proverbs, which has far more influence on
the rustic mind than scientific principles and logical reasoning; but
here, in Provincial Assembly, his following composes only a respectable
minority, and he confines himself to a policy of obstruction.

The Zemstvo of Novgorod had at that time the reputation of being one of
the most enlightened and energetic, and I must say that the proceedings
were conducted in a business-like, satisfactory way. The reports
were carefully considered, and each article of the annual budget was
submitted to