the
provincial corporations may have possessed has been annihilated. Thus
at the present day the nobles are on a level with the other classes with
regard to the right of possessing landed property and the administration
of local affairs.

From this rapid sketch the reader will easily perceive that the Russian
Noblesse has had a peculiar historical development. In Germany, France,
and England the nobles were early formed into a homogeneous organised
body by the political conditions in which they were placed. They had to
repel the encroaching tendencies of the Monarchy on the one hand, and
of the bourgeoisie on the other; and in this long struggle with powerful
rivals they instinctively held together and developed a vigorous esprit
de corps. New members penetrated into their ranks, but these intruders
were so few in number that they were rapidly assimilated without
modifying the general character or recognised ideals of the class, and
without rudely disturbing the fiction of purity of blood. The class thus
assumed more and more the nature of a caste with a peculiar intellectual
and moral culture, and stoutly defended its position and privileges
till the ever-increasing power of the middle classes undermined its
influence. Its fate in different countries has been different. In
Germany it clung to its feudal traditions, and still preserves its
social exclusiveness. In France it was deprived of its political
influence by the Monarchy and crushed by the Revolution. In England
it moderated its pretensions, allied itself with the middle classes,
created under the disguise of constitutional monarchy an aristocratic
republic, and conceded inch by inch, as necessity demanded, a share of
its political influence to the ally that had helped it to curb the Royal
power. Thus the German baron, the French gentilhomme, and the English
nobleman represent three distinct, well-marked types; but amidst all
their diversities they have much in common. They have all preserved to
a greater or less extent a haughty consciousness of innate
inextinguishable superiority over the lower orders, together with a more
or less carefully disguised dislike for the class which has been, and
still is, an aggressive rival.

The Russian Noblesse has not these characteristics. It was formed out of
more heterogeneous materials, and these materials did not spontaneously
combine to form an organic whole, but were crushed into a conglomerate
mass by the weight of