ons, beginning with the time of Peter
the Great. From Peter and his successors about seventy families have
received the title of count and ten that of baron. The latter are all,
with two exceptions, of foreign extraction, and are mostly descended
from Court bankers.*

* Besides these, there are of course the German counts and
barons of the Baltic Provinces, who are Russian subjects.

There is a very common idea that Russian nobles are as a rule enormously
rich. This is a mistake. The majority of them are poor. At the time of
the Emancipation, in 1861, there were 100,247 landed proprietors, and
of these, more than 41,000 were possessors of less than twenty-one male
serfs--that is to say, were in a condition of poverty. A proprietor who
was owner of 500 serfs was not considered as by any means very rich, and
yet there were only 3,803 proprietors belonging in that category. There
were a few, indeed, whose possessions were enormous. Count Sheremetief,
for instance, possessed more than 150,000 male serfs, or in other words
more than 300,000 souls; and thirty years ago Count Orloff-Davydof
owned considerably more than half a million of acres. The Demidof family
derive colossal revenues from their mines, and the Strogonofs have
estates which, if put together, would be sufficient in extent to form a
good-sized independent State in Western Europe. The very rich families,
however, are not numerous. The lavish expenditure in which Russian
nobles often indulge indicates too frequently not large fortune, but
simply foolish ostentation and reckless improvidence.

Perhaps, after having spoken so much about the past history of the
Noblesse, I ought to endeavour to cast its horoscope, or at least to
say something of its probable future. Though predictions are always
hazardous, it is sometimes possible, by tracing the great lines of
history in the past, to follow them for a little distance into the
future. If it be allowable to apply this method of prediction in
the present matter, I should say that the Russian Dvoryanstvo will
assimilate with the other classes, rather than form itself into an
exclusive corporation. Hereditary aristocracies may be preserved--or at
least their decomposition may be retarded--where they happen to exist,
but it seems that they can no longer be created. In Western Europe there
is a large amount of aristocratic sentiment, both in the nobles and in
the people; but it exists in spite of, rather than