and one old gentleman habitually calls him--half in
joke and half in earnest--"our friend the communist."

In reality Alexander Ivan'itch has nothing of the communist about him.
Though he loudly denounces the tchinovnik spirit--or, as we should
say, red-tape in all its forms--and is an ardent partisan of local
self-government, he is one of the last men in the world to take part in
any revolutionary movement, he would like to see the Central Government
enlightened and controlled by public opinion and by a national
representation, but he believes that this can only be effected by
voluntary concessions on the part of the autocratic power. He has,
perhaps, a sentimental love of the peasantry, and is always ready
to advocate its interests; but he has come too much in contact with
individual peasants to accept those idealised descriptions in which
some popular writers indulge, and it may safely be asserted that the
accusation of his voluntarily favouring peasants at the expense of the
proprietors is wholly unfounded. Alexander Ivan'itch is, in fact, a
quiet, sensible man, who is capable of generous enthusiasm, and is not
at all satisfied with the existing state of things; but he is not a
dreamer and a revolutionnaire, as some of his neighbours assert.

I am afraid I cannot say as much for his younger brother Nikolai, who
lives with him. Nikolai Ivan'itch is a tall, slender man, about sixty
years of age, with emaciated face, bilious complexion and long black
hair--evidently a person of excitable, nervous temperament. When he
speaks he articulates rapidly, and uses more gesticulation than is
common among his countrymen. His favourite subject of conversation, or
rather of discourse, for he more frequently preaches than talks, is the
lamentable state of the country and the worthlessness of the Government.
Against the Government he has a great many causes for complaint, and one
or two of a personal kind. In 1861 he was a student in the University of
St. Petersburg. At that time there was a great deal of public excitement
all over Russia, and especially in the capital. The serfs had just been
emancipated, and other important reforms had been undertaken. There was
a general conviction among the young generation--and it must be added
among many older men--that the autocratic, paternal system of government
was at an end, and that Russia was about to be reorganised according
to the most advanced principles of political and social scien