266 THE LESGHIAN MOUNTAINS. 



very few indeed are the great men of Russia whom 

 they do not detest and abuse ; but the Emperor is 

 still to them a loving father, in whose tender 

 mercy if they could only get at it through the 

 crowd of officials who fence him round, and hamper 

 the effects of his just will the moujik entirely 

 confides. 



If those Russians with whom I have talked 

 on Nihilism knew anything of the subject, the 

 Emperor's great mistake was not the freeing of the 

 serfs though by that he aroused the hostility of the 

 wealthy boyar class but the reduction of the fees 

 of the universities to such a degree as to render a 

 first-rate education possible to thousands who, in 

 after life, would have to fill positions for which 

 they were too highly educated, and in which their 

 excessive education would only create discontent. 

 Is it not just possible that the excessive education 

 which we force upon the working classes of England 

 at the present time may have a somewhat similar 

 effect ? I plead guilty to knowing very little of 

 politics; but when I hear on all sides the com- 

 plaint that domestic servants are becoming an 

 extinct race, having grown too fine for the state 

 of life to which (to quote the fine old catechism 

 phrase) it has pleased God to call them ; when I 

 hear of the difficulty of obtaining agricultural 

 labourers, or old-fashioned country servants ; when 

 every woman can play the piano, and none can 



