112 FORESTRY IN LITHUANIA. 



inhabitant who dares to utter any other word, or to 

 harbour any other thought than that of entire sub- 

 mission. It may be so. He may have so closely 

 gagged the mouth, and so heavily oppressed the heart 

 of Russian Poland, as to make her powerless any 

 longer to speak or to breathe. But is this to re-estab- 

 lish order and tranquility within her borders? As 

 well may the physician, who ascribes to his patient a 

 malady to which he is a stranger, and drenches him with 

 remedies which destroy him, dream that he has dis- 

 pelled the danger, because he has silenced the meanings 

 of pain, or made the limbs of the strong man helpless 

 as the limbs of an infant. 



'The narrative in the foregoing pages has been pur- 

 posely confined to the notice of those persons only 

 with whom I was brought into personal and friendly 

 relation. The sympathy awakened within me by their 

 distresses, I know to be a just and lawful sympathy; 

 and, howsoever imperfect may have been the expression 

 of it which I have tried to give, it has been given without 

 hesitation, because I am convinced of the truth of the 

 grounds on which it rests. If ever man were animated 

 with a single-hearted purpose to do his duty as a 

 steward of God's bounties, amid a people who looked up 

 hopefully to him for help, it is the friend with whom 

 I passed six months and more, upon the soil on which 

 he and his people dwelt. Day by day I witnessed his 

 honest and consistent efforts for their welfare ; day by 

 day I knew that he was stedfast and loyal to the 

 Emperor, to whom he and his people alike owed sub- 

 jection. Yet I have lived to see him torn from the 

 home of his fathers; and the people, whom he would 

 fain have protected and cherished, left once more to the 

 tender mercies of the roving Cossack, or to the grasping 

 extortion of the Jewish trafficker. His loftiest aspira- 

 tions have been crushed in the very prime of his youth- 

 ful manhood ; and the " sun " of his brightest hope has 

 suddenly " gone down whilst it is yet day " (Jer. xv. 9). 



