LITHUANIA AND ITS PEOPLE. 113 



This is, indeed, a sore trial ; fitted, indeed, to lead every 

 one who bends beneath the weight of it to seek more 

 earnestly the protection of Him, who in adversity as 

 well as in prosperity, is our surest stay. They who lean 

 the most trustfully upon Him, and walk in the closest 

 obedience to His will, will find that even the pathway 

 of tribulation leads, in His own good time, to blessing. 

 But it would be the forfeiture of this blessing, were we 

 to varnish over, with the gloss of a false name, the 

 hideous oppression of the country of which we have 

 been speaking. We dare not, therefore, dignify with the 

 name of Government (as Mouravieff and his agents would 

 fain do), the work of plunder, proscription, and massacre, 

 which they have carried on ; neither dare we apply the 

 hallowed name of Peace to the desolation which they 

 have spread over " unhappy Poland." '* 



The Lithuanians seem to be of the same race with the 

 Samogitians, and they resemble both the Poles and the 

 Russians. Their appearance speaks of extreme poverty. 

 Their carts are made entirely of wood, sometimes without 

 a single piece of iron, and even the harness of the horses 

 is often made of the more flexible branches of trees. And I 

 have been told that the landed proprietors have become 

 greatly impoverished, many of them possessing only half a 

 desatin of land, and estates of insolvent proprietors being 

 constantly for sale ; while the Government has been 

 endeavouring to provide for them by encouraging emigra- 

 tion to Simbirsk and Tobolsk, by offering them settle- 

 ments on crown lands in these governments. 



* ' Auferre, trucidare, rapere, falsis nominibus imperium ; atque, ubi solitudinem 

 faciunt, pacem appellant.' Tac. Agric. c. xxx. 



