CHAPTER X. 



SUSPICIOUS PEASANTS. 



ON the evening of July 19 we arrived in Kharkoff, 

 a city of 200,000 inhabitants, and one of the uni- 

 versity towns of Russia. About 3500 students find 

 accommodation in its various institutions of learning. 

 It is the metropolis of Little Russia ; and on its streets 

 are seen more handsome women than in any other city 

 of the Empire, save Warsaw. It has numerous splen- 

 did churches, with interiors all ablaze with riches, and 

 of its one hundred versts of streets, fifty versts are 

 execrably paved and the other fifty not paved at all. 

 This glaring difference between the wealthiness of 

 the churches, and the poverty or indifference of the 

 municipalities in Russian cities, was always a matter of 

 controversy between myself and companion. His ex- 

 planation was that the St. Petersburg government was 

 actively at the back of the churches, whilst the cities 

 had to look after their own streets. Special medals 

 are given for donations of 5000 rubles and upward to 

 churches, and as these medals are much coveted by 

 wealthy merchants, who have no other means of ob- 

 taining decorations, the churches simply roll in wealth. 

 It seemed, indeed, that this ingenious method of coax- 

 ing donations from wealthy parvenues, might with 

 equally happy results be applied to the far more need- 



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