RUSSIA IN EUROPE 
21 
EDUCATION. 
There has never been any national system of education in 
Russia. Many noble and wealthy families have English nurses 
and French or German tutors. The children are taught to speak 
French, English, and German and formerl}’- were often better 
educated in those languages than in their native tongue. 
There are nine universities in Russia, with between fifteen and 
eighteen thousand students, who are mostly from poor families 
and often support themselves by teaching. They strongly de- 
sire to reform the government, but are ignorant of any other way 
of accomplishing their object than by its overthrow. They have 
therefore become nihilists, hoping to improve the people with- 
out realizing how much evil they do. They have converted 
the universities into hot-beds of nihilism. The government has 
consequently subjected the students to very strict regulations, 
not only in their study but in their life outside as well as within 
the university, the tendency now being to restrict instruction and 
confine it to specified lines. 
In addition to these nine universities, there are medical and 
professional schools for engineers, electricians, and mechanics, 
not included in the above enumeration. Each of the eighty-five 
governments has a grammar or high school, and the pupils on 
graduating from these schools can enter the higher seminaries. 
There are also secondary common schools and gymnasiums, 
with 2,o00,000 scholars, while there are 15,000,000 of school age. 
Of every ten Russian men, two may be able to read, but of eveiy 
ten Russian women, hardl}^ one. For the last ten years consider- 
able sums have been appro|)riated by the government for edu- 
cational purposes, and in 1893 $31,000,000 by the general and 
local governments ; $175,000,000 a year were expended on the 
arm}’- and $22,000,000 on the navy, while in the United States 
$150,000,000 are annually expended for education. 
Slight as are their educational privileges, and probably liecause 
they are so slight, the ])eople have no desire for a better and 
fuller system. Daring my stay at Nijni Novgorod I was invited 
to go over the house of one of the wealthiest men in the ])lace. 
It was a very magnificent house, with a broad marlde stairway 
leading to the salon, the floor of which was mosaic and the hang- 
ings fine tapestry. I visited every room in the house; in only 
one did 1 see a book, ])aper, or Avriting materials of any kind, 
and that was the children’s school-room. I was informed that 
