1809.] 
proverb, and unintermitting benevolent. 
But it cannot be said of them without 
adulation, that they have that grace of 
manners, that elegance of personal ad- 
dress, which in other nations of Europe 
Is supposed generally inseparable from 
rank and fortune.” 
There is properly no middle class of peo- 
ple in the Russian empire, All are either 
nobles, or slaves. The richest merchants 
are frequently slaves, or slaves who have 
purchased their freedom. The manners 
of this class have risen in the scale of 
civilization, in proportion to the ameli- 
oration of their condition. As many of 
them as are rich and free, vie with the 
nobles in hospitality, their tables are 
plentiful and luxurious to a fault, and 
the jewels of their wives would purchase 
a considerable estate. They differ only 
from the manners of the same class in 
other countries, from the peculiar cir- 
cuinstances of their own. ‘They have 
not the same access and intermixture 
with the great; trade, however exten- 
sive, is still held in contempt by the 
Russian nobility; and in despite of all 
the light of the nineteenth century, a 
Russian merchant, though as wealthy as 
a prince, 1s never admitted to the table 
of a Russian noble. 
The manners of the peasantry, in 
which I include their domestic practice 
and minor morals, appear by Mr. Ker 
Porter’s account to have undergone a 
very considerable change ; but two such 
strong instances of their remaining bar- 
barism yet remain, that I deem it ne- 
cessary to give them in Mr. Perter’s own 
words, and therefore on his own credit. 
The one respects the indiscriminate 
use of the bath, by males and females at 
the same time. 
** Picture to yourself nearly an hundred 
naked women flapping, splashing, and 
sporting in the water, with all the grace 
of a shoal of porpoises. No idea of 
exposure ever crossed their minds; no 
thought of shame ever fleshed their 
cheeks ; but floundering about, they en- 
joyed themselves with as much indiffer- 
ence, as when standing in all their trim 
array, staring at the gay groupes in the 
Summer Garden. Even on the confines 
of their bath, the open river, nay in the 
very midst of it, lusty boors were filling 
their water-casks for the use of the city. 
With the women bathed many men, all 
mingled together. The bathers are of 
every size, shape, age, and description. 
Women of twenty years old possessed a 
bosom which a painter would have given 
Montuty Mac. No. 184. 
according to Mr. &. Ker Porters 
D4d 
to the haggard attendants of Hecate. 
Amidst this superabundant groupe, in- 
deed, we descried a few young virgins 
(whose twisted hair declared them to 
have pretensions to that title); and their 
slender and serpentine figures gave us 
some hint, that the female form divine 
was not quite obliterated from their race.” 
It must certainly not be contended, 
that a people have reached very high in 
the rank of civilization, whilst they re- 
tain a practice scarcely paralleled amongst 
the most savage islanders of the South 
Seas. Who would believe, unless upon 
the most indisputable authority, that in 
the very centre of Europe, there could 
exist any part of a people, thus insene 
sible to all natural modesty ? 
The other usage to which I allude, is 
of a nature which one would believe im- 
possible to any being in the very infancy 
of civilization. . Here again I shall intro- 
duce Mr, Porter to speak for himself. 
“ While Tam upon this subject (the 
Manners of the Peasautry), I cannot 
omit mentioning a strange custom which. 
they have amongst them; one very re- 
pugnant to nature, and to British: feel- 
ings even shocking to think of—Fathers 
marry their sons to some blooming girl 
in the village at a very early age, and 
then send the young men either to Mosco 
or St, Petersburgh to seek employment, 
leaving their brides a few days after their 
marrage to the care of their parents. 
At the expiration of some years, when 
the son returns to his cottage, he finds 
himself the nominal father of several 
children, the offspring of his own parent, 
who had deemed it his duty thus to sup- 
ply the place of an husband to the young 
wife. This is done all over Russia, and 
is never considered a hardship by the 
parties. Indeed, so far from it, the 
fashion continues ; and when the son be-~ 
comes: a resident in his native village, if 
he have a numerous stock thus raised to 
him, he sends them packing, and then 
enjoys himself, hke a Turk in his Se 
raglio, among their wives.”-—These two 
instanc@s of barbarism are sufficient to 
do away all the extravagant representa- 
tions of the French writers, with respect 
to the civilization of the lower orders in 
Russia. .What must, in fact, be the 
condition both of the moral feeling, and 
of the faculty of judging, amongst a peo- 
ple thus horiibly depraved (for so it must 
be termed), in the very first elements of 
naturalinstinct? It has not indeed been 
well established by the travellers into 
Africa, that even the Hottentots, the 
Lz ; most - 
