To return to the northern agricultural region, the rural population have a peculiar type, which is to be accounted for by the fact that they never experienced to its full extent the demoralising influence of serfage.  A large proportion of them were settled on State domains and were governed by a special branch of the Imperial administration, whilst others lived on the estates of rich absentee landlords, who were in the habit of leaving the management of their properties to a steward acting under a code of instructions.  In either case, though serfs in the eye of the law, they enjoyed practically a very large amount of liberty.  By paying a small sum for a passport they could leave their villages for an indefinite period, and as long as they sent home regularly the money required for taxes and dues, they were in little danger of being molested.  Many of them, though officially inscribed as domiciled in their native communes, lived permanently in the towns, and not a few succeeded in amassing large fortunes.  The effect of this comparative freedom is apparent even at the present day.  These peasants of the north are more energetic, more intelligent, more independent, and consequently less docile and pliable than those of the fertile central provinces.  They have, too, more education.  A large proportion of them can read and write, and occasionally one meets among them men who have a keen desire for knowledge.  Several times I encountered peasants in this region who had a small collection of books, and twice I found in such collections, much to my astonishment, a Russian translation of Buckle’s “History of Civilisation.”

How, it may be asked, did a work of this sort find its way to such a place?  If the reader will pardon a short digression, I shall explain the fact.

Immediately after the Crimean War there was a curious intellectual movement—­of which I shall have more to say hereafter—­among the Russian educated classes.  The movement assumed various forms, of which two of the most prominent were a desire for encyclopaedic knowledge, and an attempt to reduce all knowledge to a scientific form.  For men in this state of mind Buckle’s great work had naturally a powerful fascination.  It seemed at first sight to reduce the multifarious conflicting facts of human history to a few simple principles, and to evolve order out of chaos.  Its success, therefore, was great.  In the course of a few years no less than four independent translations were published and sold.  Every one read, or at least professed to have read, the wonderful book, and many believed that its author was the greatest genius of his time.  During the first year of my residence in Russia (1870), I rarely had a serious conversation without hearing Buckle’s name mentioned; and my friends almost always assumed that he had succeeded in creating a genuine science of history on the inductive method.  In vain I pointed out that Buckle had merely thrown out some hints in his introductory chapter