We were compelled to obey a new commander. We tried all means to gain his favour, but in vain. How could we have found any means? God grant us to suffer with a clever man! But he was a stupid officer. He had risen from a common peasant to be a captain. He thought he was a great man, and that we must be kept as severely as possible, since we were criminals. He regarded it below his dignity to speak to us; yet in spite of all his arrogance, he came to dine with us. Consider for yourself whether the man had any sense from the way he was dressed: he wore his uniform right over his shirt, and slippers on his bare feet; and thus he sat down to dinner with us! I was younger than the rest, and uncontrollable: I could not help laughing as I looked at his ridiculous get-up. He noticed that I was laughing at him, and said, himself smiling: “Lucky for you that my books have burnt, or I should have a talk with you!” However bitter I felt, I tried to get him to talk more; but he never uttered another word. Just think what a commander we were given to watch us in all we did! What were they afraid of? That we would run away? Not their watch kept us back, but our innocence: we were sure that in time they would see their error, and would return us to our former possessions. Besides, we were restrained by the fact that we had a large family. And thus we sailed with the stupid commander a whole month until we arrived at the town where we were to reside. Mikhaíl Vasílevich Lomonósov. (1711-1765.) Lomonósov was born in the village of Denísovka, in the Government of Arkhángelsk, not far from the spot where, one hundred and fifty years before, the English had rediscovered Russia. In his letters to Shuválov, Lomonósov tells us of the difficulties with which he had to contend at home and at the School of the Redeemer at Moscow. His brilliant progress caused him to be chosen among the first men to be sent abroad at Government expense to study mining, and to get acquainted with mining methods in Holland, England and France. In spite of insufficient support from the Government and a roving life at German universities, Lomonósov made excellent progress in philosophy, under Christian Wolff at Marburg, and in the sciences at Freiburg. After marrying a German woman, wandering about and starving, Lomonósov returned to St. Petersburg. Before reaching home, he had sent to St. Petersburg his _Ode on the Occasion of the Capture of Khotín_. It was the first time the tonic versification was successfully applied to the language, and though the diction of the ode is turgid and the enthusiasm forced, yet it became the model for a vast family of odes and eulogies, generally written to order, until Derzhávin introduced a new style with his _Felítsa_.