"I have often," he says, "heard intelligent and reflecting Russians mention, as an almost inexplicable paradox, that the peasants condemned to become settlers, all, without exception, and in a very short time, change their habits and lead an exemplary life; yet it is certain that the sense of the benefit conferred on them by the gift of personal freedom is the sole cause of this conversion. Banishment subservient to colonisation, instead of close imprisonment, is, indeed, an excellent feature in the Russian code; and though the substitution of forced labour in mines for the punishment of death may be traced back to Grecian example, yet the improving of the offender's condition by bestowing on him personal freedom, is an original as well as an admirable addition of a Russian legislator." It is of course by the higher class of exiles that the banishment is most severely felt; but these live in the towns, that the succour received from government may reach them the more easily, and submit, for the most part, with great equanimity to the startling change from the luxury of Moscow or St Petersburg, to the dulness and simplicity of Tobolsk, and even of worse places. Some of them have to do penance in church for a certain time after their arrival, and a portion of these continue the practice when it is no longer compulsory. At Beresov, a town in western Siberia, which Mr Erman passed through on an excursion northwards from Tobolsk, the oral chronicles of the inhabitants furnish curious details of the numerous illustrious exiles who have there ended their days. Menchikoff, the well-known favourite of Peter I., was one of these. "After his political extinction, he prepared himself, by devout penitence, for his natural decease. He worked with his own hands in erecting the little wooden church, now fallen to decay, which stands thirty or forty feet above the bank of the Sosva, at the southern extremity of the town: he then served in it as bell-ringer, and was finally buried by the grateful inhabitants of Beresov, immediately before the door of the building." It was here, at Beresov, that Mr Erman fell in with a number of unlucky conspirators, who had lost fortune, rank, and home, by their association in a recent abortive revolutionary attempt. Amongst them were a M. Gorski, at one time a count and general of cavalry, and the ex-chieftains Focht and Chernilov. They usually wore the costume of the country, but upon holidays they donned European coats, _in order to display the vestiges of the orders which had once been sewed upon them_. A curious instance of vanity, traceable, perhaps, to a desire to distinguish themselves from persons condemned to the same punishment for crimes of a more disgraceful nature.