From the reign of Peter the Great to the present moment, exile to Siberia as a punishment for political offenses, has been of constant recurrence, and most of the romance of Russian history is connected with the frozen steppes of that country. To enumerate all the illustrious names that have swelled the list of exiles up to the reign of Alexander, would be to write the history of the innumerable conspiracies which at various periods have shaken the throne of Russia, of the cruel caprices of a race of absolute and unscrupulous despots, and of the various individual passions which, under governments such as that of Russia, can always find means of making the public authorities the avengers of private hatreds. From the reign of Alexander up to the present time, sentence of exile to Siberia for political offenses has perhaps been more frequently pronounced than before; and as within this period the victims have mostly suffered for opinions, not for criminal deeds, and in many instances for opinions which, judged from the point of view of absolute right, must be pronounced to be noble and generous, though, in opposition to the reigning system in the country, the fate of these exiles has elicited the sympathy of Europe in a far higher degree than was ever called forth by the fall of court favorites, whose change of fortune was generally caused by an inordinate and selfish ambition. That to the latter, life in Siberia was but a succession of hardships, privations, and humiliations, history affirms; but what may be the fate of the exiles in the present day, there are no more authentic means of ascertaining than the narratives of the few west Europeans who have visited Siberia, and the inferences which may be drawn from the general system of convict colonization followed in the country, and from the spirit which pervades society there.