In the field of science and literature, the nobility had at length found rivals among the free citizens; and the courts of these temples were now, through the erection of village schools, made accessible even to the peasant, who was, in name at least, no longer a degraded slave.[42] If the Russian government in Poland had been exercised in practice, according to the same principles on which it was founded; if Alexander's first intentions had been practically executed in the same spirit in which the happiness of his Polish subjects had been theoretically planned; perhaps it would have been less difficult to reconcile the minds of the Poles to the loss of their independence as a nation, which they justly consider as an inestimable good. We have here no concern with politics, except so far as they have a necessary influence on the state of general cultivation; or so far as they give birth to important occasional appearances in the republic of letters. Considered in the first point of view, it is not to be denied, that the Polish nation, since the foundation of the _constitutional_ Russian kingdom of Poland in 1815, has made more progress towards social improvement, and has advanced more towards a state of equality in a mental and intellectual respect with the countries of middle Europe, viz. Germany, France and England, than during the whole vast period of their previous existence. For most of these improvements, however, the preparation had already been made, in the last ten years before the dissolution of the republic. The emancipation of the serfs, who comprised the whole peasantry, one of the fundamental laws of the duchy of Warsaw in 1807, was confirmed at the creation of the kingdom of Poland in 1815. In the diet of the kingdom, not only the nobility and the government, but also the cities and smaller communities, had their own representatives; and all Christian denominations acquired equal political rights. To the universities of Cracow, Wilna, and Lemberg,[43] there was added in 1818 a fourth at Warsaw. The kingdom of Poland contained in 1827, in each of its eight woiwodships, a palatine school, and besides this three other institutions for the higher branches of education; fourteen principal department schools, and nine for sub-departments; several professional seminaries for miners, teachers, agriculturists, and others; a military academy, a school for cadets, and a number of elementary schools, both private and public.[44] The Russian-Polish provinces, i.e. the part of Poland united with Russia in the three successive dismemberments of Poland, participate in all the means of education which the Russian empire affords; the province of West Prussia and the grand duchy of Posen, in those of the kingdom of Prussia, where an enlightened government has made, as is generally acknowledged, the mental improvement of the lower classes one of its principal objects. The Austrian kingdom of Galicia had in the year