"That is just where the great evil lies," continued Ivan Vassilievitsch. "What in other countries is an object of public competition, is with us left to ourselves. What right have we to complain against our government, who has left it in our discretion to elect officers to regulate our internal affairs? Is it not our own fault that, instead of paying due attention to a subject of so much importance, we make game of it? We have in every province many a civilized man, who backed by the laws, could give a salutary direction to public affairs; but they all fly the elections like a plague, leaving them in the hands of intriguing schemers. The most wealthy land-owners lounge on the Nevsky-perspective, or travel abroad, and but seldom visit their estates. For them elections are--a caricature: they amuse themselves over the bald head of the sheriff or the thick belly of the president of the court of assizes, and they forget that to them is intrusted not only their own actual welfare and that of their peasantry, but their entire future destiny. Yes, thus it is! Had we not taken such a mischievous course, were we not so unpardonably thoughtless, how grand would have been the vocation of the Russian noble, to lead the whole nation forward on the path of genuine civilization! I repeat again, it is our own fault. Instead of being useful to their country, what has become of the Russian nobility?" "They have ruined themselves," emphatically interrupted Vassily Ivanovitsch.--_The Tarantas: or Impressions of Young Russia._ End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of International Weekly Miscellany, Vol. 1, No. 5, July 29, 1850, by Various