The emancipation of the serfs in the month of March, 1861, was the greatest act of Alexander the Second’s life. Whether looked at from the point of view of its intrinsic difficulties, or from that of its consequences, it was one of the broadest social reforms ever undertaken by any monarch. There are perhaps few people in this country who understand what serfdom really meant; it is usually thought that the serfs were all of them poor, ignorant peasants, leading squalid and hungry lives in the tillage of the lands of their owners. In the vast majority of cases this, no doubt, was so, but there were many exceptions. There were not a few of these men who possessed better natural gifts than the rest, had more or less contrived to educate themselves, and had been allowed to push their fortunes in various capacities as tradesmen, domestic servants, etc., in the great towns. One man of whom I was told on undoubted authority throve in his trade and became the fashionable hatter of Moscow. None the less, he was a slave—the property, the chattel, of a certain landlord, to whom a portion of his profits was yearly due. [Illustration: THE EMPEROR ALEXANDER II., 1864. _From a sketch by Zichy._] That such a state of things should endure through more than the half of the nineteenth century is at this time unthinkable, yet it was so; and perhaps it would be necessary to have lived in Russia in the pre-liberation days in order to realize how little public opinion was shocked thereby. It is only fair to say that, in spite of the strong opposition which inevitably meets a great social upheaval, the Tsar was loyally helped by the more enlightened members of the aristocracy, men who were ready to do what they knew to be right, even though their properties were seriously affected. He was, moreover, ably seconded by his Minister of the Interior, Monsieur Valouieff, to whom must be given the credit of initiating all those measures of reform which were rendered necessary by the great change—especially the creation of the Semstvos, elective bodies something like our county councils, to which was delegated the management of local affairs. The nobles who so generously accepted what was a great sacrifice were rewarded by the Tsar with a special commemorative decoration.