to a political of good character wishing to go to a better climate and letting it be understood that Russia would not be the place selected. There is the human touch about everything in that country of spacious and large ideas, and it is not lacking either in the treatment of political offenders or with other criminals and felons also. Mr. Harry de Windt is not only explicit but even amusing and entertaining as he tells us what he found at Yakutsk, which is quite remote enough from civilization, on the great Lena post road, to make one feel that the lot of the banished there must be sad indeed; but at the same time we can enter a little, perhaps, into his feelings of amazement when he found that "the political exiles there seemed to be no worse off, socially, than any one else, for they moved about in society and were constantly favoured guests of the Chief of Police. The exiles, however, were not permitted to take part in the private theatricals I have mentioned, a restriction which caused them great annoyance. Their loud and unfavourable criticisms from the stalls on the evening in question were certainly not in the best of taste, and, to my surprise, they were not resented by the governor's staff." This incident will show that, in Yakutsk at any rate, the "politicals" are treated not only with leniency but with a friendly courtesy, which on this occasion was certainly abused. Mr. Olenin, an exile whose term of banishment was expiring, told me that he had no fault whatever to find with Yakutsk as a place of exile, so much so that he had resolved not to return to Russia at the end of his sentence, but to remain here and complete an ethnological work upon which he was engaged. I don't think that "harshness and barbarity" are words that can be appropriately used for a discipline that permits attendances at "private theatricals" where politicals are so much at ease that they indulge in loud and unfavourable criticisms in the presence of the governor's staff, and go out as favoured guests to dinner parties given by the Chief of the Police!