Sitting up all night with a couple of Russian ladies might, or might not, suggest the idea of telling you something of the marriage customs of this strange country. A French writer, whose name I forget, has said “the Russians are a nation of polite savages,” a remark that is not very apt, but it helps us toward a proper understanding of the social condition of the people. The rich are very rich; the poor are very poor. The nobles are courtly, polite, and as refined in manners as those of the same social class in Germany; but the serfs, or those who belonged to the nobles with the soil, before the emancipation, are rude, and not half civilized. The two classes, or rather the extremes of the two classes, would justify the description of the Frenchman, who, like many writers of his country, would not be specially tied by the truth, if he wished to point an epigram. It was no uncommon thing in those days of serfdom for the proprietor to order this matter of marriage among his people, telling the young men to get a wife when he thought it time, and providing them, if the young men were slow in making their choice. And in the peasant class the marriage was liable to all the caprices and irregularities to be expected in a state of things where the will of the master was scarcely restrained by law or custom, so that he had the social happiness of his people very much in his own hands. In such a country, and under such circumstances, it would not be strange if some social evil was suffered. Almost as soon as a girl is born, in the better ranks of society, her parents begin to prepare the _dowry_ she must have when she goes to her husband. For this is indispensable in the eyes of any Russian young gentleman who proposes to be married. She must furnish every thing for an outfit in life, even to _a dozen new shirts for her coming husband_. I have just heard of a lady of rank and wealth who had prepared a costly dowry of silks, linen, jewels, plate, &c., for her beloved daughter, who died as she came to be twenty years old. The mother resolved to endow six girls with these riches, and actually advertised for them. A host of applicants came, and she selected six. None of them had lovers. But now they had a respectable dowry secured, each girl was speedily engaged, and with the husband took the dowry, and paid the rich lady by promising to pray for the repose of her daughter’s soul.