The serfs are better off if the proprietor resides on the estate all the year: it is the land-stewards that make the most tyrannical and oppressive masters: being very often foreigners, generally Germans, they have no sympathy for the Russian race, and have besides two pockets to fill—their own and their employers’. They all seem to think that the poor peasants are fair game, and it is their object to squeeze as much out of them as possible. I have often accompanied my friends on visits to the country seats in the interior, and I speak from experience. In Novogorod, Jaroslaf, Kastroma, Vologda, Twer, Moscow, and other provinces, I have found many estimable people, ready to offer the same kindness and hospitality. Some of the proprietors undoubtedly abuse their power, are cruel to their people, vicious, intemperate, grasping, and hateful; of them I speak chiefly by report; they are not often met in really good society, and their company is generally avoided by families of respectability. There is very little of _the country_ to be seen on the post-roads, which generally run in a straight line through forests, plains, and morasses; and there being few elevations, there are no extensive views. Were there such, many beautiful spots might be discovered, widely separated from each other it is true, but consisting of woods and lakes, with hills to vary the scenery, verdant islands here and there in the broad sheets of water, reflected as in a mirror in the clear blue surface. The white house of the noble proprietor, half-buried amid the trees, and close by the church with gilded dome belonging to the estate, in which both lord and serf offer up their prayers every Sunday and saint’s holiday. It is a different landscape in every respect from those in Old England, but it is beautiful nevertheless, and somehow becomes more firmly impressed on the memory than a more cultivated one, perhaps because there is more of nature in it. It is dreary enough in the winter, when the ice has closed over the lake, and the trees have lost their foliage; when the snow lies three or four feet deep, like a white sheet over all, rendering it impossible to distinguish land from water, and silence and solitude hold their desolate reign. Plenty of wolves and bears then infest the woods near the house, and with stealthy step run across the frozen surface of the lake, while a few melancholy crows and sparrows hover in the vicinity of the village. The wolves are sometimes rendered so bold by famine, that they will devour the dogs belonging to the villagers; and if an unlucky cow or horse be left out of the byre, its bones are the only relics remaining of it in the morning. One winter they even ate up a poor sentinel, whose post was near the palace at Twer, and who had probably fallen asleep; but they seldom attack men except when driven to desperation.