separated from their parents when very young, perhaps apprenticed or taken to some place hundreds of versts distant from their native village, entirely forget each other, and for years consecutively never hear or know anything concerning their relations. Most of the men-servants are married, and many of them have their wives in the country, whom perhaps they do not see even once a year. When the young men are taken for soldiers, their relations do not even expect to see them again. One morning a poor woman came to me crying most bitterly, and saying that her two nephews had just been forced from her house to go into the army. I tried to console her, saying that they would return when the war was over, but this only made her more distressed. “No, no,” exclaimed she in the deepest sorrow, “they will never come back any more; the Russians are beaten in every place.” Until lately the lower classes were always convinced that the Emperor’s troops were invincible, but it seems, by what she said, that even _they_ have got to know something of the truth. A foreigner in St. Petersburg informed me that he had “gone to see the recruits that morning, but there did not seem to be much patriotism among them: there was nothing but sobs and tears to be seen among those who were pronounced fit for service, whilst the rejected ones were frantic with delight, and bowed and crossed themselves with the greatest gratitude.” The most distressing scenes may be seen in the streets among the bands of recruits—they, their mothers and sisters, or wives, all weeping together as they walk along; for the women, with innate tenderness, accompany them for many miles out of the town, unwilling, until the very last moment, to bid the objects of their affection adieu for ever, whilst the latter, in entering the Russian army, like the condemned in Dante’s ‘Inferno,’ leave all hope behind. Before the war began it was the universal custom among the landowners to send all the worthless characters into the army, and, as men of _any_ size are eligible to serve therein, it was a convenient manner of getting rid of those that were idle or disobedient. I have often been present when a lady or gentleman, in writing to the steward, would say, “Since you can do nothing with Vassili, Ivan, or Gregory, you can hand them over to the recruiting-officers at the next conscription.” “Do you know,” said one of these proprietors, “if you say to one of our serfs, ‘I will send you for a soldier,’ he will tremble at the words, and not forget them either for two years at the least.” By this we may form some idea of the light in which the honourable profession of arms is regarded by them, and of the treatment they expect when they are forced to embrace it.