Among my acquaintances abroad I numbered a great many Poles, and I asked a noble one day how he could conscientiously take the oath above mentioned. “We wait patiently,” replied he, “for the time is not yet come. As for the allegiance, we make a reservation to ourselves concerning it; but hope leads us still to expect that the hour for Poland’s resurrection _will_ arrive. What can _we_ do at present?” Notwithstanding that the Poles are everywhere received in society, there is very little cordiality in regard to friendship: many have, it is true, intermarried with Russians, but they are not, for the most part, of the superior class of gentry, but are merely petty _employés_, or people of no “family” in the aristocratic sense of the word. In almost every part of Russia Polish people may be met who have been banished from their native land for some political offence, either proved or suspected. Many have assured me that they were taken away in the middle of the night from their own house, and perhaps dragged from their bed, merely on suspicion of being disaffected. It was impossible to refute the accusation, because, according to the wise laws of despotism, they had never been confronted with their accusers, or even knew who they were: very probably the information had been given by some government spy, the name of whom is “legion” in Poland. One of these victims was a gentleman who, with his wife, had been imprisoned four months, when they were hurried away from Vilna to the interior of Russia, and they assured me that they had not the remotest idea what the crime was of which they were accused. Added to the antipathy the Poles and Russians naturally feel for each other politically, the difference in religion contributes to their animosity; for although the Greek Church and the Roman may appear in the eyes of Protestants to possess few points of difference, yet, perhaps for that very reason, their hatred to each other is the more intense. As far as I could learn, the chief differences between the Greek and Roman belief consist of a trivial distinction, scarcely more than verbal, in the doctrine of the equality of the three persons in the Trinity, of the denial by the Greeks of the necessity of their priests remaining unmarried, and of the substitution of pictures for images as objects of worship and reverence. It is true that, since the division of the Christian Church into the eastern and the western, a vast number of extra saints have been added to each, which may have caused considerable jealousy between them. If so, the Russians must triumph, for they have about twice as many as the Romanists; but, on the other hand, they are not quite so select. I once went to dine with some Polish friends on Christmas Day, and I remarked a quantity of straw scattered under the table. On my begging to know why this was done, I was informed that it was in commemoration of the Saviour having been born in a manger: the Russians have not this custom.