No sooner was peace concluded in 1856 than premonitory symptoms of the new order of things became apparent in St. Petersburg, in Moscow, and throughout the country generally. To all who had eyes to see and ears to hear, the war had proved that if their country was to compete successfully with its rivals, it must adopt a whole series of administrative and economic reforms; and there was a general desire that those reforms should be undertaken as speedily as possible. The young Czar took the lead in the work of national regeneration, and he had the good fortune to find sympathy and co-operation among the educated classes. For the first time in Russian history--for on previous occasions the efforts of reforming Czars had always encountered a good deal of passive resistance--the Government and the people were anxious to aid each other, and the main results may be described as eminently satisfactory. Three great reforms deserve special mention--the emancipation of the serfs, the radical reorganization of the civil and criminal courts, and a great extension of local self-government. By the emancipation decree of 1861, which had been carefully prepared by liberal-minded officials in conjunction with local committees of the landed proprietors, the millions of serfs, who had been habitually bought and sold with the estates on which they were settled, and who had known no law except the arbitrary will of their masters, were transformed suddenly into a class of free and independent citizens! Next came the reorganization of the judicial administration, by which a similar beneficent change was effected. In the old times the civil and criminal tribunals had been hotbeds of bribery and corruption to such an extent that a satirical author had once ventured to write a comedy with the significant title, "An Unheard-of Wonder; or, The Honest Clerk of Court!" Now they were thoroughly cleansed, and during some half a dozen years, when I traveled about the country in search of information, I never heard of a Judge suspected of taking bribes. The lawsuits, which were previously liable to be prolonged for a lifetime, were curtailed by simplifying the procedure; trial by jury was introduced for criminal cases; and the condition of the prisoners was greatly improved both materially and morally. Some of the new prisons were quite excellent. A big reformatory, for example, founded by a benevolent society in Moscow and largely supported by voluntary contributions, seemed to me the best institution of the kind I had ever seen.