Thus did the Decembrists expiate their political offences in their own persons, and in their descendants', for full thirty years, until the accession of the present emperor. As the iron rule of Nicholas was inaugurated by an act of crushing severity, so the milder sway of Alexander II. was marked at its outset by an act of mercy to the exiles of his father. A free pardon, with permission to return to Russia, was granted to all the survivors. Their children, born in Siberia, had their father's hereditary honours and full political rights restored to them. It is by such measures as this that Alexander II. has made his name respected and beloved by his people. The influence of political exiles of various periods has made an ineradicable impression on the urban communities of Siberia, but the Decembrists, from their education and polish, have certainly done most to form the nucleus of good society there. The mercantile class in Siberia, and indeed all over Russia, stands decidedly low in the social scale. A merchant, though enormously rich, and doing a very large business, is essentially a huckster. In manners they are little removed from the common peasant, from which class they have generally sprung. They are for the most part illiterate themselves, and, until very lately, have been incapable of appreciating the advantages of education for their children. They are widely separated from the upper classes, who regard them with unmixed contempt. The line of distinction between the nobility and the substrata of society is more broadly drawn in Russia than in any other country, excepting in the empire of Japan, where, however, the mercantile, and classes in our estimation below them, are well educated. This distinction of ranks is undoubtedly a relic of barbarism, but whether the mean tastes of what ought to be the middle classes in Russia be the cause, or the effect, of their relatively low status in society, they both mutually act and re-act on each other as cause and effect, and so the evil constantly perpetuates itself.