emancipated to rise to their proper level of intelligence. While the serfs were thus degraded and kept down to a position but little superior to that of domestic animals, their masters, having no community of feeling with them, were actuated by the single motive of extorting the maximum revenues out of their human property. The cares of management devolved on the serfs, and the masters, being for the most part almost as much as the serfs shut out from their legitimate share in public affairs, abandoned themselves to extravagant pleasures and dissipation, or to mischievous intrigues. Without any healthy occupation for body or mind, a highly artificial mode of life developed itself in the ranks of the wealthy serf-proprietors, the sole refuge from which was in the military or civil appointments of the government. Practical education was wanting in the great body of them, so that when their source of revenue was taken away by the liberation of their serfs, they broke down from the want of any resources within themselves by which they might have maintained their standing in society, and even have improved their pecuniary condition in other careers. There were very many exceptions to this, but such was the necessary tendency of the institution of serfdom, and such was the actual fate of those proprietors who allowed their energy to be sapped by the unnatural life to which they were born. It was probably the growing prosperity of Siberia, and the marked superiority of the condition of the population there, that induced the government to emancipate the serfs of Russia proper. The importance of this great measure can hardly be over-estimated, and I doubt whether the Emperor Alexander II. has received the full credit due to him for the enlightened liberality which dictated, and the noble courage which carried into execution, this truly magnificent conception. It is well known that the most determined hostility of the great majority of the nobles was arrayed against the measure, which, from their point of view, threatened to sweep away at one blow their whole worldly wealth. The Emperor stood almost alone, being supported by a small, and not overwise minority. His life was several times in jeopardy. But he maintained his purpose with singular pertinacity through three years of discussion and deliberation, during which the ill-timed zeal of his supporters raised serious difficulties in his way by trying to drive matters too fast. At the end of three years the ukase was signed, and in two years more twenty-three millions of male serfs, with the corresponding number of females, were set free. Whether we consider the vast numbers of men and women whose destiny was involved, the radical character of the change effected, the formidable opposition which had to be borne down, or the germs of expansion which it implanted into the Russian people, moulding the whole future history of the nation, this act of the Emperor of Russia stands unrivalled