I should like to offer a remark or two upon emigration, in its relation to the Russian peasant, before passing to a final description of last Christmas day as spent among the peasants far out on the Russian steppes. ployed by peasants and others to get❘ and at any rate not degrading, although a wolf. The forest where the wolves in some cases well-nigh pagan. are will, of course, have many tracks leading through it; SO you drive towards evening in a sleigh through the wood, the driver in front, while you sit behind with your back to the horses and your gun by your side. You have previously provided yourself with a piece of well-larded, roasted bacon, which gives a good smell. You then tie it up in a bag, and by a cord some twenty yards in length you drag it after the sleigh in your passage through the wood. You also provide yourself with a little sucking pig, which you pinch to make it squeal. The wolf is attracted by the sound and smell. Soon you see a pair of bright, shining lights keeping pace with the sleigh some thirty yards behind, playing in and out of the trees by the edge of the track. When the wolf makes its spring at what it believes to be the sucking pig you get your chance of a shot. Often, however, as the result of some instinctive knowledge, the sucking pig refuses to squeal lest it should disclose its presence. Good bear-hunting is obtainable near St. Petersburg, but generally at extravagant prices. In this and other cases the proceeding is as follows: The peasants find Bruin's whereabouts, and, marking him down, do not disturb him, but go to St. Petersburg and sell him to a hunter for several hundred roubles. Then the hunter comes down; a battue is formed, in which perhaps one hundred peasants take part, and the hunter gets his opportunity. If he accepts it, good and well; if not, the bear escapes. It would take considerably more than the space at my disposal were I to enter into any description of the curious medley of antique oddity and superstitious triviality that characterize a peasant christening, betrothal, marriage, or funeral. Each of these common enough experiences has become the centre of a wondrous scheme of realism and symbolism at once interesting if somewhat barbarous, suggestive if at times verging on the ludicrous, Even here, then, the soul-sadness of the emigrant is not unknown. It is at first an almost incredible idea, a Russian peasant having to emigrate. In the south there is a soil proverbially rich, a population of only forty-one to the square mile, and of square miles an infinity. Careful workers as they are, however, it does not fall to the lot of every Russian peasant to succeed. In the south his chances, from nature's point of view, are greater than in our land. But the relations between master and servant are not on the same high level, bad seasons are not unknown, the severity and extremes of the climate affect the individual indirectly if not directly; and while the landlord's estates are usually very large, many independent peasants own very little land. The government of Amur is a large Russian province in the north-east of Asia, embracing all the land on the left of the river Amur, with a considerable amount on the right bank also after the union of that river with the Ussuri. Here, as in the Dominion of Canada, free grants of land are offered to intending emigrants, and the whole country is thus gradually becoming thoroughly Russianized. The emigrants are not sent overland, but are shipped by the Black Sea round by Hong-Kong to their destinations. I well remember being present at an interview between two young Russian peasants, man and wife, intending emigrants, and my host, their former master. One could not understand the conversation, but their pathetic faces were a study. They spoke in soft, subdued, and yet decided tones, narrating the steps that had led them to this decision, explaining that they had counted the cost, but were going forward with a mighty trust in Providence. Their bravery and calmness were marvellous, their patriotism in tense, their humanity quite unmistakable. The adoption by the Greek Church, and consequently by Russia, of the Julian Calendar places Russian chronology twelve days behind ours. Consequently, if after spending Christmas here one arrives in Russia before a certain date, there is the possibility of spending two Christmas days in one year. Such was the lot that fell to the present writer. One Christmas day spent in a centre of beauty, civilization, and education; a hurried and tedious journey, and then a second Christmas day far away out on the steppes among their hardy children, surrounded by strange faces and unknown tongues. went down to a sort of servants' hall that opened on to the courtyard; there I found my host already awaiting them. They burst into the room without a greeting, and went directly to the ikon, which stood in the corner of the room facing the door. The tallest lad carried a banner, which in shape represented a star done out in cloth and ribbons, with a bell attached. In the middle of the star was a picture of Christ in the manger of Bethlehem. The smaller boys stood round the banner-bearer, and with faces turned towards the ikon they began a Christmas carol, the refrain of which was, "Be glad because of the birth of Christ." They sang very fairly in tune, the oldest boy sustaining the burden, while the smallest with his shrill treble seemed to wander somewhere in the region of the star, the four others meanwhile filling in the harmonies. I was greatly struck with the volume of sound that was produced by that and other village choirs. The Russians have very powerful voices. Suddenly they broke off, and turning round with the usual greeting of "Sdravstvuité," bowed and awaited the liberality of the prince. That Christmas day dawned in true South Russian style: the wind and snow were chasing one another over the steppes, and neither would be restrained. Within the great square courtyard, one side of which was formed by the back of my host's mansion, the snow lay thick. Often the little chapel that stood in the centre of the yard was entirely obscured from view for a time, as some great gust of wind, bearing on its bosom some denser shower of snow, revelled across the spot. I sat by a back window that looked out on the court. In the early morning the daily routine of that country estate was gone through as usual. The two hundred and fifty horses were let out for their run in droves of fifty. They dashed across the courtyard and disappeared from sight in a cloud of snow as they tore out through the gateway to the open steppe beyond. The milch kine were led in and out, and the courtyard was alive with the busy peasants. The snowstorm was seemingly quite disregarded. | appeared, wending its way from a door One little event alone broke the usual routine. About midday a little band of what was apparently six boys, no two of whom were of the same size, could have been seen toiling across the yard in snow well up to their knees; the older boys led the younger ones by the hand. As they were making for the house I I understood that there was to be some sort of service in the chapel in the afternoon, at which a priest from the neighboring village would officiate. I resumed my seat by the window. During the early hours of the afternoon several men and women were engaged with spade and shovel clearing a way from the house to the chapel. They worked through the falling snow, and even at 3 P.M. in the afternoon the light was dim. Suddenly they stopped work and looked up; all the men took off their caps and stood bareheaded in the snow. A strange procession now below me by slow and painful steps in the direction of the chapel. The leader was the priest, with long flowing auburn hair, “apparelled in magnificent attire," and as he passed the peasants, resting on their spades by the side of the track, he lifted up his hands and blessed them. Then came the prince, following reverently in his wake, then the members of his household, while the peasants closed in on the rear. They reached the chapel and disappeared within, the peasants crowding round the door with bared heads. The service did not last very long. In the evening all the peasants round were gathered into a large hall at the prince's invitation. After they were fed, they engaged in dancing and merry-making such as they love. I was astonished at the amount of pure alcohol that both men and women were able to swallow. The peasant women do not, however, drink spirits as a rule except at festivals. Their playfulness was that of little children; their humor was delightful, and their riddles wondrous hard to unravel-e.g., one peasant asked another, "Whether would you rather have eight thousand roubles or eight children?" The answer came back quickly, "eight thousand roubles;" but the questioner retorted with philosophic dignity, "Nay, it were better to have eight children than eight thousand roubles; for if you had the latter you would never be content, whereas if you had the former you would be content." It was now midnight, but at 12 P.M. in Russia the night is still young. Outside, the storm still thundered; inside, a few dim lamps shed an uncertain light on the assembled multitude. The dancing had spontaneously ceased, and the peasants relapsed into silence or talked in soft whispers one to the other. One end of the hall was whitewashed; the floor was bare. The prince placed a small table in the middle of the room, and quickly set on it an old-time magiclantern. He then spoke to the peasants a few words about the history of the day on which they were now gathered. He next flashed on the wall some pictures representing early scenes in the life of the Christ, and explained them. Never have I seen such reverence, such childlike wonder, such spirit of humility. They sat on the floor or stood round the wall absolutely motionless, lost in a sense of wonder and astonishment. It is all over now; | they are singing a chorale before they part; but the thrill in their great strong voices as it filled that spacious hall far out on the steppes, in the centre of a benighted land, was to me as the cherished plant in the peasant's hut, a memory of the past and an earnest of the future. J. Y. S. From The National Review. MATTHEW ARNOLD IN HIS LETTERS.1 Everything relating to an interesting man is interesting; and few men in our time, if any, have had more attraction for serious minds than Matthew Arnold. His "Letters," therefore, numerous though they be, have been eagerly welcomed. Here and there, I think, expressions of opinion concerning persons still alive should have been omitted; for, though legitimate enough in a private communication, they may, when published to the world, be wounding to individuals whose just susceptibilities Matthew Arnold himself would have been the first to respect. For the rest, the "Letters," written without any thought of posthumous publication, express the same opinions, hopes, fears, projects, and admonitions, with which his published works have made us all so familiar; but the expression of them here is so simple, so direct, as to invest them with a special charm of their own. The kindly satirist, the urbane master of irony, alone is absent from them; for they are addressed, for the most part, to his mother, his wife, or where not to persons closely related to him either by blood or by marriage, then to intimate friends. The style, as might have been expected of so finished and fastidious a scholar, is straightforward, unaffected, and free from violence or exaggeration. That he should have found time to write them is astonishing. That he did find time, affords pleasing evidence of the unselfishness 1 Letters of Matthew Arnold, 1848-1888. Collected and arranged by George W. E. Russell. Macmillan & Co. of his character, and of the warmth of his affections. For many readers, the chief interest in the "Letters" will probably be the frequent mention of well-known figures in the past and present generation. Whatever interest there may be in the following pages will arise solely from the genius, the character, and the labors, of Matthew Arnold himself. more involved in the wide issues of national life and human conflict. About the same date, he says he intends seriously to see what he can do "in the literary way"-for he writes quite colloquially, though the above phrase would have jarred terribly on his nerves, if met with in a printed page-that might increase his income. He finds examining thirty pupilteachers in a day, “in an inconvenient room, and with nothing to eat except a biscuit," very hard work, and he indulges in a day-dream of living at Berne on a diplomatic appointment, and "how different would that be from this incessant grind of schools." He is irritated by the praise, which he considers excessive, bestowed on Alexander Smith, one of the many immortal poets, alack! of the last forty years al Poet, critic, servant of the State, moral and spiritual teacher, Matthew Arnold was all these, and more; and his "Letters" enable us to see what it was he desired to accomplish in each of those vocations, and how far he succeeded. Some persons, not quite justly, I think, have discerned a certain vein of egotism, almost of intellectual self-complacency, in some of his published prose works. But no one would tax him with that foible in let-ready more or less forgotten, and whom ters that were addressed to those nearest and dearest to him, and that were never intended for publication. Hence nothing but sympathy is stirred in us when he writes to his mother, in May, 1853, that Lord John Russell has said he is the one rising poet of the day, and that this opinion has pleased him greatly; or to another correspondent, a couple of years earlier, that he has been reading Goethe's letters, Bacon, Pindar, Sophocles, and Thomas à Kempis, and that he intends to retire more and more from the modern world and modern literature, "which is only what has been before and what will be again, and not bracing nor edifying in the least. I have not," he goes on, "looked at the newspapers for months, and when I hear of some fresh dispute or rage that has arisen it sounds quite historical." When he received an appointment as inspector of schools, he thinks he shall get interested in them after a little time, but adds, "we"-for he was now married-"we shall certainly have a good deal of moving about; but we both like that well enough, and we can always look forward to retiring to Italy on £200 a year." Thus do so many of us look forward to a wise old age of Epicurean renunciation, only to get ever more and he characterizes as "a phenomenon of a very dubious character. Il fait son métier faisons le nôtre," he goes on, and tells his sister that he is occupied with writing something that gives him more pleasure than anything he has done yet, "which is a good sign." This something is "Sohrab and Rustum," which again he says, in writing to his mother, he has had the greatest pleasure in composing, "a rare thing with me." He pays a visit to Oxford, and complains of its "flaccid sinews," and its "poor pottering habits, compared with the students of Paris, or Germany, or even of London." He is thus already-October. 1854-an educational reformer in embryo, and beginning to form those conclusions concerning the intellectual philistinism of his countrymen which finally assumed so combative a shape. In December of the same year was published Matthew Arnold's "Poems, Second Series," and he thinks it will maintain him in public estimation pretty much at the point which its predecessor left him, and neither advance nor diminish his literary reputation. He is more and more troubled by the feeling that he does not do his inspecting work satisfactorily. Then comes the characteristic reflection, "But I have also discipline? Then they would not be, as Arnold elsewhere says, in his verse with aspect marred, Shorn of the joy, the bloom, the power, Which best befits the bard. lately had a stronger wish than usual | make it the text of their constant selfnot to vacillate and be helpless, but to do my duty, whatever that may be, and out of that wish one nearly always hopes to make something." Surely there are not, in the range of family correspondence, many more agreeable passages than this, written by a man of thirty-four to his "dearest mother." Does it not make us love and honor them both? Matthew Arnold was a true spiritual eupatrid, the pious son of a pious father. In the following year, 1855, he publishes "Balder," and thinks it will consolidate the peculiar sort of reputation he got by "Sohrab and Rustum;" but what he intends to do next is to be wholly different. He reads "Modern Painters," and deems the author, notwithstanding his imaginative penetration, "too febrile and irritable to allow him to possess the ordo concatenatioque veri." In a letter dated April, 1856, there is a passage which must be cited textually: My poems are making their way, I think, though slowly, and perhaps never to make way very far. There must always be some people, however, to whom the literalness and sincerity of them have a charm. After all, that American review, which hit upon this last, their sincerity, was not far wrong. It seems to me strange sometimes to hear of people taking pleasure in this or that poem which was written years ago, which then nobody took pleasure in but you ["you," was his sister; it is always a man's sister, or some near dear woman, that finds out his genius first] which I then fancied nobody took pleasure, and since I had made up my mind that nobody was likely to. . . . I think I shall be able to do something more in time, but am sadly bothered and hindered at present, and that puts one in deprimirter Stimmung. which is a fatal thing. To make habitual war on depression and low spirits, which in one's early youth one is apt to indulge in, is one of the things one learns as one gets older. They are noxious alike to body and mind, and already partake of the nature of death. Would it not be well for some gifted spirits among us to meditate the closing passage of that quotation, and to Time moves on with him, as with the rest of people; but he still writes as regularly, as frankly, as affectionately as ever, to his dear mother, his dear wife, his dear sister, and his cherished friends, His poems have now been reviewed in various quarters; and one of the lessons this experience teaches him is "the determination in print to be always scrupulously polite. The bane of English reviewing and newspaper writing is, and has always been, its 'grossièreté!' " Let us hope there has been some improvement in that respect since then, due in some measure perhaps to the example of urbanity set by Arnold himself; though, were he still with us, he might possibly think that, in some quarters, there is yet room for amendment. There are several references in the "Letters" to Merope, and none of them more interesting than where we are told that Froude begged him to "discontinue the Merope line," in which advice I think Froude was right. But though "the leading literary men," as the same letter informs us, speak very generously of him as a poet, the public I re -what public, one half wonders?— withholds its encouragement. member his once saying that the reputation of an author is made, not by what is written of him in the public prints, but by the opinion casually expressed, in private conversation, by certain persons whose number is very limited; their verdict gradually filtering downward, and becoming in course of time the conclusion accepted by the world at large. But, when he said this, he was no longer young, and had ceased craving for any stimulus to exertion from "the public," and had come to recognize that, as regards work of the higher and more permanent order, fit audience must generally be few. In 1859 he was sent to the Continent |