inevitably submitted to Russia, preserving, however, their national privileges.

The earlier history of Estonia, and its peculiar features, whether military, religious, or commercial, which partook strongly of the elements which characterised the middle ages, are at this day very distinctly portrayed in the institutions of the province, and among the several orders of the inhabitants. The landed estates are large, and are cultivated by a class which were recently serfs in the strictest sense, or as the peasantry still are in other provinces of the Russian empire. The country-seats of the gentry, or landed nobility, are upon a feudal scale as to size, arrangement, and domestic establishment. There is much about them that is primitive, and much that is clumsy. The peasantry are an interesting enough people; but are not as yet, so far as respects feelings and intelligence, essentially superior to such as are in actual serfdom. They rely by far too much upon the aid of their lords in times of distress, owing to scarcity of food, for example; being at the same time improvident. The lords themselves are sufficiently exclusive,-are hospitable and worthy; but neither very active nor aspiring beyond their obtained and ancient condition. With regard to any middling, such as a burgher class, in the capital, we gather but few particulars. These, no doubt, are kept at as distinct a distance from the great landed proprietors, as the peasantry are from the middle sort. But we must now again let the lady speak at considerable length for herself. The following details of house-keeping and housearrangements will interest English women-folks:

"A few days after my arrival we removed into the country, a day's journey through a richly-wooded landscape; and arrived in the evening before a grand crescent-shaped building, recalling in size and form the many-tenemented terraces of Regent's Park. If the exterior promised fair, the interior far surpassed all expectation, and I have only to shut my eyes to a certain roughness and want of finish to fancy myself in a regal residence. The richness of the architectural ornaments, the beauty of the frescoes and painted ceilings, the polish of the many-coloured and marblelike parquêtes, the height, size, and proportion of the apartments, produce a tout ensemble of the utmost splendour, entirely independent of the aid of furniture, which here, like the Narva chairs, seems to have been constructed before comfort was admitted to form an ingredient in human happiness.

"It is a strange assimilation, this splendid case built over the simplest, most primitive customs. The family have no fixed hours for rising; and sometimes you find only your host's empty coffee-cup, whilst he is abroad or busy writing ere you have risen; or you meet a servant bearing his slender breakfast to him in bed; and long after you have settled to the occupation of the day, you see him emerging from his dormitory in his dressing-gown, and with a most sleepy face. Breakfast here is not considered a meal, and not half the respect paid to it which the simplest lunch-tray would command with us; some take it standing, others smoking,

and the children as often as not run off with their portion of butterbrod to devour it in comfort in some little niche, or upon the base of a pillar in the magnificent salle; or facilitate the act of mastication by a continual wandering from place to place, which upon English carpets would be considered nothing less than petty treason.'

A little further on :

"We continued our walk to the housekeeper's rooms, very comfortable and warm, with three little children and half-a-dozen chickens sharing the brick floor; to the kitchen, where the men-cooks were in active preparation round their flat stoves; and then on to the Volkstube, or people's room, where all the lower servants, the coachmen and grooms (here not included as house-servants), the cow-girls and the sheep-boys, &c., all come in for their meals at stated times, and muster between twenty and thirty daily. This was a room for an artist-a black earthen floor, walls toned down to every variety of dingy reds, blacks, and yellows, with a huge bulwark of a stove of a good terra-cotta colour, and earthen vessels and wooden tubs and benches, and in short every implement of old-fashioned unwieldiness and picturesque form. But the chief attractions were the inmates; for, hard at work, plying their spinning-wheels, sat either singly or in groups about fifteen peasant-girls, their many-striped petticoats and dull blue or gray cloth jackets, their tanned locks falling over their shoulders, and deep embrowned spinning-wheels, telling well against the warm tones around them. In some the hair was so light a hue as exactly to repeat the colour of the flax upon their spindles; and these, the housekeeper informed us in broken German were the surest of husbands-flaxen hair being a feature that the hearts of the peasants are never known to resist. Most of these picturesque damsels were barefooted, and one pretty yellowhaired lassie, observing that she was particularly an object of attention, let her hair fall like a veil over her stooping face, and peeped archly at us from between the waving strands. I can't say that any of these young ladies looked particularly clean or inviting; but every vice has its pleasant side, and the worst of dirt and filth is, they are so picturesque. Some of them rose on being addressed, and stooping low, coaxed us down with both hands, much as if they were trying to smooth down our dresses. This is the national salutation to their superiors, especially if there be a request to make. Further on, stood a stout kitchen-girl, her jacket thrown off, and only her shift over her shoulders, kneading in a deep trough with a strong wooden bat the coarse bread which is called by distinction the Volksbrod, or people's bread. The spinning-girls belong to the estate, and attend at the hof, or court, as the seigneur's house is termed, for so many weeks in the winter, to spin under the housekeeper's superintendence; nor do they appear very averse to this labour, for, besides the smart grooms and soft shepherds who assort with them at meal-times, this Volkstube is the resort of every beggar and wandering pedlar, and the universal tattleshop of the neighbourhood.

"The further branches of this spinning department are among the most interesting of a lady's wirthschaft. The commoner linen is woven in the cottages of the peasantry; but the more fanciful and delicate manufactures,

the diaper for towels, the damask for table-linen, devolve to a regular weaver, of which each estate maintains one or more; and who sends in his book of patterns for the lady to select grounds, centres, and borders, according to her taste. If she possesses this quality in a higher degree, she may further diversify the work by sketching some flower or arabesque, which the weaver imitates with much ingenuity."

The farming system of the Estonians is not less peculiar. After telling us that an establishment of the kind presents numerous scattered buildings, all on the same scale of grandeur that the mansion-house described displays, the domestic herds passing their long winter in shelter, warmth, and almost darkness, we meet with these details:

"In the first we entered, a noble edifice one hundred and twenty feet long, and supported down the centre by a row of solid pillars, above a thousand sheep were most magnificently lodged, affording, as they congregated round their cribs or quietly stopped eating to gaze upon us, a most novel and striking picture of a vast northern fold. In another building was a herd of stalled cattle, some destined for slaughter, others milch kine, with many a barefooted peasant girl and half-full machine of milk at their sides. Further on the pigs had their domicile, and the fowls theirs; and in the midst of these buildings rose the Brandtwein's Küche, or brandykitchen, where the process of distilling from rye, barley, or potatoes, goes on night and day; the refuse grains of which contribute to fatten the cattle we have just quitted. It will easily be supposed that the task of calculating and providing food for this multiplication of mouths, all dependent on the help of man, is no light one. Every animal has so many pounds of hay allotted to him per day, and each week's consumption is something which it never entered into the heart of an English farmer to conceive and if the winter exceed its usual limits-if these poor quadrupeds, which go up into their annual ark in the month of October, be not released till the beginning of May, a scarcity of food can hardly be hindered. Fresh litter is strewed daily, which never being removed, the cattle stand at least six feet higher at the close than at the commencement of their captivity. In this consists the main provision of manure for the summer's use."

The peasantry, the clergy, the church-service, and festal observances, together with a multitude of social incidents and, to her, novel occasions and sights, occupy many of the pages of these charming and informing volumes. The peasantry, who are the only remains of the aboriginal Estonians, we have already mentioned, have been but lately emancipated; and one of the unwelcome results of this measure is their liability to the conscription. Another very characteristic consequence was the "adoption of family names by the peasants, who hitherto, like the Russian serf, had been designated only by his own and his father's baptismal appellatives." Now, this accession of dignity cost the lord and lady no little VOL. III. (1841.) No. IV.

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trouble, for they had to hunt up the requisite number and variety of names for the tenants of their estates. "The gentleman took the dictionary, the lady, Walter Scott, for reference (with us it would have been the Bible), and homely German words were given, or old Scottish revived, which may one day perplex a genealogist." But one natural yet ludicrous consequence was, that although the simple and ignorant peasant might depart quite satisfied with his new distinction, he was very likely to be driven out of conceit of it, when he reached his home, by his friends; and then he would return by begging to have another, and not seldom to have the aristocratic "sixteen or thirty-two quartered name of the count or baron under whom he served;" an impossible thing, the Estonian noble not permitting the peasant even to have the same national appellative" which with countrymen of the same soil, whether high or low, generally were alike. The aristocrat is an Esthlander, the peasant an Esthe." It may here be added that the province is divided into some six hundred baronies; that these must be held by members of noble houses, so that the nobility cannot well increase in numbers, although there are few entails, and the law of primogeniture does not exist. But while the noble, domains are not allowed to split, there are yet frequent exchanges of lords or of possessions among the recognized families. These speak the German of their Teutonic ancestors; while the peasantry preserve their original dialect, which seems to be that of the Scythians of ancient times, their religious observances, also, still presenting heathen

traces.

Before closing the volumes of this charming traveller, acute observer, and independent thinker, whom we hope to meet again, and ere long, we shall copy out a description of the pines of Estonia:

"This is the land of pines," says she, "lofty, erect battalions-their bark as smooth as the mast of a ship-their branches as regular as a ladder, varying scarce an inch in girth in fifty feet of growth-for miles interrupted only by a leaning, never a crooked tree-with an army of sturdy Lilliputians clustering round their bases-fifty heads starting up where one yard of light is admitted. What becomes of all the pruning, and trimming, and training the days of precious labour spent on our own woods? Nature here does all this-and immeasurably better-for her volunteers, who stand closer, grow faster, and soar higher, than the carefully planted and transplanted children of our soil. Here and there a bare, jagged trunk, and a carpet of fresh-hewn boughs beneath, show where some peasant urchin has indulged in sport which with us would be amenable to the laws; viz., mounted one of these grenadiers of the forest, hewing off every successive bough beneath him, till, perched at giddy height aloft, he clings to a taper point which his hand may grasp. The higher he goes the greater the feat, and the greater the risk to his vagabond neck in descending the noble and mutilated trunk."

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ART. XIV.-1. Ten Thousand a Year. 3 vols. Edinburgh: Blackwood. 2. The Old English Gentleman; or the Fields and the Woods. By JOHN MILLS, Esq. 3 vols. Colburn.

3. Modern Flirtation; or, a Month at Harrowgate. By CATHERINE SINCLAIR. 3 vols. Edinburgh: Whyte and Co.

We have done our best before the dying of 1841 to provide a last feast, rich and dainty, varied and tasteful. Our viands are not yet exhausted; the dessert has still to be set before our guests; not to speak of a number of bits and directions of which due notice will be given ere we close the number. The part of the service to which we now first invite attention may be distinguished from its fellow, just as the produce of Cockney-land may be from that of green fields, or the things which the heroes of the Shopocracy affect contrasted with what those of the Squirearchy prefer.

"Ten Thousand a Year," every one of our readers must be aware, is the title of a story which has appeared in Blackwood, and seriatim for many months. It is now published in an entire shape, with all the advantages which the author could bestow in the course of revision, and gather from the suggestions of others.

The story may be indicated in a single sentence. Mr. Aubrey, a paragon of excellence, is the lawful owner of an estate worth ten thousand a year; but it is filched from him for a time by the trickery of a firm of attorneys, of whom Gammon is the chief, who prosecute the pretended claims of Tittlebat Titmouse, a haberdasher's shopman, a ninny and a nauseating little coxcomb, and without a particle of mind or spirit; in order to make a profit by means of the wire-pulled supposititious heir. Aubrey is all perfect; Titmouse is a puppet; and Gammon is the dexterous villain, with more talent and more of the man, bad as he is, than the other two put together. The fact is, that the first and the last are exaggerations, are impossibilities; and therefore they do not much interest the reader. But the other is an every-day experience; he is bad; but his badness is real,—it is in accordance with human character, while it is also relieved by certain vibrations of the heart that are true to nature, fallen, perverted, and hardened nature.

There are many characters in the story, each more or less subordinate to the plot indicated. But these for the most part are also exaggerations or caricatures; powerfully drawn, however, and skilfully introduced. The question will therefore naturally occur, What purpose did the able and ingenious author contemplate when he designed and executed the work? Let himself first offer an answer. He says, "Whatever may be its defects of execution, it has been written in a grave and earnest spirit; with no attempt to make it acceptable to mere novel readers, but with a steadfast view