Russia in 1839 -Empire of the Czar: A Journey Through Eternal Russia

224VISITS WITH THE GOVERNOE.

kindness I can never tire, took me to see the curiosities of the old city. His servants attended him, which enabled me to dispense with putting to a second proof the docility of my feldjäger, whose claims the governor respects.

There is in Russia a class of persons which corresponds to the citizen class among us, though without possessing the firmness of character derived from an independent position, and the experience obtained by means of liberty of thought and cultivation of mind: this is the class of subaltern employes, or secondary nobility. The ideas of these men are generally turned towards innovations, whilst their acts are the most despotic that are committed under despotism : this, indeed, is the class which, in spite of the emperor, governs the empire. They pretend to enlighten the people, and their pretensions incur the dislike and contempt of both great and little. Theii impertinences are become proverbial: whoever has any need of making use of these demi-nobles, newly raised by their office and their rank in the tchinn to the honours of territorial proprietors, revenges himself upon their pride by unmerciful ridicule. These men, risen from class to class, and attaining at length, by virtue of some cross or some employ, the class in which a man may possess lands and fellow-men, exercise their seignorial rights with a rigour which renders them objects of execration among their unhappy peasants. AVhat a singular social phenomenon is this liberal or changeable element in a despotic system of government, which system it here renders yet more intolerable ! " If we had only the old lords," the peasants say, " we should not complain of our