the permission of his lord, and many of the
worst of the old feudal customs long forgotten
in Western Europe existed in full force among
the Boyards. Immediately, however, all
restrictions on marriage were removed, every
marriageable man, woman, or child rushed
into matrimony. A chance meeting in the
street, a short acquaintance, or no acquaintance
at all—the faintest shadow of a pretext was
sufficient. No sooner had the inhabitants of
any village obtained their liberty than they
made haste to barter it away with each other,
and as many of the newly married people as
possible flocked into the towns, where life is
comparatively easy and the most unskilled work
highly paid, so that the villages have become
more thinly peopled than before.

Such is the actual existing state of the com
countries of Southern Russia, one of the most
fertile food-producing districts of modern times.
Such, also, it has been as far back as any records
of Russian history extend. The whole civilisation
of the empire is concentrated in less than
half a dozen large cities. All the rest, steppe,
and hamlet, and market-town, are as wild and
wretched as when Rurik first founded Ladoga
on the banks of the Volkhof, or his victorious
cymbals struck dismay into the fierce hearts of
the Varangians and the hordes of the Tschuder.

Russia has been a poor civiliser hitherto;
but a great change is at hand, and it comes
from the only quarter whence salutary reforms
in Russia are possible. It is to a German that
this great empire is about to owe her final
liberation from barbarism. Baron Ungern
Sternberg has at last solved the great difficulty
created by the want of hands in a country of
such vast extent, and maintaining so large
an army with so scanty a population. Although
harassed by the ungenerous envy and
detraction which attend like a shadow upon
merit, the baron has at last organised a
comprehensive system of military labour, which
has created railroads for Russia. At first he began
with mere convicts and men under punishment;
but his sagacity and management were so
admirable, he soon acquired so perfect a
command over his workmen by a judicious system
of rewards and punishments, that his opponents
were forced to admit the success of his
experiment. The baron's workmen began to be
numbered by thousands; and as it was found
that men could not do the work of navvies
without being well fed and clothed, it was
looked upon as a pleasant change from fœtid
barracks, bad rations, and hard drill, to good
quarters and plenty. The system has not been
fairly at work more than three years; but it has
succeeded for a time, at least, in turning even the
bane of a large standing army into a blessing.

The hamlets of the corn districts are already
waking up into new life at the sound of the
railway whistle, and the frauds which have
hitherto kept the price of Russian wheat up to
quotations altogether arbitrary and fictitious
will soon be a thing of the past. The
merchants of Odessa and Taganrog will sink into
mere brokers and shipping agents when the
large producers of grain in Podolia and Volhynia
can come directly in contact with the buyers
of Mark-lane; and the network of railways, now
extending so rapidly, will soon yield the Russian
farmer a better profit than he has been ever
yet able to realise upon wheat grown at less
than half of the present prices.

It is also quite clear, and the British farmer
should lay this fact to heart, that the supplies
of wheat to be expected in a few years from
provinces so extensive and fruitful as those
which lie round the Black Sea and the Sea of
Azoff will be almost illimitable, when communication
is everywhere open from field to ship,
and the waste, cost, and uncertainty of
transport by oxen is but a tradition to be told to
wondering hearers on a winter's night.

WORRY.

THE second of the two dog-stories we are
about to narrate was so graphically and simply
told to us a short time ago by the owner of
the dog, a Bavarian gentleman resident in
England, that, with his kind permission, we give it
to the public.

We had been speaking of the wonderful
manner in which instinct in all animals
appears to develop from constant and intimate
association with man, and had mentioned a
case of a dog belonging to a friend of the late
gallant General Sir George Napier, who had
been taught by his master to refuse all food
presented to him with the left hand. On one
occasion, when Sir George Napier (who had lost
his right arm at the storming of Ciudad Rodrigo)
dined at his friend's house, the guests were
amusing themselves by tempting this well-
bred dog to lower his high standard of
etiquette. All in vain. Not one of seven gentlemen
present could bribe him to accept any
dainty, however savoury, from the left hand,
though he eagerly ate food presented with the
right hand. On Sir George Napier's offering
him food with his left and only hand, however, the
dog glanced at the general's empty sleeve, and,
without further hesitation, accepted the gift.
The experiment was tried again and again, but
the animal's discrimination was never at fault.

Now comes the Bavarian gentleman's
anecdote.

On Wednesday, the 27th of June, 1866, Mr.
Otto Striedinger, a gentleman connected with
the Royal Victoria Hospital at Netley, went
with two friends to a croquet party at Westend,
about five miles from Netley. He was
accompanied as usual by his favourite dog Worry—
a magnificent black retriever. The weather
being extremely hot, the croquet did not begin
before four o'clock, and was followed by supper;
so that it was ten o'clock before the party broke
up. The three gentlemen then walked back to
Netley in the dusk. The footpath by which they
returned led through a private park, and across
a common overgrown with heather. When