156

LIFE OF COBDEN. [CHAP

1847. it) was his remark. In another room was w prisoner a
Zr, 48. nobleman, as he wag called, who confessed to the Bar
that poverty had led him to commit an act of forgery ; be
was not ironed, nor was his head shaved like the rest. In
a third room were two women ; one of them said be’
offence was being without a passport; the other was #
woman who stated herself to be a widow, and whose
little daughter, a child about seven years of age was
sleeping upon a bundle of old clothes at her side. She
sald she was banished at the request of her mistres
she being her serf, because she was ill-tempered. I ga"
these poor women some silver,
“+... On leaving the mill, a few steps brought me inf
the midst of the agricultural operations in the neighbourhood
and what a contrast did the implements of husbandry pre”
sent to the masterpieces of machinery which I had just beel
inspecting! The ploughs were constructed upon the model
of those in use a thousand years ago; the scythes and reap”
ing-hooks might have been the implements of the ancient
Scythians ; the spades in the hands of the peasants Were
sither entirely of wood or merely tipped with iron ; the fields
were yielding scarcely a third of the crop of grain which a?
English farmer would derive from similar land ; there Was
no science traceable in the manuring or cropping of the
land, no intelligence in the improving of the breed of the
cattle, and I could not help asking myself by what perversity
of judgment an agricultural people could be led to borro¥
from England its newest discoveries in machinery for spi”
ning cotton, and to reject the lessons which it offered for
the improvement of that industry upon which the wealth
and strength of the Russian empire so pre-eminently
depend.

tL

~. . . Baron Meyendorff tells me that an associatio”