the depot. Sometimes the wretches lame themselves, or manufacture artificial wounds. Sometimes they take the flattering unction to their souls that they are under the standard size; and in this case, with the light-heartedness of their nation, they march merrily to the place of

trial.

Here they are stripped stark naked by the inspecting surgeon. This officer twists their limbs, kneads their ribs, wrenches open their mouth, and thrusts his hand into their throat. He drags them from attitude into attitude by main force, apparently unconscious that his patient is endowed even with animal life; and if satisfied at length of their worthiness to form "food for powder," the signal is given in these two syllables" Shave him!" At this ominous sound the fated wretch utters a cry which makes the hearts of his comrades without die within them. He groans, weeps, and sobs, and gives himself up to despair; but in the midst of all, he is whirled into the next room, forced down upon a seat before the barber, and in an instant the fore part of his head is as bare as the palm of his hand. Escape is now impossible; for with this token, by which he is distinguished in common with convicted criminals, of belonging to the emperor, he would be seized even in the midst of a forest by any peasant in Russia. No one gives himself any trouble about him till it is necessary to march to the grand depôt, where, according to size, appearance, &c., he is appointed to his regi

ment.

Till lately the Jews were permitted to buy themselves off from military service, and enormous sums were frequently given for that purpose. The Emperor Nicholas, however, has put a stop to this indulgence, and at present they are taken as conscripts like his other subjects. The scenes which this gives rise to are still more striking than the above. The Jews, especially those of Poland, are in general a handsome race, both male and female; but the persons of the lower classes, owing to abstinence, unwholesome food, and want of cleanliness, are sickening to the last degree. Many of them have such heads as an Italian painter would delight to study; but when stripped they prove to be mere scarecrows, covered with blotches and ulcers, the smell of which is horrible.

When one is at length pronounced to be in reasonable health, his cries are terrific. He dashes himself upon the ground, crawls upon his belly to the feet of the inspecting officer, humbles his spirit to the dust, and begs for mercy with all the praise and supplication which the poetical genius of his nation has thrown into their addresses to the Deity. His howls are heard in the court-yard below, where the females and old men of the tribe are collected awaiting the result, and the answering chorus of screams and yells forms the most appalling sounds that can be imagined. The women beat their breasts, tear their hair, and looking up to the windows, clench their hands, and pour out upon the heads of their oppressors all the bitterest maledictions of the Hebrew prophets. All, however, is unavailing,-the victim comes forth to them with his head shaved!

There is another class of Poles now brought under the military conscription-the poor nobles. This class had increased in numbers, and diminished in means so surprisingly, that you could hardly enter a peasant's yard without seeing a scion of nobility performing the menial

offices. When a noble died, his estate was divided among his children, while his title was multiplied according to their number, and descended to them all. Thus it was in like manner with the children's children; till in the course of two or three generations, a number of patches of land were seen, side by side, each about the size of a table-cloth, and each the patrimonial estate of a nobleman. Unable to be supported by their land, these proprietors were forced to work for a maintenance, and were frequently hired by the peasants themselves; but still, even in this state of degradation, they preserved, till the ukase of his present Majesty, the privileges of their hereditary rank, exemption from taxation, from arrest, and from the military conscription.

An army composed, for the most part, of mauvais sujets, Jews, and nobles, must contain the elements of everything good and bad. The Russian army, however, by no means receives justice from the journals of France and England. By them the good is entirely overlooked, and the bad is made to preponderate to such an excess, that one would think the question was of an army of fiends. The Russian soldier, notwithstanding, is quite as civilized, in the practical sense of the word, as the soldier of any other country; and on more occasions than one he has gained by comparison with his neighbour, the enlightened Prussian.

The habit of blind submission to his superiors, in which the Russian peasant is brought up from his earliest infancy, is highly favourable to the formation of the military character. The doctrine of predestination which he inherits from his Tartar masters (for in reality this is not a more predominant dogma in the Greek than in the Anglican creed) renders him insensible to danger; and the hardiness of his constitution and habits bears him up in the midst of every kind of fatigue and deprivation. He is not naturally strong in a close grapple with an English soldier, the odds would be against him; but he would beat the enemy in a march through frost and snow, and he would thank his gods for a feast when John Bull would faint with hunger.

Jacky for so the English residents call him-never enjoyed the luxury of a bed in his life. In his infancy he was swung in a towel, or a rag of any kind, hung up beside the bed of his mother; and when this tender parent went out to her work in the fields, (on the day after he was born,) a bladder filled with milk was left dangling over his mouth, with which he might amuse himself if he chose. All his brothers and sisters, with the exception perhaps of one, died of this treatment; but he, gifted by nature with an iron constitution, grew up for the especial use of the Emperor. When, in a few months, he descended from the hammock, he was accustomed to sleep upon the floor. At ten or a dozen years, if permitted to act as his master's postilion, he lay between the horse's feet; if a domestic servant, he stretched himself upon the stairs, or behind the door; if enjoying the dignity of ostler in the village inn, he tucked himself up in his sheepskin pelisse, and passed a comfortable night on the pavement before the house.

This way of life not only renders his body in some measure insensible to pain, but preserves his mind unruffled by those petty rubs of the world which keep other people in a continual ferment. If you tear the flesh off his back with the knout, he walks home without assistance, as firmly and as quickly as you; and in like manner, when Fortune's cato'-a-thousand-tails comes across his spirit, he bears the infliction without

altering a muscle. He is patient, good-tempered, kind-hearted; and even in his moments of joviality-which are not more frequent than those of the English peasant-he does not exhibit one-half the brutishness which reigns on such occasions in an English alehouse.

Jacky, however, is not a stone; he will yell when deeply hurt either in body or soul, and the boldest heart may tremble at the sound. He sometimes rises up in wrath, and buries his hatchet in the brains of his master; he must be managed in order to avoid such paroxysms. This is a fact which the Emperor knows and understands better than any man in Russia-a knowledge and understanding which are worth to him his life and crown.

Loyalty and patriotism are nowhere stronger than in the Russian army. How comes this loyalty to a despot who fills up the ranks by main force? Patriotism, embracing an area equal to a twenty-eighth part of the entire globe? To explain fully the contradiction would require a volume, and it might be made a very curious, amusing, and important volume. Let us see what can be done in a page.

The peasants of Russia, that is to say, the great body of the people, compared to which the other classes are as a single drop in a glass of water, belong either to the crown or to the nobles. The peasants of the crown (like their Prussian neighbours) are free in fact, although not in theory; while the peasants of the nobles are partly serfs of the glebe, and partly slaves. This grand distinction is enough of itself to make the Emperor a beloved and absolute monarch; but independently of this, he never comes before the majority of his subjects except in the character of the good genius of the country. He is the refuge of the oppressed; he is the chastiser and avenger. All the odium falls to the share of the nobles; all the praise is paid to the Emperor. When the serfs are discontented, they think of murdering their masters; but the horrible atrocity of raising their fingers, or even their voices, against the Tsar never enters their imagination. In the affairs of the military conscription, they know that the state must have soldiers-this is no fault of Nicholas; but every individual on whom the choice falls thinks himself deeply injured by the agent. When actually in the army they are speedily reconciled to their lot, for the pay is sufficient to supply them with the necessaries of life. Who indulges them in the luxuries? Why, Nicholas. Now and then he gives them a loaf of bread; now and then a glass of rotki; now and then a silver rouble-out of his own pocket. I have sojourned in most of the countries of Europe, but I never witnessed anywhere so much enthusiastic loyalty to the person of the sovereign as in Russia.

The patriotism of the Russian peasant is part and parcel of his loyalty. Under any other form of government, the feeling, if it existed at all, would be merely provincial; for the ignorant and therefore contracted mind of the peasant would be lost in the moral and political variety of that immense region which he calls his country. As it is, however, these innumerable parts are bound together by one leading and intelligible idea-which is, the Emperor. The peasant understands the word Russia to mean the country of the Tsar and of himself; and for this country he is ready either to fight, or to starve, whenever the word of command is given.

PAY AND EMOLUMENTS OF THE FRENCH AND ENGLISH NAVAL

OFFICERS.

In the comparison of the pay and rewards between the French and British Armies which appeared in this Journal, the remarks are confined to the non-commissioned officers and soldiers, and the undeniable fact is established, that the advantage greatly preponderates in favour of the former; in the general accuracy of which review the Journal de l'Armée acquiesced.

In drawing a comparison between the official pay and emoluments of the French and English Navies, great difficulties present themselves. Indeed, to arrive at just conclusions, we ought not entirely to forget the statistics of the two governments, and the effects which their state of civilization, their various habits, manners, and duties, and also the prices of domestic necessities have on their relative ranks. A reference to their official archives must be resorted to; and with these, a residence in their naval ports to which they are restricted, in order to obtain their full pay, would tend to throw greater light on the subject. The writer of the present article not having enjoyed personally these opportunities, his information will be necessarily drawn from the statements and opinions of distinguished French officers, and equally strengthened by reports, extracted from a great mass of public documents.

In confining these remarks to the officers, the value and importance of our petty officers and seamen are not on this account less estimated, feeling as we all must how very great the share of those glories and honours which our Navy have wrested from their country's enemies rest with them. Therefore, without entering into a detail, those who are acquainted with France and its customs, or who have inspected the society of their sea-ports, will agree with the writer that the British sailor possesses advantages over the French seaman, similar to those which the French soldier enjoys over the British; and this is to be attributed solely to the popularity of the services in their respective countries. Since the annihilation of the French navies and the destruction of her maritime commerce, France places but a secondary interest in her naval defence. And although the French ministers have yearly in the budget demonstrated the rising maritime wealth of France, the necessity of a naval defence in the event of a hostile rupture, the disgrace as well as the impolicy of thus betraying their weakness and consequent loss of their colonies, as also a certain defeat with their enemies, yet so little sympathy has been enlisted in their behalf, that the opposition, finding their echo in the nation upon this subject, resist invariably their project of a naval increase. Indeed nothing but the danger of an impending war, coupled with an assurance of a friendly naval alliance against their natural antagonists, can obtain from the National Deputies an assent for placing the naval arm of France in that situation which her political position in Europe would naturally demand.

If, according to Chateaubriand, France be considered "a soldier," Great Britain may be safely held up as "a sailor." For our mighty commercial intercourse with the globe, resulting from the national

A comparison of the pay and rewards of French and British officers will be given in a future Number.-ED.

industry of three-fourths of her population, must necessarily require a preponderating naval protection; and this conviction is so embodied in the nation, and so identified with our national wealth and prosperity, that in all our numerous naval philanthropic institutions, the patriotic nobleman and wealthy citizen vie in their exertions to support these establishments. This naval feeling, so general to the metropolis, extends itself to the colonies, which yearly transmit large sums for the support of the above institutions; while in France, so low is the consi.. deration attached to seamen, that they have no exclusive institutions; and it was not until the translated Report of the Dreadnought Seaman's Hospital had pointed out to Admiral Duperré, the present Minister of Marine, that the protection and care which the French seaman received from British philanthropy in that, the only institution, founded on the universal principle of charity, were greater than those which they received in their own country, that their accustomed enemies treated them more humanely than their country's friends it was only after this report that the French government promulgated a circular, upon which the following comment is extracted from the Brest newspaper-" By a singular anomaly, in the event of our seamen being shipwrecked on a foreign shore, our Consuls were ordered to give them all possible assistance; and in the event of being cast away in France, the duties of the public officers were restricted to saving the crew and cargo, without the obligation of securing from death such unfortunate sailors as had reached the shore destitute and forlorn, with a distance of perhaps 200 leagues from their native homes. A circular of the Minister of Marine, signed Duperré, compels towards shipwrecked mariners in France the observance of the same conduct as is adopted in foreign countries." It is an act of justice, however, due to the French nation to state, that Admiral Keralio de la Bruchollière has lately bequeathed the most munificent donation that any country can boast of, to establish a college at Brest for invalid seamen. This sum, a million of francs, the entire fortune of this truly great and noble-minded veteran, while it conveys a moral lesson to the French government, demonstrates the benefits extended to mankind by those philanthropical institutions, which constitute in no small degree the greatness of our empire.

Although in the advantages hitherto possessed by the British sailor an offset to them may be found in the hardship of impressment, and the still greater one of corporal punishment; yet in France, such are the workings of the naval registry, so completely and wilfully are its intentions perverted, and its regulations crushed by bribery, encouraged by the very civilians who are intrusted with their due execution, and who have thus invaded the natural prerogatives of the naval officer, who alone could be supposed effective in enforcing these regulations, that the registry by these abuses must be considered, not one of general enrolment, but rather a perpetual and private impressment of the harshest features, from whose severity and effects, while it enables the ordinary and worthless seamen to escape, causes them to fall too frequently on the able and meritorious.*

"To encourage the establishment of classes (naval registry), one should remove that esprit de lésinerie, by which the Bureaus have for ever destroyed the finest of our maritime institutions. We should release from the despotism of clerks the seaU. S. JOURN, No. 84, Nov. 1835. 2 B