the enormous dead level
of peasants.

The serfs belonged soul and body to the landowner: even when they
were allowed to take service or exercise a trade in distant towns,
they were obliged to pay a due, "_obrok_," to their owner, and to
return home if required; while the instances of oppression were
sometimes frightful, husbands and wives were separated, girls were
sold away from their parents, young men were not allowed to marry.
On the other hand, when the proprietor was kind, and rich enough
not to make money of his serfs, the patriarchal form of life was
not unhappy. "See now," said an old peasant, "what have I gained
by the emancipation? I have nobody to go to to build my house,
or to help in the ploughing time; the Seigneur, he knew what I
wanted, and he did it for me without any bother. Now if I want
a wife, I have got to go and court her myself; he used to choose
for me, and he knew what was best. It is a great deal of trouble,
and no good at all!" Under the old arrangements three generations
were often found living in one house, and the grandfather, who was
called "the Big One," bore a very despotic sway. The plan allowed
several of the males of the family to seek work at a distance,
leaving some at home to perform the "_corvee_" (forced labour)
three days a week; but the families quarrelled among themselves,
and the effect of the emancipation has been to split them up into
different households. A considerable portion of the serfs were
not really serfs at all. They were coachmen, grooms, gardeners,
gamekeepers, etc., while their wives and daughters were nurses,
ladies'-maids, and domestic servants. Their number was out of all
proportion to their work, which was always carelessly done, but
there was often great attachment to the family they served. The
serfs proper lived in villages, had houses and plots of land of
their own, and were nominally never sold except with the estate.
The land, however, was under the dominion of the "_Mir_"; they could
neither use it nor cultivate it except according to the communal
obligations.

The outward aspect of a Russian village is not attractive, and
there is little choice in the surrounding country between a wide
grey plain with a distance of scrubby pine forest, or the scrubby
pine forest with distant grey plains. The peasants' houses are
scattered up and down without any order or arrangement, and with
no roads between, built of trunks of trees, unsquared, and mortised