er of education. Until the time of Alexander II. the
village priests controlled all schools in the country, though often
they were utterly incompetent for teaching. But that liberal monarch
changed this, and gave the schools into the hands of the most capable
individuals, whether they were priests or otherwise. A manifest
improvement has been the consequence. Thirty years ago there were but
about three thousand primary schools in all Russia; to-day there are
nearly twenty-four thousand. This increase has been gradual, but is
highly significant. Reading, writing, arithmetic, and geography are
the branches which are taught in these schools. Statistics show that
in 1860 only two out of one hundred of the peasants drafted into the
army could read and write. Ten years later, in 1870, the proportion
had increased to eleven in a hundred, and in 1882 it had reached
nineteen in a hundred. Government organizes these village schools,
and holds a certain supervision over them, contributing a percentage
of their cost, the balance being realized by a small tax upon the
parents of the children attending them. Finland has an educational
system quite distinct from the empire, supporting by local interest
high schools in all the principal towns, and primary schools in every
village.

In St. Petersburg the common signs over and beside the doors of the
shops are pictorially illustrated, indicating the business within,
these devices taking the place of lettered signs, which the common
people could not read. Thus the butcher, the barber, the pastry-cook,
and the shoemaker put out symbols of their trade of a character
intelligible to the humblest understanding. At times these signs are
very curious, forming ludicrous caricatures of the business which
they are designed to indicate, so laughable indeed that one
concludes they are designedly made ridiculous in order the more
readily to attract attention. There is a large population of
well-educated native and foreign-born people whose permanent home is
here, among whom a German element is the most conspicuous. Nor is
America unrepresented. There are good Russian translations of most of
the standard English and American authors, poets, and novelists. We
saw excellent editions of Shakspeare, Longfellow, and Tennyson; also
of Byron, Macaulay, Scott, and Irving. This list might be extended so
as to embrace many other names. The modern school of Russian romance
writers is not formed upon the vicious