ntly accurate. And
a similar statement may be made with respect to the pictures of
Russian peasant life contained in these tales. So far as they go they
are true to nature, and the notion which they convey to a stranger of
the manners and customs of Russian villagers is not likely to prove
erroneous, but they do not go very far. On some of the questions which
are likely to be of the greatest interest to a foreigner they never
touch. There is very little information to be gleaned from them, for
instance, with regard to the religious views of the people, none with
respect to the relations which, during the times of serfdom, existed
between the lord and the thrall. But from the casual references to
actual scenes and ordinary occupations which every here and there
occur in the descriptions of fairy-land and the narratives of heroic
adventure--from the realistic vignettes which are sometimes inserted
between the idealized portraits of invincible princes and irresistible
princesses--some idea may be obtained of the usual aspect of a Russian
village, and of the ordinary behavior of its inhabitants. Turning from
one to another of these accidental illustrations, we by degrees create
a mental picture which is not without its peculiar charm. We see the
wide sweep of the level corn-land, the gloom of the interminable
forest, the gleam of the slowly winding river. We pass along the
single street of the village, and glance at its wooden barn-like
huts,[14] so different from the ideal English cottage with its windows
set deep in ivy and its porch smiling with roses. We see the land
around a Slough of Despond in the spring, an unbroken sea of green in
the early summer, a blaze of gold at harvest-time, in the winter one
vast sheet of all but untrodden snow. On Sundays and holidays we
accompany the villagers to their white-walled, green-domed church, and
afterwards listen to the songs which the girls sing in the summer
choral dances, or take part in the merriment of the social gatherings,
which enliven the long nights of winter. Sometimes the quaint lyric
drama of a peasant wedding is performed before our eyes, sometimes we
follow a funeral party to one of those dismal and desolate nooks in
which the Russian villagers deposit their dead. On working days we see
the peasants driving afield in the early morn with their long lines of
carts, to till the soil, or ply the scythe or sickle or axe, till the
day is done and their rude carts come cr