which the house-serfs are punished for occasional carelessness or neglect, the following circumstance is related by the author already quoted: — "Attached to every house is a man called a dvornik or yard-man, whose duty it is to keep the street clean in front of his master’s house, to scrape the snow from off the pavement, and to strew it with sand, to prevent accidents to foot passengers. The Emperor, in walking the street, slipped and fell. He took down the name of the house he was passing, and going straight to the nearest police-station, directed the dvornik of that house to be seized and flogged. Short was the shrift allowed the offender; a Persian bastinado would not have been more prompt. Surrounded by all the dvorniks of the neighborhood, collected for the purpose of being edified by the example, stood the unfortunate culprit, in the presence of the Whole staff of the police of the district. In the centre of the yard lay a form and two bundles of birchen rods, and all was anxious expectation. At a signal, every head was uncovered, in deference, probably, to the authority represented by the punishment; and though the thermometer was at ten degrees below freezing — point, the offender was seized, stripped, and laid flat on the bench. One man sat on his legs, another held his arms crossed beneath the bench; while, on each side of him, with a bundle of rods under their arms, stood two others, cutting away alternately at him, and exchanging the rods as often as they got dull, until the whole were expended.[1] "Such," says the writer, "is the paternal discipline" of the Russian autocrat. How would this Imperial
- ↑ Thompson, Letter iii.
