' Of the Count himself, I am thankful to say that I have heard a better account than I had dared to hope for. The place of his residence is Ufa, in the province of Orenburg. The climate has thus far agreed with him; and the Governor of the place appears to do everything he can to relieve the irksomeness of his exile. But the question which I cannot help asking myself, and to which I have not yet been able to find a satisfactory answer is, Why is such a man in exile at all? If he had been really guilty of doing anything, directly or indirectly, to promote the work of revolution, is it to be supposed, that, in the present temper of the Russian Government, his liffe or property would not have been immediately forfeited? The mere fact that his life and property are spared is proof incontrovertible that the charges attempted to be brought against him are false; and that the Government knows them to be false. But, if false, why not admit their falsehood? Why not punish, as they deserve, the perjured witnesses that dared to slander him? Why not fully reinstate the Count in the property of which he is the rightful owner, and to the improvement of which he is ready to devote his fortune and the best energies of his noble nature? There is, indeed, one answer, and only one, — but who can call it a satisfactory answer? — to be returned to these and other like questions, namely, that the unsparing rigour of MouraviefFs government forbids the display, — I will not say, of mercy, — but of any approach to equity or fair dealing towards any Pole, whose name has been in the slightest degree associated — it matters not how wrongly — with the insurgent cause. The fate of Count Bisping is but the fate of hundreds and thousands of others who, like him, are, or were, landed proprietors in Lithuania and the adjoining provinces. The system pursued has been simply a system of indiscriminate proscription; and, even whilst these sheets are passing through the press, I observe a proclamation, lately issued by Mouravieff — and now making the circuit of every journal in Europe — in which he regards with wondrous self-complacency the work done by his hands within the last few months, and prides himself in the belief that there is no longer left, throughout the extensive districts entrusted to his charge, a single inhabitant who dares to utter any other word, or to harbour any other thought than that of entire submission. It may be so. He may have so closely gagged the mouth, and so heavily oppressed the heart of Russian Poland, as to make her powerless any longer to speak or to breathe. But is this to re-establish order and tranquility within her borders? As well may the physician, who ascribes to his patient a malady to which he is a stranger, and drenches him with remedies which destroy him, dream that he has dispelled the danger, because he has silenced the meanings of pain, or made the limbs of the strong man helpless as the limbs of an infant.
'The narrative in the foregoing pages has been purposely confined to the notice of those persons only with whom I was brought into personal and friendly relation. The sympathy awakened within me by their distresses, I know to be a just and lawful sympathy; and, howsoever imperfect may have been the expression of it which I have tried to give, it has been given without hesitation, because I am convinced of the truth of the grounds on which it rests. If ever man were animated with a single-hearted purpose to do his duty as a steward of God's bounties, amid a people who looked up hopefully to him for help, it is the friend with whom I passed six months and more, upon the soil on which he and his people dwelt. Day by day I witnessed his honest and consistent efforts for their welfare; day by day I knew that he was stedfast and loyal to the Emperor, to whom he and his people alike owed subjection. Yet I have lived to see him torn from the home of his fathers; and the people, whom he would fain have protected and cherished, left once more to the tender mercies of the roving Cossack, or to the grasping extortion of the Jewish trafficker. His loftiest aspirations have been crushed in the very prime of his youthful manhood; and the " sun " of his brightest hope has suddenly " gone down whilst it is yet day " (Jer. xv. 9).