This is, indeed, a sore trial; — fitted, indeed, to lead every one who bends beneath the weight of it to seek more earnestly the protection of Him, who in adversity as well as in prosperity, is our surest stay. They who lean the most trustfully upon Him, and walk in the closest obedience to His will, will find that even the pathway of tribulation leads, in His own good time, to blessing. But it would be the forfeiture of this blessing, were we to varnish over, with the gloss of a false name, the hideous oppression of the country of which we have been speaking. We dare not, therefore, dignify with the name of Government (as Mouravieff and his agents would fain do), the work of plunder, proscription, and massacre, which they have carried on; neither dare we apply the hallowed name of Peace to the desolation which they have spread over " unhappy Poland." '*
The Lithuanians seem to be of the same race with the Samogitians, and they resemble both the Poles and the Russians. Their appearance speaks of extreme poverty. Their carts are made entirely of wood, sometimes without a single piece of iron, and even the harness of the horses is often made of the more flexible branches of trees. And I have been told that the landed proprietors have become greatly impoverished, many of them possessing only half a desatin of land, and estates of insolvent proprietors being constantly for sale; while the Government has been endeavouring to provide for them by encouraging emigration to Simbirsk and Tobolsk, by offering them settlements on crown lands in these governments.
* ' Auferre, trucidare, rapere, falsis nominibus imperium; atque, ubi solitudinem faciunt, pacem appellant.'— Tac. Agric. c. xxx.
THERE is little to strike the eye or arrest the attention of a traveller in passing from Poland into Lithuania, which is conterminous with it throughout its eastern boundary, though extending much further both to the north and to the south. All that is seen of forest lands from the railway in both countries is alike. The forests are not continuous in either, nor confined to any well defined localities. Nor is there anything remarkable to be seen in the one or in the other.