From very ancient times the Russian nobles have divided their serfs into two classes : the agricultural peasants who live on the estates and cultivate the soil, and the so-called "Dvorniye Liudi,"who are chosen for the personal service of the lord, as footmen, gardeners, coachmen, and others. These servants soon obtained certain advantages ; were not used to dig the soil, and not given up for military service. As they were no better fed in their lords house than in their own, had their own bread and kwas to provide, to be content with what remained from their lord's table, and as they had rarely any other clothing than that worn on the paternal dunghill, such servants cost very little to keep, and whole companies of stable-boys, stoveheaters, scullions, lamplighters, couriers, table-coverers, and housemaids, were easily admitted into a household. These thorough old Russian servants, who, with their shoes of lime -bark, and sheepskin cloaks, formed a strange contrast to the palaces they lived in, where they slept on the stoves in the kitchen, or on the chairs and floors of the rooms, are still to be met with in country houses in the interior. Even in many houses in Moscow and St. Petersburg (generally in those of the poorer nobles) the lower offices of the household are still filled by these serf servants, who are provided perhaps with a better caftan and boots, but after serving for a time in the kitchen or the stable, are dismissed to their fields again. These people differ too little from the rest of the peasants to form a class apart.
The observation which the masters soon made, that their own serfs were much idler, slower, and more perverse in service than those who worked for hire, the increasing wants of a newly-civilized capital, and of luxurygrowing with the growth of the empire, have called forth a numerous class of ministering spirits, consisting of natives of all nations, and of the most various relations in hfe, the study of which is one of the most interesting that a capital can offer to the ethnograph or psychologist. By far the larger part are those members of the superfluous population of the estates, who are not wanted for the cultivation of the soil, and whom their lords have permitted to seek their fortune in the towns. They are furnished with a pass or permit, which runs thus : "I permit my krepostnoi tshelovek (serf) Jephim, — on payment of a yearly sum of sixty, seventy, eighty rubles (as the case may be) which he is to transmit half-yearly, — to seek his liveHhood in any way, in any town or village of the Russian empire, for so many years until it be my pleasure to call him back to my estate, X., where he is registered." The serfs thus manumitted for a time, come to the cities and engage in various occupations, in hotels, coflFee-houses, manufactories, and in wealthy private families, where, however, those entirely free are preferred, on account of the dependence of the former on another master, by whom they are continually hable to be recalled. It is curious to see with what inconceivable adroitness and rapidity these people from the plough accommodate themselves to their new position. They come up raw and unfashioned from the sheepfold, stumble over the floors of the sitting-rooms, and scarcely know how to place a table against the wall. In a few months they are coxcombs in gay liveries, exhaling perfume, dancing on the smoothest poHshed floor with the waiting-maids, and assisting their masters into their carriages with the grace of a court page.