In many wealthy famiHes a good music master is often retained, and in some, particularly in the provinces, a private band. In fact, it is easy enough for a nobleman to get one together, liis peasants are always a.t hand, and learn as easily to play on the violin as to clean his boots. It is only necessary to have a German musician in the house, wliich is indeed somewhat expensive, and to let him tutor them for a time, till a band is formed, and then at a baU, or any such occasion, the lord has only to muster the stove-heaters and superfluous table-deckers to have a very tolerable orchestra. Here and there, where the taste is more refined, three or four well-paid German musicians will be foimd on the establishment ; but this is rare, and so are the private horn-bands, which foreigners on their first arrival at St. Petersburg seem to expect to hear from every house.
On some of the estates schools have been established, where a select number of peasant-youths are taught reading, writing, &c., in order to render them serviceable afterwards, as gardeners and bailiff's, or in St. Petersburg as grooms of the chamber and secretaries. These youths bring with them the capacity for further improvement. Many of them acquire the arts of reading and writing, they themselves scarcely know how, and even the little postilions may often be seen in a corner of the stables dihgently forming the letters with their frozen fingers. Nothing can excite the surprise of a stranger, more than the extraordinary passion for reading now prevalent among servants in Russia. The greater pait of the antechambers of the nobles, where there are always a number of servants assembled, are regular reading-rooms ; those who are not playing at draughts, the favourite game, are generally reading. It is no rare thing to see six or eight in different corners thus engaged ; and if their occupation strikes a foreigner, who expects nothing but laziness and barbarism, with admiration, as indicative of advancing civiHzation, his admiration will rise to astonishment if he give himself the trouble of inquiring into the nature of their studies. A Translation of Bourrienne's Memoires, Karamsin's History of Russia, the Fables of Kruiloff, the Novels of Prince Odojevsky, the Tales of Baron Brambiires, Bantysh Kamensky's History of Lesser Russia, Polevoy's Outhnes of the History of the World, a translation of the ^neid, and others of the same kind, are the works he will find. I know not whether our domestics have yet risen to Luden's History of the Germans, or Raumer's Hohenstaufen ?
It is worthy of remark, that the young literature of Russia, which has already produced much that is excellent, as yet entirely unknown to us, has hitherto thrown off none of a base and spurious kind. That with the good much that is worthless exists, is undeniable, particularly in the scientific branches, where all is good for nothing ; but as it was calculated for the educated classes, it contains nothing vulgar, insipid, or common. The sei'vants, and such of the lower classes as are more and more becoming readers, are compelled to satisfy their Hterary appetite with wholesome food. Their taste will refine itself in consequence, and enough has already been written in Russia to keep a zealous reader in breath. Circulating hbraries abound m St. Petersburg. In the provinces, of course, it is more difficult to obtain books, and there, many really touching examples of the literary yearnings of the people are related. I knew an old chamberlain, who in his leisure hours had learned Kruiloffs Fables by heart, and had read Karamsin's History of Russia, six times through, because he could get no other books All that is written about Napoleon among us, is translated directly into Russian, and read by all classes, in the antechambers particularly, with uncommon ardour.
It is remarkable that neither Vienna, nor Berlin, nor London, nor Paris, cities which for centiuies have been the centres of a stirring national life, and the theatres of many extraordinary events, operating powerfully on the humanity of the middle ages as on our own, can vie vnth young unhistorical St. Petersburg in the number of their historical monuments. The most numerous, and in some measure the grandest, monuments of modem times, at least according to the plan laid down for their execution, have been erected in St. Petersburg.