At the pubHc-house opposite, it would indeed be a wonder if we did not find every bench thronged with guests, for temperance is no prevaihng virtue in Little Russia. The spectacle here presented is any thing but a gratifying one. The brandy flows in torrents. The people drink it out of large glass tumblers, or, perhaps, out of the tin measure in which it is served out to them. Quarrellings and fightings are not, indeed, of frequent occurrence, but the scenes which do take place are not on that account less disgusting. Perhaps a couple of drunken women are laughing and singing aloud, while several old fellows are vainly endeavouring to join in the melody, but are too far gone to do more than articulate an occasional grunt. Half-a-dozen natives of Great Russia are, at the same time, perhaps, embracing, kissing, and hugging each other with maudlin tenderness, and some German vagabond, dropped here by Napoleon's army, announces, by his fiery nose and sunken eyes, the degrading species of slavery into which he has sunk. Among all this noisy rabble may be seen the host, the pale, meager, bearded, ever sober Jew, who sells his poison in the name of some noble ; for the sale of spirits, which in Great Russia is farmed out to merchants, is in Little Russia the unenviable privilege ot the local nobility.
Not to leave the place with so disagreeable an impression on our minds, let us seek the village chm-ch ere we return homeward. We may rely on finding it the handsomest building in the place. It is always kept in good repair, and looks generally as if it had just been built. The most highlyesteemed among its sacred pictures, you may be sure, was discovered miraculously suspended to some tree not far off, and now the hundred nobles, the thousand kasakki, and the two thousand panski ludi of the village, rarely omit, on each returning Sunday, to pay their devotions to the wonderful picture. The church stands generally alone on a little eminence, on which it is visible from every part of the village, and from the church-door, on a Sunday, as you gaze doTi into the moving world below, you may sometimes behold delightful and diverting pictures of Russian Jife. Young girls, and matrons with infants on their arms, come climbing np to the holy place ; and to my mind, the man must be but a sorry Christian who would scorn to enter the sacred edifice and join the pious Cossacks in their prayers to Heaven.
The Dnieper serves to divide into two sections the populous region fertilized by its waters, and of these two sections the eastern constitutes the government of Kieff, and the western that of Piltava. Conisidering that the latter contains a population of nearly two mUlions, we might certainly expect to find in the chief city, a place of greater importance, but Poltava bears about the same proportion to the government of tlie same name, that St. Petersburg, at no very remote period, did to the whole empire. All the nobles who are not prevented from doing so, by some urgent business, or some official appointment, live upon their own estates or in the villages. The Malorossians, indeed, are seldom fond of a town life, and above all things they entertain a great aversion to St. Petersburg. The Moscovites dislike St. Petersburg also, but then they dislike it chiefly on account of its foreign character. The Malorossians dishke it not merely on that account, but also for the many Great Russian elements in which it abounds. There are noble families in Little Russia, who have visited almost every capital in Europe, and yet never set foot in St. Petersburg
Such is the aversion of the people of Little to those of Great Russia, that it may fairly be described as a national hatred, and the feeling has rather strengthened than diminished since the seventeenth century, when the country was annexed to the Moscovite empire. The Malorossian, to this day, sympatliizes more with the Pole than he does with the Mosco\ate.
Before their subjection, all the Malorossians were freemen, and serfdom, they maintain, had never been known among them. It was the Russians they say that reduced one-half of the people to slavery. Dming the first century after the union. Little Russia continued to have her own hetmans, and retained much of her ancient constitution and privileges, but all these have been swept away by the retrograde reforms of the last and present century. Even the name of Malo-Rossiya has, since 1837, been abolished, and occurs no longer in any official document. Till that year, there had been a governor-general of Little Russia, but the office has been done away with, and the former inscription over the government hotel at Poltava has been effaced. This has given great offence to the nobles of the land, and a stranger will not bo long among them without hearing bitter complaints on the subject.