It is also from the universities that the young men are taken who are designed for the business of public instruction; and as we have already stated, they are for the most part educated at the expense of the state. When their studies are completed they are appointed professors in the gymnasia and other schools. The government has neglected no means of making their calling as advantageous as possible, both as to salary and honorary advancement. These encouragements would have the happiest effect anywhere else than in Russia, but there they have quite the contrary result. It follows from the existing system of nobility with its graduated scale, the privileges it confers, and the means of fortune its offers, that a man's whole status in life resolves itself into a question of official rank. Now, as no calling presents a greater chance of rapid advancement than that of the public instructor, in which capacity a young man rarely fails to obtain the rank of major (hereditary nobility) after five or six years' service, the consequence is that all the sons of the petty nobles, burghers, and priests, eagerly rush into this thriving profession. This, however, is not the real mischief; on the contrary, the great number of competitors might produce a very salutary rivalry; but unfortunately the little power and influence exercised by the professors, who after all, can only command boys, and still more than this, their want of opportunity to enrich themselves under cover of their office, strip the business of public instruction of all prestige, and cause it to be considered, notwithstanding its high pay, as much less advantageous than many other posts the fixed salary of which is almost nothing, but which enable the holders to levy almost unlimited contributions on those who come under their hands. What follows? As soon as the professors have obtained the rank of major, they quit the universities and enter the civil administrations, where they can fatten on law suits, chicanery, and exactions, and all the countless means by which the law enables them to make fraudulent fortunes. And here we may remark that this state of things is another consequence of the want of definite callings and professions in Russia. The career of official rank is the only one known to the Russian; for him there exists none other.
We must not wonder, therefore, if the instruction given in the elementary schools, and the gymnasia is incomplete and almost barren of good effect. The teachers are almost always mere boys without experience or sound knowledge. They content themselves with going through their routine of business according to the letter of the rules, and the military discipline imposed on them; but once escaped from their classes, they think of nothing but enjoying themselves, eating, drinking, and playing cards. I have visited many gymnasia in Russia, and I have always seen in them the same effects flowing from the same causes.
Besides the great universities and high schools, all the leading towns of the empire formerly contained numerous boarding schools, most of them kept by strangers; but these were suppressed by ukase in the year 1842. The means of instruction are at present confined to the imperial establishments, from which all foreigners not naturalised in Russia are excluded. These new regulations dictated by false vanity, will infallibly have a disastrous influence, and render the progress of education more and more difficult.