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the passion for learning and travel, so it has foolishly
decided to forbid the holding the celebration of the
twenty-fifth anniversary of the abolition of serfdom.
The now emancipated serfs consequently think it proper
to infer that those who are in the highest places repent
of what was done.
In the cities, the Russian common people are found in
the genuine Russian tea-houses, where they have the
melodies ground out for them in the organs, and enjoy
the pleasure of having music at tea. There also the
workman or the peasant is generally to be seen on his
Friday, or when he has got a little too much in his head,
with his harmonica in his hand, that instrument which
demands so little skill and has superseded the balalaïka
of earlier times. I shall never forget a slightly
intoxicated young workman in Smolensk, who was reeling
along happy in the middle of the street, working away
on his accordion while the inhabitants from all the street
doors accompanied his wanderings with looks and smiles.
Seeing him suggested the role the accordion plays in
Tolstoï’s “Power of Darkness.” We cannot help
comparing mentally the gay tramp of young men through
the streets of Rome, keeping step to the melody of the
guitar, or the artistic four-part songs of the Germans.
Here is delight in music which is elementary and only
half developed. Gentleness and naïvete in this popular
pleasure are united with rudeness and stupid melancholy.
In the vicinity of Moscow, on the first of May (Russian
style) there was an opportunity of seeing a celebrated
national festival, which annually takes place in
Sakolniki Park. It is a wood of tall spruces, traversed by
many broad carriage-roads. From the grand avenue
radiate seven principal roads, which are mutually united
by cross-roads. There are also smaller roads and paths,
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