townwards from the citadel, I met a line of mourning women all on the same errand, some on foot and some in carriages, all with the same look of blank despair. Week after week they turn their steps in faith to the citadel, but only those who had money to pay for the information, knew the fate of those who were dearer to them than life itself. For all that poor girl, who has saved something from her week's wages to buy a loaf of bread for her lover, knows to the contrary, he may be dead, and has found a nameless burial in the common ditch, which has already received so many victims who have died in the citadel, or, perhaps, his solitary confinement has driven him mad, or he may be half way to Siberia.

CHAPTER XVIII

LITHUANIA.

AFTER staying ten days at Warsaw, I set off for Wilna, in company of my fellow-travellers from Cracow. On our arrival at the St. Petersburg railway-station, in the suburb of Praga, we found ourselves among a crowd of policemen, soldiers, officials, and spies, all there in the hope of catching a stray emissary or two of the National Government. Looked upon with universal suspicion, and not permitted to take our places in the train till our passports had been examined three times and twice countersigned, we at last found ourselves fairly on our way to Wilna, determined to beard Murawiew in his den. With the exception of about a dozen ordinary passengers, there were only soldiers in the train, which we learnt had been lately fired upon by the insurgents between Grodno and Wilna. A pilot engine was sent ahead to feel the way; and so we proceeded on our journey, to which the possibility of danger lent just sufficient excitement to keep off the ennui from which only persons of the best regulated minds are free during a long railway journey. From Warsaw to Lapy, the frontier station between Lithuania and the Kingdom of Poland, the line was guarded by parties of cavalry and infantry stationed at intervals of about half a mile. All the cottages of the gate-porters along the line were

occupied by military, and in many instances surrounded by a ditch, mound, and palisade, illustrating exactly the fossa, agger, and vallum of the Romans. Where the cottages were left unprotected, the windows were planked up, for fear of the insurgents coming in the night and shooting in at the guard. A large proportion of these tenements, to which a temporary stable for the Cossack horses was added, had been burned to the ground by the insurgents, and a solitary chimney remained to tell the tale. At each station a whole company of infantry, consisting of some 150 men-for since the Crimean war the companies have been reduced by more than half their strength-was permanently established in the waitingrooms, and it was calculated that a force of at least 20,000 men was occupied in guarding the line between St. Petersburg and Warsaw. From Warsaw to the Lithuanian frontier the line traverses a thickly wooded country, not passing within sight of a town, or even a considerable village. In the immediate vicinity of the rail the forest had been cleared away, and the yet smoking roots showed us that the work was of very recent accomplishment. It was strange to watch the wild-looking Cossack vedettes, their figures cutting clear against the sky, as they looked down from the high railway banks on the train, as it moved slowly past them; for, from fear of an accident, the speed never exceeded that of a goods train on an English railway. From Bialystock to Grodno the country is much less wooded, and the line consequently less carefully guarded. However, as between Warsaw and Lapy, all the stations were occupied by a company of infantry, the Simonowski regiment of the Imperial Guard being employed on this

R

service, as we neared Grodno, their present head-quarters. I was much struck with the fine appearance of this regiment, which contrasted in a very remarkable degree with the troops of the line. Between Warsaw and Grodno we had seen but a single work in the construction of which any engineering skill had been displayed, the iron bridge over the Bug, which forms the frontier between Luthania and the Kingdom of Poland. At Grodno a similar bridge has been thrown across the Niemen, the banks of which afford some fine scenery. The castle of Grodno, memorable as the meeting-place of the last Polish Diet, overhangs the bed of the Niemen, which flows 200 feet below. Here Stanislaus Augustus played out his unworthy part, and, tool as he was of Catherine, signed his abdication, which immediately preceded the final partition of Poland.

At the time of our visit a most painful state of things reigned there. Every individual who was even suspected of a leaning towards the insurrection was at once thrown into prison, and, as a Jew put it well in explaining the Russian régime, every Pole who even showed himself in the street had at least one foot in a dungeon. I was fortunate enough to make the acquaintance of an English lady who was residing in Grodno, and the details I learnt from her quite confirmed the general opinion formed of the Russian atrocities in Lithuania. A few weeks previously she and her husband were on a visit at a country house, a few miles from Grodno, when a party of soldiers arrived and surrounded the premises. The officer, entering the house with some of his men, at once ordered the proprietor to be arrested, on suspicion of supplying the insurgents with provisions. The

husband of the lady from whom these particulars are derived happened to be in the room at the same time. The officer, approaching him, rudely demanded who he was, and, scarcely waiting for an answer, ordered his men to take him too. The lady assured me that neither she nor her husband had any connexion whatsoever with the insurrection, and therefore the arrest of the latter was quite unprovoked. As it is the rule rather than the exception that the ladies in Luthania are quite ignorant of the fate of their husbands and brothers, the case of this lady was not marked out from the others; but it seemed strange to hear an Englishwoman pouring out in our language the tale of grief I had so often listened to in Polish.

Among the most cruel acts perpetrated by the Russians in Lithuania, was the utter destruction of Szezuki and Jawoiowka, villages of the petite noblesse. It seems that such of the male population of these villages as were capable of bearing arms joined the insurrection to a man, only leaving the old men, women, and children at home. This fact coming to the knowledge of the authorities, troops were sent to the spot with orders to destroy all trace of human habitations, and to plough up the former site of the villages. This order was literally executed, and, just before our arrival, a melancholy train of old men, women, and children passed through Grodno on their way to Siberia, to expiate the crime of their kindred. The fact is that the Russian Government is determined to get rid of the petite noblesse at any price, as it naturally regards this catholic peasant population, scattered broadcast among the faithful orthodox-i.e. the Uniates converted to the schisma at the point of the