This did not interest Levin, but when he had finished, Levin went back to his first position, and, addressing Sviazhsky, and trying to draw him into expressing his serious opinion: —

“That the standard of culture is falling, and that with our present relations to the peasants there is no possibility of farming on a rational system to yield a profit — that’s perfectly true,” said he.

“I don’t believe it,” Sviazhsky replied quite seriously; “all I see is that we don’t know how to cultivate the land, and that our system of agriculture in the serf days was by no means too high, but too low. We have no machines, no good stock, no efficient supervision; we don’t even know how to keep accounts. Ask any landowner; he won’t be able to tell you what crop’s