in those days when religious animosity added additional venom to the feelings of the Mussulmans toward their Christian captives, and when Spain and Italy were Africa’s Africa.  The slave population of the United Slates are forbidden to hope.  They form a doomed race, the physical peculiarities of which are forever to keep them out of the list of the elect.  They are slaves, they and their ancestors always have been slaves, and they and their descendants always must be slaves.  Such is the Southern theory, and the practice under it does that theory no violence.  In Russia the condition of the enslaved has never been so bad as this, nor anything like it.  Between the slave and the serf the difference has been almost as great as that between the serf and the free citizen.

Nothing certain is known as to the origin of Russian serfage.  Able men have found the institution existing in very early times; and other men, of not less ability, and well acquainted with Russian history, are confident that it is a modern institution.  Count Gurowski, whose authority on such a point he ought to be a very bold man to question, says,—­“In Russia, slavery dates, with the utmost probability, since the introduction of the Northmen, originating with prisoners of war, and being established over conquered tribes of no Slavic descent.  This was done when Rurik and his successors descended the Dwina, the Dnieper, and established there new dominions.  In the course of time, the conquerors cleared the forests, established villages and cities.  As, in other feudal countries, the tower, the Schloss, was outside of the village or of the borough,—­so was In Russia the dwor or manor, where the conqueror or master dwelt,—­and from which was derived his name of dworianin.  That the genuine Russian of that time, whatever may have been his social position, was free in his village, is beyond doubt,—­as, according to old records, the boroughs and villages, dependencies of the manor, were settled principally with prisoners of war and the conquered population.  It was during the centuries of the Tartar dominion that the people, the peasantry, became nailed to the soil, and deprived of the right of freely changing their domicile.  Then successively every peasant, that is, every agriculturist tilling the soil with his own hands, became enslaved.  Only in estates owned by monasteries and convents, which were very numerous and generally very rich, slavery being judged to be opposed to Christian doctrine, it did not take root at once.  Generally, monks were reluctant to the utmost, and even directly opposed to the sale of men in the markets, and the dependants of a monastery were never sold in such a manner.”  The common view is, that Borys Gudenoff, who reigned at the beginning of the seventeenth century, established serfage age in Russia; but though the exact character of his legislation is yet in dispute, it is obvious that no Czar, and least of all one situated as was