When we come together we have very little to talk about, for we have all read the daily papers and nothing more.

The best thing we can do is to sit down at the card-table, where we can spend our time pleasantly, without the necessity of talking." In addition to the daily papers, some people read the monthly periodicals--big, thick volumes, containing several serious articles on historical and social subjects, sections of one or two novels, satirical sketches, and a long review of home and foreign politics on the model of those in the Revue des Deux Mondes.

Several of these periodicals are very ably conducted, and offer to their readers a large amount of valuable information; but I have noticed that the leaves of the more serious part often remain uncut.

The translation of a sensation novel by the latest French or English favourite finds many more readers than an article by an historian or a political economist.

As to books, they seem to be very little read, for during all the time I lived in Novgorod I never discovered a bookseller's shop, and when I required books I had to get them sent from St.Petersburg.The local administration, it is true, conceived the idea of forming a museum and circulating library, but in my time the project was never realised.