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Elegant Pocket Edition, price ls., by post Is. 6d.
DR. CULVERWELL ON MARRIAGE,
its HINDRANCES and OBLIGATIONS.
" To be or not to be, that is the question."—Shakspeare.
Contents : —On Matrimonial Eligibility and Unfitness—Laws
Paternity—Phenomena of Gestation—On Maternal Influence—On
infelicitous and unproductive Uaions—Curioslties of Medical Experi-
ence, Cases, &c. &c.

THE RUSSIAN GOVERNMENT

AND THE ROMAN CATHOLIC CHURCH.

The following is extracted from a new work, entitled
"Eastern Europe and the Emperor Nicholas," by the
author of Revelations of Russia." The descriptions
are, we hope and be:ieve, grievously overcharged :
" In the city of Minsk, in 1837, there still existed a con-
vent of humble nuns of the order of St. Bazilius. Their
time, like that of the ' Sisters of Charity,' was divided be-
tween their religious duties, attendance on the sick, and the
education of poor children.
" Far and wide through the surrounding country, the
suffering and needy had learned to bless their unassuming
benevolence, and people of all ranks regarded with venera-
tion a community, distinguished not by by ascetic practices,
but through its active and unwearying philanthropy.
" The very popularity of this order, and the estimation in
which it was held, marked it out for a persecution, so atro-
cious that I know of nothing more harrowing in times ancient
or modern.

" The cruelties of Nero, Domitian, and Caligula, the most
virulent religious persecution of past centuries, and the hor-
rors of the French revolution, rarely equalled in degree the
barbarities practised on those harmless women, and sink into
insignificance beside them, when the long protraction of seven
years of suffering is considered.
" All the details of this'inhuman;persecution might have re-
mained either utterly unknown beyond the Russian frontier,
or merged in vague rumours of cruel treatment, but for the
providential escape of four of the sufferers.
" Between 1837 and 1845, 44 nuns perished at the hands
of the Russian despotism, out of 58 devoted to duties whose
fulfilment appeals so directly to all human sympathies, that
a religious sisterhood analogous to their own had been spared
even during the French reign of terror, which so pitilessly
swept away all social landmarks. Of the 14 that remained,
eight had either had their eyes torn out or their limbs
broken, and of the other. six only. four had strength to at-
tempt, or fortune to effect, their escape. A few more
months and the whole surviving 14, at last doomed to
Siberia, might have been expiring on that weary road,
which the ten unhappy creatures left behind by the fugitives,
are at this moment being dragged or driven over, all lamed,
blind, or ailing.
_ . _

"Nothing iii that case would ever have reached our ear of
the incredible sufferings of these poor victims, whose fate
would silently have contributed to swell those statistics of
proselytism which the Russian Government gives periodically
to Europe, and which Nicholas has commemorated by the
famous medal inscribed with the motto, Separated by vio-
lence, and reunited by love.'
"Of the four fugitives, two—the sister Wawrzecka and
Irena Macrina Minceslas (Mieczyslaska)—succeeded in reach-
ing Posen in Prussian Poland, where the Roman Catholic
archbishop, having taken •down their circumstantial deposi-
tion of the facts about to be narrated, sealed it with the arms
of the archbishopric, and forwarded the document to Rome.
" An order consequently arrived for the superior to repair
to Rome by way of Paris, in which city she took up her
abode till the 10th of October last, under the same roof with
one near and dear to the author. •

" Here she was led to give all the sad details of her harrow-
ing story, whilst the scars which mark her body added their
dumb eloqueuce to her recital.
" Irena Mieceslas had been thirty years renowned :for her
charity and benevolence throughout the Government of
Minsk, as head of the Bazilian convent, consisting of 34 nuns,
in the city of that name. It will be hence at once per-
ceived that she is advancing into the vale of years. The
aspect of her countenance, according to the portrait which the
writer.has before him, is at once noble and indicative of deter-
mination. It derives the first expression from the position
of the eyes, which is such as we rarely meet with out of the
Scandinavian or Anglo-Norman race—viz., obliqued upwards
from the outward corners, that is to say, in a direction pre-
cisely contrary to the eyes of the feline species, of all Mongo-
lian races, and of many of the inhabitants of southern coun-
tries. The finely-chiselled corners of her mouth seems to mark
a decision of temper, of which she has given the most heroic
proofs in her conduct.
" The substance of her narrative, which the other three
sisters corroborate in the minutest particulars, is to the fol-
lowing effect :
" The Emperor Nicholas, having profited by his influence
and privileges in nominating corrupt and ambitions tools to
the bishopric of the Bazilian communion (that is say, the
Roman Catholics with creek forms), amongst these Semi-
asko, the bishop of the diocese in which the convent of these
poor nuns was situated, had apostatized to the Greek from
the Latin church. Finding that the great mass of the clergy,
and the whole of their congregation, refused to follow the ex-
amples of their chiefs, Nicholas ordered forcible means to be
resorted to, and set on foot a persecution. which caused the
females of this religious association great alarm, and induced
them to use the private influence of their friends in the Rus-
sian capital, to be allowed to retire from the convent into the
bosoms of their families.'

" This boon the Emperor refused, referring them to their
apostate bishop.
Semiasko, after vainly using all his persuasive powers
with this community, to induce them to pass over to the
Russian Church, showed them alike the threats and promises
he was empowered to make in the name of Nicholas, and
the awful signature appended to a document which com-
manded him to adopt such measures as the interests of
religion might require, to oblige all recusants to reform.
Finding their determination unshakable, he left them three
months to consider the matter; and then, detaching from
his breast one of the numerous orders with which the Em-
peror had rewarded his apostacy, he attempted to pin it on
the bosom of the superior, to whom he held out a dazzling
prospect of honours and rewards.
" These women, it must be remembered, in their devout
belief, now saw in their former pastor only an impious se-
ceder from the faith of their fathers. Into Mieceslas, there-
fore, spurning this temptation, said tauntingly to the bishop,
Keep it, keep it ; it would ill accord with the humble cross
which marks my order, and with you it serves to hide a
breast beneath which there beats the heart of an apostate !'
"These nuns had been fortified in their resolution by the
exhortation of their confessor, a weak, but probably well-
meaning man, named Michalewitch.
" As the persecution became more rigorous around him,
between the threats and the promises of his bishop, he was
influenced to desert to the Russian communion, and be was
afterwards frequently obliged to take his seat as member of
the tribunal which attempted to subdue the obstinacy of
these women. It is, however, probable that he yielded more
to terror than seduction, for he strove apparently to
bury his remorse in incessant intoxication ; and in this
condition he afterwards fell into a pool of water, where he
was drowned.
. " Three days after the imultiug rofugti of the iniperior to

' apostatize, Semiasko came with a detachment of soldiers to
turn the sisters out of the convent. Such was the violence
employed, and the terror inspired by the account of uni-
versal persecution, that a sick nun of their number fell and
expired upon the pavement of the chapel.
"The remainder were heavily ironed, hand and foot, and
marched to Vitepsk, where they were placed in a Russian
convent of black sisters.'
" These black sisterhoods, which may, in some measure be
compared to our penitentiaries, are places of refuge for the
widows of private solders, and receptacles for the most dis-
orderly prostitutes.
" Here the 33 nuns of St. Bazilius, from Minsk, met with
14 more of their order, transferred from another convent to
this abode, where for two years they were kept at hard la-
bour, chained in couples, and exposed to all the malignity of
the depraved associates with whom these women of gentle
birth were thus forcibly mingled.
"In 1839, all other efforts having failed to shake their
resolution, they were transferred to another Russian convent
of black sisters, in the city of Polock. Here they met with
ten more nonconformist nuns of the same order. The whole
number of these women, 57, were now brought up twice a
week, on Wednesdays and Fridays, before a commission of
the Russian authorities and clergy, and flogged before them,
receiving 50 strokes a piece.
"This was continued for months together, till the wounds
upon their backs was an open sore, and that pieces of the
scabs, and then of the raw flesh, adhered to the instruments
of torture. Three of their number died beneath this in-
diction.

" They were then fed on salt herrings, and refused drink
(a favourite Russian mode of torture), except on the condi-
tion of apostacy. This punishment, which it appears they
found the most difficult to bear, was superseded by a system
of starvation. They were only fed once every other day,
and driven to eat nettles and the fodder of the convent
cattle.

" They were employed to dig out clay, and not under-
standing how to conduct an excavation, the earth fell in, and
buried five of their number. With incredible barbarity the
Russian authorities not only refused to dig them out, but pre-
vented the nuns from attempting to extricate their com-
panions. They perished in this self-dug grave.
"The next labour in which the survivors were employed,
was to aid the masons in constructing a palace for the rene-
gade bishop.
" Some of the Polish gentry, whose spirit no terrors will
quell, coming to look on, oce of itkeir number addressed
some words of consolation to these poor women. Within
twenty-four hours not only this imprudent individual, but
all those around him, had disappeared.

" The falling of a wall in the midst of the nuns injured
many, and killed eight of them outright. Aninth and tenth
soon after perished.
"These ten bodies were carried off by the people, and
hidden, where all the efforts of the Russian authorities failed
to discover them.

" About this period, several monks of St. Bazilius were
brought to the same convent. Their treatment is described
as having been more barbarous than even that of the nuns.
Four of these men, Zawecki, Komar, Zilewicz, and Buck-
zy•nski by name, all upwards of seventy years of age, were
at last, in the full severity of winter, stripped and placed
under a pump, where as the water was poured over them it
'gaadually congealed into a mass of ice, and froze them to
'death ; another, named Abbe Laudanski, aged and infirm,
• whilst staggering beneath a load of firewood, was struck upon
the head with such violence by a drunken deacon that his
skull was fractured, and he died upon the spot.
It must here be explained that all the lower, or white
eldrgy in the Russian Church are very ignorant and depraved,
aixtl that the deacons are the lowest among them.

..," In the present instance, however, the refusal of the great
bulk of the Bazilian clergy to pass over to the Russian Church
hect obliged it, in these forcibly-converted provinces, to fill
,up those gaps in the lower ranks of its hierarchy with boors
df the most illiterate and dissolute character.
igt happened that one of these surviving monks of St.
Razilius succeeded in making his escape; and Samiasko,
irritated at this incident, resolved to conquer the obstinacy
of the nuns, and publishing that they were about to read
their recantation, caused them to be forcibly led by the sol-
diery to the portals of the Russian church. The curiosity
I which this announcement caused, led the whole popalation'of
the city of Polock to assemble; notwithstanding the ex-
amples which had been made of those who had expressed
their sympathy with the sufferers.
"The apostate bishop, in his episcopal garments, advanced
towards the nuns, and bidding the soldiers leave his dear
sisters at liberty, spoke to them with paternal kindness, and
offering his hand to their superior, prepared to lead her into
the church. Irene illieceslas then seizing one of the hatchets
used by the carpenters who had been working at the repara-
tion of the church, called out to all her nuns to kneel, and
addressing Semiasko, told him, ' After having been their
shepherd, to become the executioner of those whom he had
not already done to death, and to strike off their heads before
the threshold of that temple, which their footsteps would
never voluntarily cross.'
"So galling was the provocation of this rebuke to the
Russian bishop, that unable to contain himself, he struck the
superior on the face, and then flung the ax.e indignantly from
him. It chanced in falling to wound one of the nuns in the
toot ; and a moment after the superior having put her hand
to her mouth, which was filled with blood, drew out one of
her shattered teeth, and holding it up to him said, ' Take it,
it will earn you some fresh order from the Emperor.'
" Such was the effect of this scene, that nothing could re-
strain the enthusiasm of the people; and as the nuns were
led back by the soldiery, the crowd followed them, singing
with one accord Hallelujahs and Te Deunis.
" Such, notwithstanding all the i epressive terrors of the
Russian authorities, became the feeling of the population of
the city of Polock, that it was found unsafe to continue
the persecution of the nuns within its walls, and they were
ordered to be removed to the borough of Medzioly, in the
province of Minsk.
"'Phis public defeat of the Russian bishop and authorities
was, however, revenged on these poor women by an act of
such diabolical malignity as only the most undeniable evi-
dence
can render credible.

" When the Russian soldiern, and the newly-made deacons
had been rendered drunk with brandy, all these helpless nuns
were turned out amongst them as incurably obstinate, to
treat as they thought fit. Then commenced a scene worthy
of pandemonium—the shrieks and prayers of the victims
mingling with the oaths, blasphemies, and ribaldry of the
crowd, to whose brutal lust they were abandoned.
" When the fury of these demons in human form had been
exhausted, it was discovered that two of these unfortunate
females were quite dead. The skull of one had been crushed
by the stamping on the temples of an iron-plated heel. The
other was trampled into such a mass of mud and gore, that
even its human character was scarcely recognizable. Eight
others bad one or several bones or limbs broken, or their
eyes torn or trodden out. Of the whole number, the supe-
rior, a woman of iron frame as well as indomitable resolution,
fared the best ; but she was not allowed to attend or console
her mutilated sisters except on the condition of apostacv.
" They were afterwards marched out of Polock by night on
foot, and chained two by two,—even those whose eyes had
been torn out, and whose hideous wounds were festering.
Those whose legs were broken, or who were lamed, were
sent forward in carts under the care of Cossacks.
" A gentleman of Polock, M. Walenkiowitch, having or-
dered a funeral service to be read for these victims, was
seized in the middle of the night and sent to Siberia, his
property being confiscated. A monastery of Dominican
monks, in another part of the country, having ventured to
pray for them, was immediately dispersed.
"On reaching Medzioly, the nuns were again immured in
a convent of the black sisterhood, and divided into four
parties. Here they were put into sacks, and towed after boats
in the water, which was allowed to rise to their mouth and
nose. Three more of their number perished in this manner,
either of cold, or fear, or drowned by incessant immersion.
The inhabitants of Medzioly carried off their bodies in the
night, as the earthly coil of holy martyrs which men would
some day venerate and hold precious.
"After two more years' captivity of the 58 nuns (34 from
Minsk, 14 from Vitepsk, and 10 from Polock) only 14 sur-
vived, and of these eight were either lame or blinded.
" The superior, Irene Miesceslas, who had fared the best,
had an open wound, from which she was obliged to extract
with her fingers the carious bones, and which afterwards be-
coming filled with worms, from want of dressing, caused her
intense agony.
" At length some relaxation of vigilance having opened
a prospect of escape, this courageous woman persuaded
three of her companions to attempt it with her. In this
enterprise these four women all succeeded, enfeebled by
disease as they were, and without money or passports, at a
-distance of between 200 and 300 miles from the Austrian and
Prussian frontiers.
" At the commencement of the present year, profiting by
the scene of riot and drunkenness to which the saint's-day
of the protopope of the convent had given occasion, they
effected their escape. Leaping down a high wall into the
snow they alighted in safety, and immediately fell on their
knees in thanksgiving. They then separated, to facilitate
their flight. The superior, in the midst of all the severity
of the season, was driven to hide for days together in the
woods, without other food than berries, or anything to
quench her thirst but the snow. Once, driven to extremity,
she knocked at the door of a wealthy-looking house, and
being received with veneration by its owner, was provided
with money, provisions, and a correct map of her route.
She crossed the frontier disguised as a shepherd; but even
then was not in security, as the cowardly Government of
Prussia gives up even its own subjects to the Czar.
"It was not until she had reached Posen, in the midst
of a Polish population, that she felt in security ; and here she
had unobtrusively withdrawn to a convent of the Sisters of
Charity, but she was considered too precious, as a living tes-
timony of the horrors daily perpetrated in that Golgotha,
which the frontier of Russia encircles, to be left in her retire-
ment. With her scars, wounds, and personal evidence, she
has been wisely forwarded to Paris, where a deputation re-
cently waited on her, to express their sympathy with her
cruel treatment. In Posen she was joined by the sister
Wawrzecka, and shortly afterwards learned that the other
two had, in like manner, escaped the pursuit of the Russian
authorities, and been safely forwarded by the zeal of the in-
habitants to the Austrian frontier."

NOTTINGHAM, WEDNESDAY.—
Poiers.—At a meeting of the Town Co
theporta at this important
fjun"cilltifthais dOalry, Than!
rTiaalyialoinrgbrtohuegGhtovefrnorwmaerdnt,atomooptien_on, on the subject of memo-
rialising
and
the
d
crisis, to prevent difficulties which must occur, should they
not be opened,
the disease amongst potatoes.
crop of wheat and
from a scarcity of food,. arising from an in-
sufficienthands of those in thefavourable,
of deferring to do an act which all
He urged the necessit&obfinet the
whmoemmoirgihalt
beto fsatvroe
had thought it right to. pursue, for
an ample supply of provisions to the
prevent them being visited with the
condemnedthe
nations
ot the e
Europe policy
hitnhoherraPoburistr onfts'sefamdrnaeldf.bte'rdinHegbegged to move, that with the fearful
prospect of distress occasioned by the deficiency of the late
harvest, the council deem it expedient, that a memorial in
conformity with this resolution be prepared and transmitted
to the Lords of the Treasury, and that the mayor do affix the
common seal to such memorial. Mr. John Bradley se-
conded the motion. Mr. , Wakefield thought the alarm
created had been greater than was necessary, but he should
vote for the memorial. Many members of the council
spoke in favour of the motion, and it was carried unani-
mously, and a committee was appointed to draw up the me-
morial agreeing with the spirit of the resolution.
A VIRTUOUS CONCLUSION.--A Yankee paper gives
the following as the climax in the address of a barrister to a
jury in an action for seduction. Describing his client, he
said :—" Ere this monster approached to beguile and betray
her, my client was blooming as the rose, gentlemen of the
Jtiry," quoth Demosthenes, " light of step as the wild gazelle
of the desert; gay as the larks
.; beautiful as the Houns, and
virtuous as—and virtuous as—gentlemen—se—could be ex-
Petted. 9 .