Morning journal and courier., 1884-02-01
Friday, February I, 1884.

l
 | Two interesting accounts of life in Russia
 have just been published, one of which
 draws a terrible picture and the other a pleasing one. A Russian correspondent of
 the London Daily News thus writes about the l political situation in Russia: Grave troubles seem to be brewing for the short, dark days
 of the Russian winter that are yet to come. | Returning to the capital after months of ab- | sence in various parts of the empire I find the police preparing for what threatens to be period of abnormal activity in the future near at hand. A nasty revision of passports, obviously undertaken with a view to the dis | covery of suspected persons, is proceeding; as write the streets are full of the marching 1 and counter-marohing of forces, civil and military; the city wears the aspect of an armed camp. Nor is the situation a whit less serious than it looks. Explorations of Underground Russia'' have brought to light, in full working order. galleries long regarded by the secret police as forsaksn and disused. The old Nihilistic organization, applied with such terrible effect in 1881, is once more in existence. The official notion that the Zheliabof circles were broken up, shattered irremediably, once for alI by the police after the catastrophe of 1881 turns out to be an error of the most serious kind. The organization was merely crushed in one of it's parts; the remainder of the chain-the immediate purpose of it's exist snce having been accomplished of it's own accord. There is now a new syn thesis-a new act of organization on the old lines, with objects best known, of course, to the terrorists themselves. The army is now the ostensible and probably the real point of attack chosen by the propsgandists of to dry; yet 8 new organization may spring up in 8 night, and out of 8 single plot matched by 8 dozen determined men in wine cellar, con sequences may follow dwarfng the general activities of Russian conspiracy into complete insignifcance.
 This is gloomy and ominous enough The other and pleasant picture is drawn by Gas sius M. Clay. He says that many of the stories told in print about Russian matters are malignant calumnies." He lived in St
 Petersburg nine years and during that time he made Russian life a study. He went among all classes He dined with tke em- peror and he ate cabbage soup and black bread with the Neva raftsmen. He came back to Kentucky satisfied that there is not a more charitable, humane people on the face of the earth than the Russians. Food and clothes are distrib- utea in St. Petersburg throughout the winter monthE. The men and women of the high nobility are active in benevolent work. No one is permitted to starve or freeze. Friendless children are brought up at the public expense and put in the way of earning their own living. The parks of the nobles are open to the common people. The Rus sian aristocrst is net only kind but polite to his servants and to his interiors generally. As to the much talked of Russian prisons, Mr. Clay says he never knew or heard of one, during the years he spent in the country, s'equal in its infany to the Kentucky peni- tentiary." The St. Petersburg hospitals in his time were models of what hospitals should be. The streets were Ia hundred times cleaner" than those of Richmond. Noble women, the daughters of e1iIes, spoke lov- ingly of Siberia as their fatherland. II do not hesitate to say." writes the ex-enyoy, ''that of all the people I ever knew, the Rus sians are the most genial and hospitable."
 MT. Clsy'k ideas of Russia and the Rus sians differ widely from those generally en- tertained. It is to be hoped they are correct. Russia needs very humane spirit just now.