He issued a rigorous fugitive-serf law, and even wrenched liberty from certain free peasants who had entered service for wages before his edicts.

This completed the work, and Russia, which never had had the benefits of feudalism, had now fastened upon her feudalism's worst curse, a serf caste, bound to the glebe.

But the greatest proof of this great lack was shown in his dealings with the serf system.

These, thus lifted from the earth, lost even the little force in the State they had before; great bodies of serfs thus became slaves; worse than that, the idea of a serf developed toward the idea of a slave.

By this, masters and serfs were encouraged to enter into an arrangement which was to put the serf into immediate possession of himself, of a homestead and of a few acres, giving him time to indemnify his master by a series of payments.

But this plan also the serf-owning caste entangled and thwarted.

We have shown this vague fear in Nicholas's mind thus at length and in different workings, because thereby alone can be grasped the master-key to his dealings with the serf system.

Masters and serfs were empowered to enter into contracts, the serf receiving freedom, the master receiving payment in instalments.

Notice after notice was given to the serf-owners that they were not to be molested, that no emancipation was contemplated, and that the ukase contained "nothing new."

It was said that "Serfism excludes pauperism"that, if the serf owes work to his owner in the prime of life, the owner owes support to his serf in the decline of life.

They freed their serfs without any war, and each serf received some acres of land.

O Death, the wage of our first father's blame, Daughter of envy and nonentity, Serf of the serpent, and his harlotry, Thou beast most arrogant and void of shame!

Home, where the kettle shall gaily sing, Is all that matters with serf or king; Gold and silver and laurelled fame Are only sweet when the hearth's aflame With a cheerful fire, and the loved ones there Are unafraid of the wolves of care.

He became a serf,a semi-bondman, chained to the soil, but protected from outrage.

And for three hundred years, it cannot be doubted, the relation between master and serf was beneficial.

From frontispiece to Coverdale Bible.] While this period did not produce a single great poet or a statesman of the first rank, it witnessed the destruction of the majority of the nobility in the Wars of the Roses, the increase of the king's power, the decline of feudalism, the final overthrow of the knight by the yeoman with his long bow at Agincourt(1415), the freedom of the serf, and the growth of manufactures, especially of wool.

So also the serf went into a Saxon grave, the lord into a Norman tomb.

He maintained that in a free country there could be no safe or logical middle ground between the status of freeman and that of serf.

" Liberty stands a goddess upon the very dome of our Capitol, Liberty's lamp shines far out into the darkness, a beacon to the oppressed, a dazzling ray of hope to serf and bondsmen of other climes, yet here a sword unforbidden is piercing the heart of the mother whose son believes God has made us to differ so that he can go astray and return.

In Livonia and Poland, the lord is bound by law to provide for the serf.

In Hungary, though feudal slavery gives an interest to the lord of the soil in the life of his serf, yet the law insists upon the provision of food, raiment and shelter.

It began neither serf nor lord, but burgher and farmer; it followed the normal development of the middle class under Progress everywhere and became capitalistic.

These three, the Serf, the Rebel, and the Squatter, are three out of a thousand types and aspects that have gone to our making.

Her sisters opposed it bitterly as bringing discredit on them all; and old Yacob, though he had formed a sort of liking for his clumsy, obedient serf, shook his head and said the thing could not be.

People of lord and serf you are Farewell, salute, bent knee and hand-kiss, Three-masters, uniform and star!

The surf is often bad, they could only work when it was calm, and while they were doing nothing, wages mounted up.

And yet, in spite of the wind and the sea and the clean light of the forenoon, there was a sadness about the place, and an undercurrent of uneasy silence that the rustling of the leaves and the noise of the surf only seemed to accentuate.

This accident kept them prisoners for a week till the wind and surf had abated.

Their position was now as desperate as could be imagined: the southerly winds had set in, and they had to coast along a surf-beaten shore against a head wind.

SURF RIDING.

The surf-riding struck the visitors with admiration.

The next day the boats tried to find another landing-place, but the surf was too heavy; and when two canoes were seen coming in from the sea, Cook determined to intercept them and try to come to friendly terms.

An attempt was unsuccessfully made at a place that has been identified a little north of Five Islands, near Illawarra, but the surf was too heavy.

The rushes of the wind, which at first were broken, at intervals resembling the roar of a chimney-top in a gale, had soon reached the fearful grandeur of those aërial wheelings of squadrons, to which we have more than once alluded, passing off in dread mutterings, that, in the deep quiet of all other things, bore a close affinity to the rumbling of a surf upon the sea-shore.

To the mariner sailing by India's coral strand that country presents the aspect of an endless beach of shell sand, quite innocent of coral, on which the surf breaks continually into dazzling white foam against a dark background of pensive palms.

Before they reached the village, however, Atkins had leaped into the boat, and with a cheer the men ran her out into the surf, and scrambled in.

At first their shadowy helms in the faint distance The tree-tops rear; then, as he nearer glides, The white surf gleams where the firm reef's resistance Meets and hurls back the fiercely charging tides.

He sees outspread the wide sea-beach, all sparkling With coral sand and many-tinted shells, While high above, in tropic rankness darkling, A cloud of verdure ever-brooding dwells, With growing wonder and delight the stranger, While his swift shallop nears the enchanted strand, Sees the white surf cleared with one flash of danger, And a broad portal opening through the land.

"Fool!" exclaimed Miss Panney, who, with flushed face, was hurrying after the rest, "why didn't he take it with him?" When the bathing master reached a point opposite the imperilled swimmers, he was obliged to wait a little for the life-line, but as soon as it reached him he tied one end of it around his waist and plunged into the surf.

She went on, in a voice that the noise of the surf could not drown, to tell him that she hoped ten thousand more people would say the same thing to him, and to declare that he ought to have several boats outside during bathing hours, so that people could cling to some of them, and so, perhaps, save themselves from exhaustion on their return, and so that one, at least, could be kept free to succor the distressed.

If by looking at certain details of this composite structure one could shut off the surroundings from the eye, the mind might feed without any hindrance upon the ideas of old piety and the fervour of souls who, when Europe was like a troubled and forlorn sea, sought the quietude and safety of these rocks, lifted far above the raging surf.

As we could not find any place where we could possibly land our boat in safety, I and two more swam on shore with bags tied round our necks to hold the eggs in, and the boat with one of the men lay off, out of the surf.

It was a work of considerable difficulty to get our booty safe into the boatso frail a cargowith so tremendous a surf running against us.

The eldest boy wrapt around his younger brother his little cloak, to shield him from the surf and sleet, and then drew him close to his side and said to him, "the night will not be long, and as the wind blows we shall the sooner reach our home and see the peet fire glow."

But such sounds did not disturb the universal stillness of the hour; neither did the gambols of yonder group of seals and walruses that were at play round some fantastic blocks of ice; nor did the soft murmur of the swell that broke in surf at the foot of yonder iceberg, whose blue sides were seamed with a thousand watercourses, and whose jagged pinnacles rose up like needles of steel into the clear atmosphere.

Twenty yards beyond them, amid the surf of the now returning tide, two others were emerging from the sea.

This applies particularly to the Melanesian and Polynesian inhabitants of the South Sea Islands, whose chief pastimes are swimming and surf riding.

And now, as we stand motionless on the eminence over Ana Mánoo, the whistling of the wind among the branches of the lofty toa shall fill us with a pleasing melancholy; or our minds shall be seized with astonishment as we behold the roaring surf below, endeavoring but in vain to tear away the firm rocks.

but heavily manned canoe dashed through the surf and shot in among the bathers.

Owing to the heavy surf which continually breaks on the north coast, these rivers have bars across their embouchures which do not allow large vessels to enter.