Especially there were several in James Town itselfone a lawyer body I had thought the obedient serf of the London merchants, one the schoolmaster, and another a drunken skipper of a river boat.

Stein did not retire, however, until after the royal edict had emancipated the serfs of Prussia, and until that other great reform was made by which the nobles lost the monopoly of office and exemption from taxation, while the citizen class gained admission to all posts, trades, and occupations.

Is not the condition of the masses in many great cities as degraded and as sad as ever was that of the serfs in the middle ages?

But now I love to lure them on, To make them slaves to my gaze, Like serfs to a conqueror's chariot, Like moths to a candle-blaze.

This formula she abolished, and boasted that she had cast out the word serf from the Russian language.

Its main features were: a period of transition from serfage to personal liberty, extending through twelve or fourteen years; the arrival of the serf at personal freedom, with ownership of his cabin and the bit of land attached to it; the gradual reimbursement of masters by serfs; and after this advance to personal liberty, an advance by easy steps to a sort of political liberty.

A public man having requested an estate with its serfs as hereditary possessions, the Czar replied as follows:"The peasants of Russia are for the most part slaves.

He freed all the serfs on the Imperial estates without reserve.

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.

Yet the opposition was directed not so much against the personal emancipation of the serfs as against the appropriation to them, when liberated, of the land they held.

The Czar now sought to foster other good efforts, especially those made by some earnest nobles to free their serfs by will.

The Emperor of Russia may emancipate serfs from a dictate of humanity, but he did not give them political power, for fear that it might be turned against the throne.

Just as "Poverty Is No Crime" shows the influence of the Slavophile movement, "A Protégée of the Mistress" (1859) was inspired by the great liberal movement that bore fruit in the emancipation of the serfs in 1861.

" "My lord, they were but serfs for the most part, butfor Sir Pertolepe's dogstwenty and twoand roasted alive, poor beasts!"

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

My safety and happiness and that of my dear wife and daughters were concerned, and were the lives of fifty serfs at stake, I should not hesitate.

I am a soldier, free-born, and no serf like Walkyn or villein like Roger.

Your parents were serfs before the freedom.

Therefore I decree that such as are serfs among ye shall go free henceforth, and to such as are free will I give grants of land that ye may come to bless this night and remember it ever.

but madame, Russians are more keenly alive to the problem of our serfs than any other.

And then he told her alms, her mighty labours, Among God's poor, the schools wherein she taught; The babes she brought to the font, the hospitals Founded from her own penury, where she tended The leper and the fever-stricken serf With meanest office; how a dying slave Who craved in vain for milk she stooped to feed From her own bosom.

Even the Emperor of Russia saw that, and in 1861 liberated all the serfs within his territories.