RINCE DMITRI KHILKOV is a young

PRINCE

man (in the forties), who inherited large estates from his ancestors in the province of Kharkow. Several years ago he was brought to a serious consideration of the highest questions of human life. Like Count Tolstoi he came to the conclusion that the life he was leading as a wealthy and privileged person, surrounded by peasants wallowing in ignorance and untold misery, was opposed both to reason as well as to the dictates of his conscience and the teachings of Christ.

Not satisfied with a mere change of views, he commenced at once to carry out his convictions in life. He consequently distributed his estates and other property among the peasants, keeping only seven hectares of land to himself, not as his property, but only for his use, for which he paid taxes, and on the produce of which he supported his family. "I kept bees," he says, in a letter to a friend, "and a piece of land, and my seven hectares gave me what I needed for the support of my family. I ploughed the field, cultivated grass and root-crop, and usually got a good harvest. I had one horse and two cows."

Dressed as a muzhik the young prince now led the life of a peasant, sharing the toils and the sufferings of the muzhiks, and in every way trying to help and elevate them.

"In

Concerning the influence of the prince on the surrounding population, a person in St. Petersburg, intimately acquainted both with the prince and his surroundings, told me some striking facts. that region of South Russia where Prince Khilkov lived, in former years prevailed such a degree of depravation among the peasants, that it was even dangerous for a stranger to travel there. After the radical change of the life of the young prince he did all in his power to reform the peasants of his region. He walked about among the muzhiks reading to them from the New Testament, showing them a better way and a happier life, advising and helping them morally, as he had already helped them economically. And what were the results? The entire district was reformed. Drunkenness and crime, which formerly were common, almost disappeared, and peace and goodwill were established among the people."

Thus things went on for a few years, but this new state of things could not but attract the attention of the authorities. A plan was set on foot for getting Prince Khilkov out of the way by burying him alive in the monastery of Solovetsky, in the White Sea, in the province of Archangel. This project was, however, frustrated through the influence of prominent friends of the young prince, and it was resolved that he instead should be banished to Traps-Caucasia.

Now it remained only to find a pretext for

public intervention, and the Russian authorities are skilful in the art of discovering and inventing such pretexts.

The young prince had never refused by word and deed to help those who applied to him for aid, and as a consequence had become an object of suspicion and hatred to the priests and the landlords of the district. These very often transgressed the law and violated every principle of justice in the most flagrant manner in their treatment of the people. They had thought that their shameful actions would not come to light, and were enraged when they found how the prince had taught the peasants to defend their rights.

In one district a scheme was on foot by which the peasants were to be driven into open rebellion in order that a pretext might be secured for confiscating their land, and transferring it to a certain Count. The peasants are robbed in this manner all over the empire. In this instance when the authorities called the peasants together with the intention of carrying out their plots, they found they had been anticipated by Prince Khilkov, who did not appear, but had explained to them the wicked plans of the tchinovinks. did not come to any revolt, and the peasants retained their land.

It

This was Prince Khilkov's first open collision with the secular authorities. Afterwards he was often at variance with them.

His relations to the authorities of the church soon also became strained. The Archbishop of Kharkow had edited a shameful pamphlet, entitled "The Damned Stundist," which was printed and distributed in large numbers in all the parishes of his diocese. This pamphlet was written in verse. Prince Khilkov provided each verse of this significant orthodox opus with a commentary, in the shape of quotations of Bible texts, and sent the pamphlet back to the archbishop. Besides, he bought several hundred copies of the pamphlet,. wrote out with his own hand his commentaries on each copy, and distributed them among the peasants of the district.

Their

In order to fight the Stundist movement, which was thus growing with alarming rapidity, the archbishop ordered the priest of the village, where Prince Khilkov was living, to arrange public meetings for religious discussion. Such meetings have of late years become very common. name, however, is misleading, for if the sectarians dare to open their mouth and refute the lies and calumnies heaped upon them by the "orthodox. missionaries," whose speciality it is to conduct. these meetings, they are usually silenced, put in chains and banished. This has of late become so common that these "meetings for religious dis

cussion" deserve to be called orthodox inquisitorial meetings.

These meetings, which were arranged by order of the archbishop, were attended by large crowds of people. Often, before the discussion commenced, peasants would come forward to the priest and hand over to him the pictures of saints, which they, as is usual among the orthodox Russians, had kept in their homes, declaring that they did not need them any more; or they would ask him to read some portions of Scripture,' e.g., Matt. xxiii., xxiv., or such like, to the people. The orthodox who were present and listened to the reading of such passages, wondered at the new doctrines that were thus presented to them from the word of God, and many left the orthodox church and joined the Stundists.

The authorities found that they must carry out their plan of getting Prince Khilkov out of the way as soon as possible. His influence was of course considered as "dangerous" to their interests. They feared his popularity among the peasants, and therefore he must be despatched at the earliest possible opportunity. But how? In order to prevent disturbances among the peasants it would be best to do it as quietly as possible.

In the year 1890 the governor of Kharkow tried to induce Prince Khilkov to move to the city, but this he refused to do. In January, 1892, Prince Khilkov received a communication from the ispravnik (the chief of the police of the district), in the city of Soomi, ordering him to appear in the city to receive an order from the Minister of the interior with regard to his person. The prince instead of obeying this summons called together the peasants of his village, explained to them the reason why he was to be banished, and took leave of them.

After a few days the ispravnik, accompanied by a stanavoy (a police-officer), and ten armed policemen, appeared in the village. The ispravnik read the ministerial order to the prince, from which he learned that he was to be banished to TransCaucasia for five years "by administrative measure," that is without legal trial and sentence. The ispravnik proposed to give the prince a kind of passport, or permit to travel to his place of banishment at his own expenses, within a fixed time, prisoners of the nobility having under certain circumstances the privilege of travelling more comfortably than common prisoners, though escorted by gendarmes as the rest. This offer the prince however refused to accept, partly because he would not himself in any way contribute towards his deportation, and partly because he did no longer consider himself as possessing any rank or privilege above the peasants. He requested that he might be treated like a common muzhik.

He thus stayed two weeks more at his home. On the 13th of February, 1892 (old style) two officers, accompanied by fifteen armed soldiers, came to the village of the prince. The authorities,

It is customary in Russia to ask the priest to read certain prayers or portions out of the Bible or any other sacred book, which he is bound by custom to do.

fearing that the peasants would not quietly allow them to carry off the prince, had taken this precaution. The prince was then taken by force from his wife and children, and was sent by common étape to Trans-Caucasia, which has been now for many years a place of exile for sectarians.

His first stopping-place was Tiflis, the capital of Caucasia, to which the exiled sectarians are first sent. Tiflis is a very original and interesting place to the tourist. It consists of two parts with sharply marked difference of features. "The new

or European city," and "the old or Asiatic city." The former has wide well paved streets with broad side-walks, made of asphalt; shady avenues and boulevards, without which it would be impossible to walk in the city under the scorching sun, large buildings, street-cars and other appliances of European civilisation. But the dark oriental types, the picturesque Asiatic costumes, and all possible oriental dialects, remind you that you are not in Europe, but in Asia. Of this you are still more impressed when you come to the Magdan, the central point of the Asiatic city. The whole place is teeming with Asiatics in their manycoloured dirty costumes, and high papácha (a kind of cap) of sheep-skin, which give them a peculiarly weird look. Sharp guttural sounds of unknown dialects, the crying of children running about in the crowd, the shoutings of fruit-dealers carrying large wooden bowls full on their heads, the creaking of ungreased arbi (carts with two wheels),— all this almost turns the stranger's head. The narrow crooked streets, the smoking coal-fires at the entrances of the houses, over which the Asiatics roast their shishlik (mutton roasted on coal) complete the picture. The tramway is the only sign of European civilisation in this part of the city.

Here on the border of the Kora (a river running through Tiflis), near the Sion cathedral, erected in the sixth century, and in which the Georgian kings used to be crowned, rises the sombre "castle" Metjesch, which from almost as long ago has served as a prison for criminals. This dark, damp, and overcrowded prison is too well known to almost all the exiled sectarians, sent by étape to the Trans-Caucasus. Only a small number escape this dreary "castle."

From this prison the exiled sectarians are forwarded to Elisabethpol, and from there they are sent to different parts of the Trans-Caucasus.

The relatives of the prisoners, accompanying the exiles, present a most pitiable sight, reduced as they generally are to utter want, tired out from the fatiguing march, and half-starved from want of food. Haggard-looking wives of exiled sectarians are often seen on the streets in Tiflis, carrying their pale and sickly children in their arms, as they walk from house to house begging their food.

Prince Khilkov was detained a good while in Tiflis, where he was allowed to lodge among his friends under the strict guard of the police. While in this city an officer of high position sent for the prince, intending to save him from exile, and procure him a situation in Caucasia. The prince appeared in the dress of a muzhik at the house of

the officer. The valet of the latter, believing that he was a common peasant, scolded him for coming thus poorly dressed to see his excellency, to which the prince replied: "I am accustomed to go to my heavenly Father in this dress, and his excellency cannot be higher than God." When the officer proposed to procure the prince a position in his service, the latter replied that he had been exiled "by administrative process" on the order of the Minister of Justice, and declared that he would abide by the ministerial order.

After having remained for some time in Tiflis, where he came in contact with some Baptists, who showed him much kindness, the prince was sent of to the village of Bashkitchet, in the district of Bortcha'i, inhabited by different Asiatic tribes and a few sectarian exiles.

The lot of these sectarian exiles is, as a rule, as hard (if not harder) after their arrival at their destination as it was in the prisons, or on the way to their place of banishment. There is no shelter against the sharp cold in the winter, or the scorching heat in the summer. It is a barren mountain-district, inhabited by half-civilised and half-nomadic tribes; and there is no opportunity of earning a living. If there should be a chance to earn anything somewhere, there are the many police-regulations hindering the exiles from leaving their assigned places, or in many cases forbidding them to engage in occupations to which they are used. Such are some of the conditions in which these exiles are living. Many of them are reduced to the greatest want, and become the victims of hopeless misery. I have received heart-rending letters from these poor exiles; and to render them any help is next to impossible, as it has to be done by stealth, as if it were a criminal act. But even if their economical position should happen to be tolerable-which, however, is very rare-still, the sudden change from an active spiritual life, a religious enthusiasm all on fire, rejoicing in suffering for the sake of truth, into forced inactivity among dismal surroundings, must be all but unbearable.

On his arrival at Baschkitchet, Prince Khilkov got a place as a servant in the family of a banished sectarian, where he earned his living by work as a day-labourer. While in St. Petersburg, on my way home from the famine stricken districts in Russia, in the summer of 1892, a letter from Prince Khilkow was read to me, from which I quote the following:

Besides labouring for their support, the prince and his princess were engaged in helping their neighbours as much as their circumstances would permit. When cholera broke out last summer, they devoted themselves with heroic courage and touching self-sacrifice to the work of nourishing the sick. The prince had a small store of medicine, which was later on increased, the Dukhobertzee having collected among themselves forty roubles for that purpose. Through the energetic efforts of the prince and the princess the ravages of cholera were considerably diminished in that region.

There were no physicians and not any medicine, besides what the exiles had procured for themselves. During the latter part of summer, an official sanitary commission visited the place : they had no medicine, and wanted to take from the poor exiles what little they had in their possession (!), which, however, was refused them, "for these physicians," writes a person fully acquainted with all the details of the case, "do not even visit cholera patients: they are hunting cholera, which they want to strike out without coming in contact with persons infected.”

Last year the Russian Government took by force the children of Prince Khilkov's family from their parents, and placed them under orthodox guardians in St. Petersburg.

I close these notices from the life of this typical follower of Count Tolstoi with quoting the following extract from a letter of Prince Khilkov in reply to an enquiry as to his (and his friends') principles of belief. I give his words without

comment.

"The principles of our faith," he writes, "are common to all men, because the human soul is Christian in its nature, as Tertullian said of old. Generally stated, my confession, presented in a circle of intimate friends, is as follows.

"We regard it as our duty to sow about us in our lives and actions the good seed, and to do the works of love, even if we should have to sacrifice our life for our neighbours, our brethren. We consider as brethren all those that have anything common with us without regard to religious creed, sex or age, and not acknowledging any privileges or prerogative with which power, usages, or culture may have invested us or them in the eyes of the world.

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By good works we understand all kinds of help which we can show to our fellow-men by delivering them from their spiritual and bodily sufferings, lessening their hard work, and spreading among them that light of reason, which enlightens the way of our life.

"We observe no ceremonies introduced and established by the church, the state, or ancient custom, because all these customs, which are either antiquated or have lost all significance, only hide the true light of life and reason. They often contribute to quiet the restless conscience by affording it a certain satisfaction in performing certain outward actions, intended to conciliate the gods for sins committed in the past. We, on the other hand, leave our consciences to be tormented, until