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PLATE LXXin
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A RUSSIAJSr PEASANT.
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1 HE peasants of Russia, properly so called, are moderate in size, and
form an active and laborious race of men. They are in general very
healthy, and of a cheerful and kind disposition. The natural simplicity
of their manner of living, and their rude, but dry and wholesome,
climate procure them a degree of physical complacency, of which few
other nations can boast. Their dress consists of a round hat, a coarse
coat of drugget (in winter this is changed for some skin prepared with
the wool on), reaching to the knee, trowsers of thick coarse linen, a
M'oollen cloth bound round their legs instead of stockings, with shoes
or sandals made of bark, and fastened with strips of the same material
wound round their ankles. They always wear their beards, which are
bushy, and of various colours.
Their females are marriageable at a very early age, and this is to
be accounted for in so cold a climate chiefly by the constant use of
the hot bath. It is used by people of every age and in all circumstances,
and seems to be so indispensable a necessary to the common
people, that, whether ill or well, youjig or old, children at the breast
or their mothers, they are constant in the use of it. In Tooke's View
of the Russian Empire, vol. ii. p. 2O0, there is a very long and minute
account of the Russian baths.—The cottages, in which the peasants
live, arc not the most commodious: they are square, and formed of
whole trees piled one upon another, and fastened together at the four
corners ; the interstices of them are filled up with moss ; the roof is
in the form of a penthouse, and covered with the bark of trees, over
which they put turf and mould. After the house is finished, they cut
out the windows and doors, both of which are very small, particularly
the former.
T H E END.