INTRODUCTION.

THE subject of the present work is SIBERIA; a region dreary by nature, and not only in name synonymous, but actually identical with

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vast prison-a locality associated in our minds with the most poignant of human sufferings. As such, it could only be properly described under the influence of those painful impressions, impressions, and while the writer is writhing under the most acute mental agony.

The Authoress of the present "Revelations" was one of the numerous exiles who are yearly

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sent to that desolate wilderness.

She was a lady of quality, who had the misfortune to incur the displeasure of the Russian Government, and, in consequence, was included in the class of the nestchastfi ludi, or “unfortunates," as the exiles, in pity for their hard lot, are called by the people.

With regard to her personal history, we need only say that she is well known in her own country-a lady by birth and position in society-a wife and a mother, torn from her happy home. Her name is Eve Felinska, a name not less noble than honourably distinguished in Polish literature. Her husband's elder brother, who died some years since, was ranked among the most eminent Polish writers and poets. One of his best and most popular productions was the tragedy, named after Barbara Radziwill," the consort of King Sigismundus Augustus, supposed to have been poisoned by her step-mother, Queen Bona.

Respectable by her family connexions, and a gentlewoman of a cultivated mind,

she could not but suffer the more bitterly, when torn on a sudden from her domestic hearth and the bosom of civilized society, and carried off to the wilds of Siberia. Here,

among a barbarous population, her very habits of refinement, as may be conceived, rendered her position more difficult and unendurable.

As for her crime, it was that which the noblest and most exalted minds of every nation have ever been proud to commit—namely, the crime of patriotism. By her birth, descent, and education, a Pole, she could not but feel deeply for her fallen country and its oppressed people. Possessed of landed property, she established schools in the villages for the education of her serfs, and treated them with more than usual humanity-conduct that made her suspected by the Russian Government, which suffers no educational establishments but those that are sanctioned and carried on according to its own regulations. In addition to this, another incident seems have rendered her obnoxious to the

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Government. In the year 1837, some emissaries from abroad made their appearance in Russia, for the purpose, as was stated by the agents of the secret police, of bringing about a new insurrection in the Polish provinces. In this conspiracy, a great number of the first families in Lithuania, Volhynia, and other provinces, became implicated, and among them was our Authoress; but in what manner and to what extent she was compromised, is not known, such matters never being divulged in Russia. To afford temporary shelter to the emissary on his passage, or simply to receive a letter from him, or from those who may have been in connexion with him; or the casual sknowledge of a vague rumour of what may have occurred in some other locality, and not reporting it to the authorities, suffices to implicate any one as an accomplice in plotting against the safety of the State.

The dungeons of the citadel of Warsaw, and those at Wilna and Kiov, were at that period crammed with these unhappy victims of sus

picion. Our Authoress, and other ladies similarly compromised, were sent to a convent of Russian nuns at Kiov, where they remained many months, undergoing the most rigorous discipline that a fanatical sisterhood, especially if authorized by the Government, can inflict on their sex. After a protracted investigation, conducted with a barbarity peculiar to Russian courts, the whole affair ended, by the two emissaries who had arrived from abroadKonarski and Zawisza-being shot. They were both young men, pupils of the University of Warsaw. The rest of the accomplices in the alleged plot were sent into banishment to Siberia, and had their estates confiscated. Their lives were spared, but each was subjected to the penalty of a death long drawn out, and to a fate from which all human beings shrink-death far from home, country, and friends.

Among those who were thus banished from Kiov, was our Authoress, together with two other gentlewomen-one an elderly matron, the other, a young lady in her tenderest age,