45.—INTERIOR OF AN ISBA.
The Russian peasant is intelligent, brave, hospitable, affable, and benevolent; but he is wanting in cleanliness, and indulges to excess in malt spirit. He wears a shirt of cotton-stuff, usually red, falling over capacious trousers, which are tucked into heavy boots.
His outer clothing consists of the touloupa, formed of a sheep’s skin with the wool on, and worn with this next the body. His low crowned hat has a broad turned up rim. The hat worn by peasants in the neighbourhood of Moscow is pointed and almost without a rim.
The women wear boots like the men: they also wear the touloupa, with a shawl and kerchief over the head and shoulders. It is only on fête days that this wretched costume gives place to aprons and shawls, of bright colour, and even embroidered in gold and silver. The head-dresses are elegant, and vary in the different provinces.
46.—LIVONIAN PEASANTS.
The pleasures of a Russian peasant are always of a serious character. The quick and sparkling expansion and gaiety of Southern populations are unknown to the inhabitants of these frozen regions.