Page:Brandes - Poland, a Study of the Land, People, and Literature.djvu/82

70 obtain permission for this they prefer to go to St. Petersburg, where they find less restraint and better professors, rather than remain in Warsaw, where the university instruction as a rule is bad.

When the University was suddenly transformed from Polish to Russian, those professors who did not know Russian asked leave to retire. Several of them remained, however, chiefly from patriotic reasons. But by degrees the University was purged, and the Polish professors were replaced by Russians, or by those who were favourable to Russia. The regulation has been made that after twenty-five years' service a professor can be dismissed, unless the faculty specially desire to retain him. They never desire to retain an eminent Polish professor. Thus, last year, Baranowski, the first medical professor of the University, received his dismissal as coming within the limit, although, since he was very young when he was appointed, he was just fifty years old and in full possession of his powers. As Professor of Æsthetics and the History of Literature, passing by the deserving and sound historian of literature, Piotr Chmielowski, they have appointed a certain Struwe, the only man who could be found who would speak Russian. Sometimes he succeeds in obtaining three auditors.

The halls are so small that none of them hold over a hundred, and not one of them is ever full.

The students have to wear a uniform like the pupils of schools, and they are under strict supervision. It is naturally forbidden to them to form any union whatsoever. They are not allowed to stand in a knot on the street, and if they even assemble at all in private to the number of six or seven, they are sure to be reported and punished; for everything is known. No one goes in or out of a house unseen. Latch-keys are unknown—and there is no northern institution one can speak of which astonishes an inhabitant of Russian Poland more than the latch-key. "Does the government allow such things?" they ask, with amazement. Every one, even the master of the house, must ring at his door, and the porter (Stroz), who corresponds to the Russian Dvornick, and whose duty it is to be responsible for