A Russian Schoolboy by Serge Aksakoff.
 
These recollections of school and college were published by Aksákoff in 1856, when he was in his sixty-fifth year. He called them merely Recollections: he did not then know that he would record other and still earlier memories in the book called Years of Childhood.
 
A Russian Schoolboy, the title chosen for this translation, is not a misnomer: when Aksákoff left Kazán in the spring of 1807, he was still a boy of fifteen, though his school had been promoted by imperial decree to the dignity of a university. As a student he wore a sword with his uniform, but little change took place in his occupations. His university studies are remarkable: he learnt no Greek, no Latin, no Mathematics, and very little Science hardly anything but Russian and French; and even to these he seems to have given less time than to acting plays in the winter and collecting butterflies in spring and summer; fishing and shooting were reserved for the vacation.
 
Translated from the Russian by J D Duff.Part of the World Classics series no:261