abundant fruits of a life spent as I have tried
to describe amongst the Russians. Such men
are, however, the scarce exceptions, not the
rule, among the English men of business in
Russia.

SMALL-BEER CHRONICLES.

IT is the custom of Registrars-General and
other Strong-Ale-Chroniclers to make certain
occasional comments on the Births, Deaths, and
Marriages which it comes within their province
to record. I am far from wishing to depart
from this ancient and useful custom, and shall
only differ from some of my predecessors and
contemporaries in the order in which I propose
to treat of these three subjects. I consider
that the old proprietors and holders of office
should be dealt with first, and that we should
not have anything to say to their successors, the
young heirs, till we have made certain comments
on their neglected predecessors. I shall begin,
then, contrary to custom, with the Deaths, and
get to the Births and Marriages afterwards.
Entering, then, at once upon this part of my
duty, let me commence by announcing, in form,
the death of THE DOOR-KNOCKER.

As this old and respectable institution is
likely very soon to be forgotten, it seems
desirable to say a few words as to its leading
characteristics, for the benefit of future ages.
It is not right to bury old customs without
a word of funeral oration. When a long-
entertained guest departs, you should see him
courteously to the door and off the premises,
not turn your back upon him and let him slink
away unobserved.

It is possible that the days when Corinthian
Tom and Jerry the unprincipled held it as a
fixed idea that to sally forth at midnight and
wrench off the door-knockers of the lieges was
pastime admirably adapted to young men of
condition—it is possible, I say, that this same
wrench may have given a shake to the constitution
of the door-knocker from which it never
recovered. It may be, also, that Creation
generally arrived at the conclusion that an engine
whose use was to attract the attention of
persons dwelling in the lower stories of houses,
scarcely fulfilled its purpose by deafening the
inhabitants of the upper regions, and making
them shake in their shoes, while it left those for
whose benefit its clamour was meant so
completely undisturbed that they were obliged to
have their attention called to the knock at the
door by the ringing of a bell.

Knockers may be classified under two heads:
the matter-of-fact and the fanciful. The matter-
of-fact knocker was simply what it professed to
be—a piece of heavy metal, attached by a sort of
hinge, to a street-door, with a plate for banging
purposes between it and the wood-work of the
door. The metal would be sometimes of bronze,
sometimes—but very rarely—of brass, oftenest
of iron, of a blackened description. The
instrument would vary in size, in weight, and in
mode of decoration. This was the matter-of-fact
knocker. Now for the fanciful. A lion's head
would sometimes be brought into play in the
construction of a fanciful knocker. I call it
a lion's head by courtesy, but it must be owned
that the resemblance to the king of beasts
presented by the head in question, was
somewhat of the remote order, the eye having
generally a somewhat human cast, and the upper
lip being terribly swollen, in consequence of
the machinery which connected the handle of
the knocker with the teeth of the animal being
rather a large mouthful. Sphinxes were pressed
into the service of the knocker fanciful, and also
the heads of aged men of two classes—a frowning
old man who was sorry to see you when you
called, and an old man bursting with glee, but
rather, it must be confessed, of a malicious sort,
as if he knew of some tremendous " sell" that
was in store for you when you got inside the
house, and was enjoying the joke prodigiously.
The last knocker was very disconcerting. So was
the hand holding a heavy ring-shaped knocker:
for the simple reason that the hand had so tight
a grasp, that the instrument worked stiffly. I
may mention here that some persons of a severe
and pitiless frame of mind were in the habit
of fastening down their knockers with a staple,
so that you could only lift them a very little
way, and consequently could administer but a
very gentle rap. This was disappointing, and
the custom of so crippling the knocker was
confined entirely to churlish and gloomy
individuals. There were, again, those who had a
bell-wire attached to their knockers, so that a
knock and a ring were combined in one
action, and a very stiff and crabbed action it
was. And I may further add that because
the knocker alarmed—as has been said above
—everybody in the house, except the servants,
it was the custom with some cautious
persons to place beneath the instrument a brass
plate with the words " and ring," or " ring
also," inscribed upon it. I wish I could say
that the word " please" was also used on these
occasions; but truth must be the leading
characteristic of these reports, and such was not
the case.

The deceased door-knocker had its good and
bad qualities like other things. One got to
know the knocks of certain old friends and
habitués of the house, and the well-known sound
was often very welcome. A bell tells no tales
of individuality. In like manner the bore had
his knock, and one could fly by the back door,
or hide, between the time when he rapped and
the moment when the door was opened. The
bell gives no such warning. The single knock
of the creditor or the dependent, and the smart
crash of the postman, again, told their tale
plainly enough. And the mention of that last
knock, by-the-by, brings us to a consideration
of the troubles connected with the knocker.
What a thing it was to be accidentally passing
through the hall or actually approaching the
door when the postman arrived! To say your
heart came into your mouth at such moments is
no sort of exaggeration, and I should think that,