prospect of such advantage as reduces the
sum actually wheedled out of them to a
fractional amount of the quotations in open market.
All the tricks and intrigues ever tried in this
world have defeated themselves in the end,
according to one of those immutable laws by
which mankind is governed, and from which
there is no departure, either in Russia or
elsewhere. When the money is collected; when
bills of exchange at long dates have been
cashed or exchanged for other bills of doubtful
worth, discounted in places where the current
interest on such transactions is usually fifty
per cent, and never below thirty; when the
carefully prepared agreements, with all their
disputable clauses, have been hawked about
among those who see their way to further
extortion, still they are not very saleable nor
pleasant things to touch, especially where there
is a smart consul. But suppose the total
amount of the swindle to be at last scraped
together? it does not all go into one pouch. First,
a horde of travelling pedlars must have their
commission upon every dirty detail of it. Then
the local police, in many places, have to be
made safe; the provincial judges must be
bribed; and sometimes the tribunals at Moscow
and the Senate itself must be corrupted, in
cases where the issue is resolutely disputed
by angry folk. Then come the principal partners
in the concern, for it cannot be managed
single-handed. In the case of my prince, he
had to divide his scanty booty, firstly, with
his friend upon the frontier who furnished
information in the first instance; secondly, with
the talkative broker at Galatz; and, thirdly,
with other brokers at Ibraïla, besides his own
private dependents and hangers-on.

Moreover, a Russian prince, although
travelling with shaggy ponies belonging to the
peasants on his own estate, cannot hurry about
from place to place for nothing. So if my
prince had counted his spoil carefully at the
end of the campaign, he would have perceived
that it was but small. The seed corn which
the princess got from her old admirer, and
which disappeared in the private trade of her
chief butler, might have been sold for twice as
much as my prince pocketed for the whole
harvest which grew out of it.

There is no sounder moral upon Russian things
than this. Every one who has business in the
country finds it quite impossible to arrive at any
satisfactory result, owing to the endless
ramifications of minds as acute as they are disloyal.
However the affair ends, he will find himself
lighter in purse and heavier at heart than he
ought to be. But what comes of it all on
the other side? Nothing—absolutely nothing.
Accomplished scamps, who have passed their
whole lives in fibbing and stealing, seldom retain
more money than credit at the end of their
career. The folk they have to deal with soon
find them out, and act accordingly. Now and
then they get hold of a new and unsuspecting
customer, but they soon scare him; and he,
generally, makes such a cry about being fleeced
so closely, that other sheep scamper away
with their wool altogether. There are few
objects more pitiable than these jaded scamps,
tired out and exhausted at last by their
interminable deceptions. Such a fine fellow as
my prince, with his great court friends and
belongings, may go on for a time, but even he
sinks out of his depth at last. An illness
will do it; and these kind of men appear
peculiarly subject to the fearful visitation of
complete paralysis of the limbs. Philosopher-
physicians may account for this or not, but it is
certainly a noteworthy fact.

They may usually be found at last hunted
down by their own hounds at Gastein or Carlsbad,
where they mostly resort from the first
days of spring till late in the autumn. Inquiry
will, perhaps, reveal that they are then
supported in morose discontent, worse than death,
partly by the slender means saved by a neglected
wife when the crash came, partly by begging-
letters, which they can still dictate.

So, if travellers thitherward next autumn
should remark a wasted man with pale cheeks,
made blue by mineral waters, and eyes singularly
bright and keen, sitting motionless but watchful
in an invalid chair; and if that man should
be attended by a fat, faded lady, very sad and
tearful, very patient and kind, it is by no
means impossible that the stricken wretch may
be our old acquaintance Aide-de-camp General
his Highness the Prince Dooyoumalsky,
rebuked and chastened by a mysterious and
awful justice which has overtaken him at last.

THE KILLING OF DR. PARKMAN.

I.

IN the remembrance of the Americans
themselves, Cambridge, near Boston, is associated with
the renown of their greatest men. They still
gather under the elm-tree in the Common beneath
which Washington first drew his sword when
taking command of the American army in 1775;
and close by is the fine old mansion which he
occupied as head-quarters during the eventful
years that followed. In the same house now
dwells Longfellow—the most charming poet of
his country—who thus alludes to its former
illustrious occupant:

                Once, ah! once, within these walls
                The father of his country dwelt;
                And yonder meadows, broad and damp,
                The fires of the besieging camp
                Encircled with a burning belt.
                Up and down, these echoing stairs
                Sounded his majestic tread:
                Yes; within this very room
                Sat he, in those hours of gloom—
                Weary both in heart and head.

At Cambridge, too, lives Lowell the poet, and
Dana the author, and Emerson the profound
and eloquent thinker, and Agassiz the naturalist,
and Asa Gray, and Pierce, and Wynam, and
others whose names are familiar to the learned
of every nation. Amongst its dead are