attempts at elegance on the part of your
collars at defiance. They stand out like a
compact bundle of quills, to use a professional
simile, and they crack in a similar
manner if roughly disturbed. When you
take up a position, it is as well to
choose an elegant, or at least an easy one;
for you will be speedily wedged into it, and
you soon grow painfully aware of your likeness
to those bold commercial satellites who
walk about London spreading the fame of
Moses and Son for a shilling a day and their
board.

Your hat, if you persist in wearing one,
cuts a clean place for itself into your frozen
hair; and if you catch sight of your shadow
in a foggy, tortured looking-glass (nothing is
so abjectly affected by the weather as a
mirror), you will perceive that the natural
covering of your head has gracefully arranged
itself in the form of a sugar-loaf, or perhaps,
in light mockery of your profession or
acquirements, in that of a fool's cap. It has in
fact taken the shape of the inside of your hat,
whatever that shape may be.

It is a fierce and bloodthirsty thing to
shave yourself, or to allow any ferocious
lover of old fashions to shave you. Your
face, after such an operation, will bear the
strongest resemblance to an uncooked
beefsteak of unsavoury exterior. Your obdurate
and merciless collar eats into the persecuted
skin like a knife, and you would no more
think of making a true British bow than of
cutting your throat. The intelligent and
travelled observer will remember that
Russians and other people of cold countries,
generally rather raise their heads than
depress them in saluting. I believe they
have learned this by bitter experience, by
the torture of shaving in sledging-time.
Their bow is not a deferential inclination
of the head. It is a spasmodic writhe of the
waist.

Now, it is all very well for some bumptious
old person connected with that famous school
for bumptiousness, the red tape and sealing-
wax office, to say, " Pooh! pooh! I was in
the Principalities in eighteen hundred and
three, and I found nothing of this sort."
Excuse me, sir; I find it so in eighteen
hundred and fifty-four. They say the
climates of the world are changing, and I am
sure you will agree with me when I add that
the race of young men and travellers has
degenerated since your time of wooden heads
and wonders.

I am going to dine with the hospodar, and
the frost dims my burnished boots as I walk
down stairs; my teeth are chattering in spite
of the enormous bearskin cloak in which I
am swathed. My brother's nurse is certainly
using the pincushion very briskly as I step
into my sledge and hurry my feet into a
sheepskin bag, for nothing but wool and
leather will keep out the penetrating cold.
It is still daylight, for the prince dines
at five o'clock, and we are at the close
of January. The streets are a pretty sight.
Gilded and glittering sledges are flashing
about in all directions. The horses
that draw them wear great patches of bright
coloured leather covered with bells on their
foreheads and shoulders. (The jingling is
peculiarly merry and inspiriting.) They have
housings of velvet and fur, and I see that it
is a gallantry among the cavaliers here that
these shall be of the same colours as those
chosen by their lady-loves. Some are of
crimson and ermine, some of purple and gold,
some of white and sable. The sledging-time
will probably last about a couple of months,
and the streets never look so animated and
pretty at any other season.

THE THEATRE.

THERE is a Wallachian theatre where
pieces are performed twice a week in the
Rouman language. I went there, and found it
a dismal little place enough, lighted by a dim
chandelier of oil lamps. Two indifferent and
rather dirty candles were also placed beneath
every box. Each box contained four chairs,
and was divided merely by a thin partition,
on which the occupants of either side might
place his elbows and converse. They did
converse—conversation, indeed, appeared the
sole business of the company there. This
talk must have disturbed the serious pit of
standing people who came to see the play;
but they bore it very patiently, and, perhaps,
they did not lose much.

The pieces were the Great Great-coat of
Prince Menchikoff, an excessively stupid farce
founded on the anecdote which startled the
diplomatic world of Constantinople. The other
piece was called a Peasant's Marriage. I am
sorry to say nothing could be sillier—plot,
language, and acting were almost childish.
An old Greek, dressed in Turkish clothes,
keeps a school: he overhears that one of his
pupils is in love with the pride of the village,
he is also in love with her—why, how, or
wherefore, does not appear in either case.
These circumstances give rise to a comic
song, performed by the whole strength of the
company. The dramatis personae then scuttle
off the stage, tugging at the old person's
robe and hustling him. To console
himself, he gets into a swing, he compares the
emotions produced in an elderly stomach
by swinging, to love—audience laugh—
comic song all chorus succeeds, and act
closes. There is now half an hour's pause
for general flirtation. The Wallachian good-
humour is irresistible. The dim oil
chandelier is lowered, part of it hits a bald-
headed gentleman on the head, bald-headed
gentleman laughs, audience laughs, bald-
headed gentleman rubs his head—there is a
visible bump on it—audience are in ecstasies,
and cry out jocular condolences. Lamps are
snuffed, and make a sad smell, whereat there