dissatisfaction was forbidden. The shops did
not improve one's spirits; they were hung
with emblems; and, at the corner of his own
street M. Robertson was annoyed by the
presence of an establishment festooned with
shrouds.

In due time the new-comer made arrangements
for his first balloon ascent. M.Sacharoff,
a distinguished chemist, was appointed to
accompany him, and they ascended from the
gardens of the School of Cadets, in presence of
a vast crowd, on the evening of the last day in
June. A little table had been fixed against
one side of the car for the use of M. Sacharoff;
who, when he entered, spread his papers
on it and began to read them. The perfect
smoothness of the upward motion through
the air is illustrated by the fact that M.
Sacharoff was not in the least aware of the
balloon's having started until his companion
pointed to the Neva far below. When a
balloon rises above the clouds, they are seen
from above rolling in high cones upon each
other, and appear like mountains tumbling
down with a swift fall to overwhelm the
earth;  while the balloon traveller fancies
himself fixed immovably in space, and if
it be his first trip, for the first time
knows what perfect silence is. When the
balloon has risen to a great height in the air,
the uneasiness felt by most aeronauts is
compared by M. Robertson to the sensation of a
man who holds his face in water; the chest
dilates, and any attempt to swallow a small
piece of bread is vain. On the occasion
of this first ascent from St. Petersburgh
a speaking trumpet was carried by M. Sacharoff
with which he began to make experiments
as the balloon descended. Shouts
directed into space were lost, those directed
against the earth were echoed and sometimes
returned with a vibration that affected sensibly
the ear. Thereupon M. Robertson reported
to the St. Petersburgh Academy of
Sciences, that the idea of man's power to
divert rain or storms by the communication
of violent shocks to the atmosphere, say by
the discharge of cannon, was confirmed. So
that if this ingenious aeronaut were still alive,
there can be little doubt that he would be
found backing the theory of a. French
chemist who only the other day wrote a
learned essay to demonstrate that the siege of
Sebastopol is the true cause of this year's
ungenial spring.

Monsieur Robertson descended in the
gardens of the general Peter Demidoff, sixty
miles from St. Petersburgh, and was hospitably
received by the ladies of the mansion.

The magic lantern business experienced at
the outset a slight check. At Paris M.
Robertson had concluded his entertainment
with a homage to Napoleon, at St. Petersburgh
it was thought proper to put Alexander
in Napoleon's place. The young Czar
Alexander always wore a dark green coat, and
dark green reflects so little light that it
would not suit the magician's apparatus;
a change was, for this reason, made in the
picture to scarlet, for the sake of brilliancy.
The result was a commotion among the
police. The czar shown in the colours of
a Jacobin? Siberia for such a crime! The
governor of the town threatened nothing
less, if the offence were repeated. The
exhibition was for some days closed by authority.
The exhibitor was called upon to submit to
the police a catalogue of all his phantoms;
there being no freedom allowable in Russia
even to a shadow. M. Robertson was
forbidden to make profane copies of the image
of a czar again, and his ghosts were made
to feel the pinch of a strict censorship.

The show, however, soon recovered from
the shock, and was visited by all the nobles in
the town. It was indeed subject only to one
other drawback, and that but a slight one.
The entrance passages were lighted with a
liberal supply of tallow candles; and, after the
company had all passed in, these candles
invariably disappeared! The company had
to make its exit in the dark, or a fresh set of
candles had to be supplied. The help of the
police was at last sought, and spies were
set in the passage; whereupon it was
discovered that the thief was a mason, who,
being caught with a candle end in his mouth
and beaten, confessed that he had
breakfasted heartily at the expense of M. Robertson
ever since the beginning of his exhibition.

While telling this story of the mason,
Monsieur Robertson states his impression
that the noble classes fasten with no less
avidity on richer fare. He thinks that they
must eat much, not only on account of
climate, and to pass time, but also because of
the poor quality of half the food of a country
which is in some parts so infertile that, as
Forster relates of his travels in Siberia, cows
may be seen who have nothing but morsels of
dried fish for their fodder. As for the
thievery, that was as characteristic then as it
is now. The Russian tradesmen, after goods
were bought changed them by sleight of hand,
if the face of the customer were for a minute
or two averted; and, in the case of those very
candles which the mason stole, and which
were bought by the hundred pounds at a
time, M. Robertson discovered quite at the
last that, while using every precaution he
could think of, he had been cheated of five
pounds in every hundred, by the dexterous
slipping of a five-pound weight under the
scale.

After he had spent some time at St. Petersburgh,
the showman journeyed to Riga, and
there made a balloon ascent, which has
been described in Kotzebue's Recollections
of a Voyage in Livonia and Italy. From
Riga he went to Vienna; and thence
returned to Moscow, and his account of travel
is, that— pretty much as at present —there
are only two roads, namely those joining
the capital to St. Petersburgh and Warsaw;