of that valiant chieftain of the Black
Brunswickers who left the Duchess of Richmond's
ball to die at Quatre Bras.

I wish the Germans wouldn't call Brunswick
Braunschweig; it destroys the illusion.
I can't think of the illustrious house
that has given a dynasty to the British
throne as the House of Braunschweig. It is
as cacaphonous as the house of Physic-bottles,
instead of the house of Medici would sound;
but our Teuton friends seem to have a genius
for uglifying high-sounding names. They
call Elsinore (Hamlet's Elsinore) Helsingborg;
Vienna, Wien; Munich, München; Cologne,
Köln, and the Crimea, Krim. Can there be
anything noble, proper to a blood-stained
battle-field in the word Krim?

The Frenchman, who was a fool, left us at
the Prussian fortress town of Magdebourg,
where also the Englishman (who was
anything but a fool, a thorough man of the
world, in fact, and of whom I intend you to
hear further in the course of these travels)
also bade me adieu at this station. Then I
was left alone in my glory to ponder over the
historical places I had been hurried through
since six o'clock that morning; I thought of
Dusseldorf, and Overbeck the painter, of the
battle of Minden, and the Duke of Cumberland
and Lord George Sackville; of Hanover,
George the First and his bad oysters; of
Magdebourg and Baron Trenck, till I went
to sleep, and waking found myself at Potsdam.

I found that I had another travelling
companion here in the person of a magnificent
incarnation, all ringletted, oiled, scented,
dress-coated, and watered-silk-faced, braided,
frogged, ringed, jewelled, patent- leathered,
amber-headed sticked, and straw-coloured
kid-gloved, who had travelled in the same
train, indeed, from Cologne, but had been
driven out of the adjoining carriage, he said
by the execrable fumes of the German cigars,
and now was good enough to tolerate me,
owing to a mild and undeniably Havannah
cigar I lighted. This magnificent incarnation
shone like a meteor in the narrow carriage.
The lamp mirrored itself in his glistening
equipment; his gloves and boots fitted so
tightly, that you felt inclined to think that
he had varnished his hands straw-colour, and
his feet black. There was not a crease in his
fine linen, a speck of dust on his superfine
Saxony sables, his moustachioes and glossy
ringlets. I felt ashamed, embaled as I was
in rugs and spatterdashes, and a fur cap, and
a courier's pouch, all dusty and travel-stained,
when I contemplated this bandbox voyageur,
so spruce and kempt, the only sign of whose
being away from home, was a magnificent
mantle lined with expensive furs, on the seat
beside him, and who yet, he told me, had
been travelling incessantly for six days. He
talked with incessant volubility in the French
and English tongues; the former seemed to
be his native one; he knew everybody and
everything I knew, and a great many things
and people I didn't know. He seemed
intimately acquainted with every musical instrument
and musician from the piper that played
before Moses to the Messrs. Distin and their
Saxhorns. I began to fancy as he proceeded,
that he must be that renowned and eccentric
horn-player and mystificateur, who travels
about Europe, Asia, Africa, America, Australia,
and other parts of the world, accompanied by a
white game cock, and who was once
mistaken for a magician by the Greeks of Syra
through his marvellous feat of blowing soap-
bubbles with tobacco smoke inside them. I
was in error, however. I learnt the wondrous
creature's name before I reached Berlin; but
although he refrained from binding me to
secrecy, this is not the time nor place in which
to reveal it.

Ten thirty p.m., a wild sweep through a
sandy plain thinly starred with lights; then
thickening masses of human habitations;
then brighter coruscations of gas-lamps, and
—Berlin. Here I am received with all the
honours of war. Two grim guards with
gleaming bayonets impress me, if they do
not awe me, on the platform as the carriage-
door is flung open; and a very tall and
fierce police officer in a helmet demands my
passport. I observe that the continental
governments always keep the policemen with
the longest moustachioes, the largest bodies,
and the most ferocious general aspect, at the
frontier towns and railway termini. You
always see the élite of the municipal force,
the prize policemen, when you enter a
foreign country, and those in power have a
decided eye to effect. Behold me here,
exactly half way in my expedition Due
North—which is not due north by-the-by,
but rather north-east.

Behold me, come post-haste to Berlin, and
half my journey due north accomplished.
Now, when the northern end looms in sight,
I find myself brought to a standstill. This is
the twenty-seventh of April, and the flowers in
England must be looking out their summer
suits, yet here I am literally frozen-up. It
was my design, on quitting London, to
proceed, viâ Berlin, to Stettin in Pomerania,
and there to take the first steamer to St.
Petersburgh. Here is my fare, sixty-two
dollars in greasy Prussian notes—like curl-
papers smoothed out—here is my Foreign-
Oflice passport, not visé yet for Russia, but
which to-morrow will be; here are my brains
and my heart, bounding, yearning, for
Muscovite impressions; and there, at Stettin-on-
the-Oder is the Post-Dampfschiff Preussischer-
Adler, or Fast Mail-packet Prussian Eagle.
What prevents the combination of these
things carrying me right away to Cronstadt?
What but my being frozen up? What but
the ice in the Gulf of Finland?

In a murky office in Mark Lane, London,
where I first made my inquiries into
Muscovite matters, the clerks spoke hopefully of