jack-boots with triple rows of nails; and the real
proprietors, showing themselves recalcitrant
at this new application of the law of meum
and tuum, the consequence was a frightful
uproar and contention:—such a fighting and
squabbling, such a shrieking and swearing in
bad Hebrew and worse German, such a rending
of gabardines and tearing of beards, and
clawing of hooked noses, had never been in
Jewry, since the days of Korah, Dathan,
and Abiram. A friend of mine told me that
he once saw the same experiment tried in a
Parisian violon, or lock-up house, after a
bal-masqué. The incarcerated postillions du
Longjumeau, titis, débardeurs, Robinson
Crusoes, and forts de la halle becoming
uproarious and kicking at the iron-stanchioned
door, the sergents de ville entered the
cell, and unbooted every living prisoner.
And such a scene there was in the morning
in the yard of the poste, before the
masqueraders went to pay their respects to
the Commissary of Police, that Monsieur
Gavarni might describe it with his pencil,
but not I, surely, with my pen!

I have related this little apologue to illustrate
the characteristic, but unpleasant, proceedings
of the Russian custom-house officers,
when we had given up our keys, in one of
the white-washed cellars on the basement of
a building on the INGLISKAIA NABEREJENAIA,
or English Quay, and when those
officials proceeded to the examination of our
luggage. Either they had read Mr. Leitch
Ritchie's Life of Schinderhannes, or they had
an intuitive perception of the modus agendi
of the Robbers of the Rhine, or they had
some masonic sympathy with the Parisian
police agents; for such a turning up of boxes
and turning out of their contents, and mixture
of their severalties, pell-mell, higgledy-
piggledy, helter-skelter, jerry-cum-tumble,
butter upon bacon, topsy-turvy, muck, mess,
and muddle, I never saw in my life. There
was a villainous douanier, who held a bandbox
under one arm, and seemed desirous
of emulating the popular hat-trick of Herr
Döbler; for he kept up a continual cascade
of gloves, collars, eau-de-Cologne bottles,
combs, hair-brushes, guide-books, pin-
cushions, and lace cuffs, till I turned to
look for the accomplice who was supplying
him with fresh band-boxes. Now, the
custom-house officers of every nation I
have yet travelled through, have a different
manner of examining your luggage. Your
crusty, phlegmatic, Englishman turns over
each article separately but carefully. Your
stupid Belgian rummages your trunk, as if
he were trying to catch a lizard; your courteous
Frenchman either lightly and gracefully
turns up your fine linen, as though he were
making a lobster salad, or—much more
frequently—if you tell him you have nothing to
declare, and are polite to him, just peeps into
one corner of your portmanteau, and says,
C'est assez! Your sententious German
ponders deeply over your trunk, pokes his fat
fore-finger into the bosom of your dress-
shirts, and motions you to shut it again.
But none of these peculiarities had the
Russians. They had a way of their own. They
twisted, they tousted, they turned over,
they held writing–cases open, bottom
upwards, and shook out the manuscript
contents, like snow-flakes. They held up coats
and shirts, and examined them like
pawnbrokers. They fingered ladies' dresses like
Jew clothesmen. They punched hats, and
looked into their linings; passed Cashmere
shawls from one to the other for inspection;
opened letters, and tried to read their
contents (upside down), drew silk stockings
over their arms; held boots by the toes,
and shook them; opened bottles, and closed
them again with the wrong corks; left the
impress of their dirty hands upon clean
linen, and virgin writing-papers; crammed
ladies' under-garments into gentlemen's
carpet-bags, forced a boot-jack into the little
French actress's reticule, dropped things
under-foot, trod on them, tore them, and
laughed, spilt eau-de-Cologne, greased silk
with pomatum, forced hinges, sprained locks,
ruined springs, broke cigars, rumpled muslin,
and raised a cloud of puff-powder and
dentifrice. And all this was done, perhaps not
wantonly, perhaps only in ignorant savagery;
but, with such a reckless want of the
commonest care; with such a hideous vacarme
of shouting, screaming, trampling, and
plunging, that the only light I could view the
scene in—besides the Schinderhannes one—
was in the improbable event of Mr. and
Mrs. KEELEY travelling through the country
of the Patagonians, falling into a gigantic
ambuscade, and having their theatrical
wardrobe overhauled by those overgrown
savages.

Yet I was given to understand that
the search was by no means so strict as it
had habitually been in former years.
Special instructions had even been issued by
the government, that travellers were to be
subjected to as little annoyance and delay
in passing through the custom-house as
were possible. That some rigour of scrutiny
is necessary, and must be expected, I am
not going, for one moment, to deny: the
great object of the search being to discover
books prohibited by the censure, and
Russian bank-notes—genuine or forged (for the
importation, or exportation of even good
notes is illegal, and severely punished).
Touching the books, the Russian government
is wise. II est dans son droit. One
volume of Mr. CARLYLE would do more
harm to the existing state of things than
millions of spurious paper roubles. Not,
but what the most jealous watchfulness is
justifiable in the detection of forged notes,
and the prevention of the real ones leaving
the country, as models for forgery. The
paper currency is enormous; there is