nothing very peculiar about the paper of the
note, and, though its chalcography is sufficiently
complicated, and the dreadful pains
and penalties denounced against the forgers,
and the holders of forged notes, are repeated
no less than three times in successively
diminishing Russian characters on
the back; the last repetition being literally
microscopic; it is all plain sailing in
printing and engraving, and there are few
clever English or French engravers, who
would have any difficulty in producing an
exact copy of the "Gossudaria Kredit-
Billiet" of all the Russias. I have
been told by government employés, and
bankers' clerks, that they can detect a
bad bank-note immediately and by the
mere sense of touch; but I apprehend that
the chief test of genuineness is in the state
into which every note passes after it has
been for any time in circulation: intolerable
greasiness and raggedness. The mass of
the people are so grossly ignorant, that the
note might as well be printed in Sanskrit
as in Russ for them: they cannot even
decipher the figures, and it is only by the
colour of the note that an Istvostchik or a
Moujik is able to tell you its value.

Among the hecatomb of luggage that
had been brought from the deck of the
pyroscaph into this cave of Trephonius, I
had looked for some time vainly, for anything
belonging to me, one glimpse indeed I caught
of my courier's bag, skimmering through the
air like a bird, and then all resolved itself
into anarchy, the confusion of tongues, and
the worse confusion of wearing apparel again.
My keys were of not much service, therefore,
to the officer in charge of them; and it was of
no use addressing myself to any of the
douaniers or porters, for none of them spoke
anything but Russ. At length I caught sight of
a certain big black trunk of mine groaning
(to use a little freedom of illustration) under
a pile of long narrow packing-cases (so long
that they mast have contained young trees,
or stuffed giraffes), addressed to his
excellency and highness, &c., Prince Gortchakoff;
and, being plastered all over with double eagle
brands and seals, were, I suppose, inviolable
to custom-house fingers. I pointed to the big
black trunk; I looked steadily at the custodian
of my keys, and I slipped Petersens paper
rouble (crumpled up very small) into his hand.
The pink lid of his little grey eye trembled with
the first wink I had seen in Russia; and, in
another twinkling of that eye, my trunk was
dragged from its captivity, and ready for
examination. But there is a vicious key to
that trunk which refuses to act till it has
been shaken, punched, violently wrenched,
and abusively spoken to; and while the
officer, having exhausted the first, was applying
the last mode of persuasion (in Russ) I
availed myself of the opportunity to chink
some of the serviceable Petersens copeck
pieces in my closed hand. The key having
listened to reason, my friend, with whom I
was now quite on conversational terms, made
a great show of examining my trunk: that
is to say, he dived into it (so to speak) head
foremost, and came up to the surface with a
false collar in his teeth; but it was all cry
and no wool, and I might have had a
complete democratic and socialist library and
half a million in spurious paper money for
aught he knew or cared. Then I gave him
some more copecks, and said something to
him in English, which I think he didn't
understand; to which he responded with
something in Russ, which I am perfectly
certain I didn't understand; and then he
chalked my box, and let me go free—to be
taken into custody, however, immediately
afterwards. He even recovered my courier's
bag for me, which an irate douanier had
converted into a weapon of offence, swinging it
by a strap in the manner of the Protestant
Flail to keep off over-impatient travellers.
Such an olla podrida as there was inside that
courier's bag, when I came to examine it
next morning!

I need scarcely say that I had no Russian
paper money with me, either in my luggage
or on my person; and I must admit, to
the honour of the Russian custom-house,
that we were exempted from the irritating
and degrading ceremony of a personal search.
That system is, I believe, by this time generally
exploded on the continent—flourishing
only in a rank and weedy manner in the
half-contemptible, half-loathsome Dogane of
Austrian Italy, and (now and then, when
the officials are out of temper) at the highly
important seaport of Dieppe in France. As
for books, I had brought with me only a
New Testament, a Shakspere and a Johnson's
Dictionary. The first volume incurs no
danger of confiscation in Russia. The
Russians to every creed and sect save Roman
Catholicism and that branch of Judaism
to which I have previously alluded, are as
contemptuously tolerant as Mahomedans.
Russian translations of the Protestant version
of the Bible are common; the volumes of
the British and Foreign Bible Society are
plentiful in St. Petersburg, and Russians
of the better class are by no means reluctant
to attend the worship of the Anglican Church,
both in Moscow and Petersburg. But it is
for the Romish communion, that the Russians
have the bitterest hatred, and for which all
the energy of their persecution is reserved.
Tolerated to some extent in the two capitals—
as, where there are so many foreigners, it must
necessarily be—it is uniformly regarded with
distrust and abhorrence by the Greek
Church; and I do believe that, in a stress of
churches, an orthodox Russian would infinitely
prefer performing his devotions before a
pot-bellied fetish from Ashantee, than before the
jewelled shrine of our Lady of Loretto.

I think, on the whole, I passed through the
custom-house ordeal rather easily than otherwise.