Far different was it with Miss Wapps,
who, during the process of search, was a flesh
sculptured monument of Giantess Despair,
dovetailed with the three Furies blended into
one. This uncomfortable woman had in her
trunk—for what purpose it is impossible to
surmise—the working model of a power–loom,
or a steam–plough, or a thrashing–machine,
or something else equally mechanical and
inconvenient; and the custom–house officer,
who evidently didn't know what to make of
it, had caught his finger in a cogged wheel,
had broken one of his nails, and was storming
in a towering rage at Miss Wapps, in
Russ; while she, in a rage quite overpowering
his in volume, was objurgating him in
English, till a superior official charged at Miss
Wapps, Cossack fashion with a long pen, and
conveyed her, clamouring, away.

Sundry red–bearded men, in crimson shirts
and long white aprons, and with bare muscular
arms, which would have been the making of
them as artists' models in England, had been
wrestling with each other and with me, both
mentally and physically, for the honour of
conveying my luggage to a droschky. But
much more had to be done before I could be
allowed to depart. All the passengers had
to enter an appearance before a fat old gentleman
in green, and bright buttons, who sat in
a high desk like a pulpit, while a lean, long
man, his subordinate, sate at another desk
below him, like the parson's clerk. This fat
old gentleman, who spoke English, French,
and German wheezily but fluently, was good
enough to ask me a few questions I had heard
before: as my age, my profession, whether
I had ever been in Russia before, and what
might be my object in coming to Russia now?
He entered my answers in a vast ledger, and
then, to my great joy, delivered to me my
beloved Foreign–office document, with the
advice to get myself immatriculated without
delay. Then I paid more copecks to a dirty
soldier sitting at a table, who made "Muscovite,
his mark," on my passport—for I do not
believe he could write; then more copecks
again to another policeman, who pasted
something like a small pitch–plaster on my
trunk; and then I struggled into a courtyard,
where there was a crowd of droschkies;
and, securing with immense difficulty two of
these vehicles—one for myself and one for my
luggage—was driven to the hotel where I
had concluded to stop.

You have seen, in one of the panoramas
that infest our lecture–halls, after painted
miles of river, or desert, or mountain have
been unrolled, to the tinkling of Madame
Somebody on the piano, the canvas suddenly
display the presentiment of a cheerful village,
or a caravan of pilgrims, or an encampment of
travellers, smoking and drinking under the
green trees; then the animated picture is
rolled away into limbo again, and the miles
of mountain, or river, or desert, begin again.

So passed away the unsubstantial alliance
of us thirty living travellers. We had walked,
and talked, and eaten, and drunk together,
and liked and disliked each other for three
days and nights; and now we parted in the
droschky–crowded yard, never to meet again.
To revisit the same cities, perhaps, inhabit
the same streets, the same houses, to walk on
the same side of the pavement, even to
remember each other often, but to meet again
no more. So will it be, perchance, with
Greater things in the beginning of the End;
and life–long alliances and friendships which
we vainly call lasting, be reckoned merely as
casual travelling companionships—made and
broken in a moment in the long voyage that
will last eternal years.

I am incorrigible. If you want a man
to explore the interior of Australia, or
to discover the North–West Passage, or the
sources of the Niger, don't send me. I should
come back with a sketch of Victoria Street,
Sydney, or the journal of a residence in Cape
Coast Castle, or notes of the peculiarities of
the skipper of a Hull whaler. If ever I write
a biography it will be the life of John Smith;
and the great historical work which is to
gild, I hope, the evening of my days will be
a Defence of Queen Elizabeth from the
scandal unwarrantably cast upon her, or an
Account of the death of Queen Anne. Lo! I
have spent a summer in Russia; and I have
nothing to tell you of the Altai Mountains,
the Kirghese tribes, Chinese Tartary, the
Steppes, Kamschatka, or even the Czar's
coronation. [I fled the country a fortnight
before it took place.] I have learnt but two
Russian cities [it is true I know my lesson by
heart], St. Petersburg and Moscow; and my
first–fruit of Petersburg is that withered
apple the Nevskoï–Perspective. You know
all about it already, of course. I can't help it.

In Brussels my first visit is always to the
Manneken. On arriving in Paris I always
hasten, as fast as my legs can carry me,
to the Palais Royal; I think I have left a
duty unaccomplished in London when I come
to it after a long absence, if I delay an hour
in walking down the central avenue of Covent
Garden Market. These are cari luoghi to
me, and to them I must go. I have not been
twenty minutes established in Petersburg,
before I feel that I am due on the Nevskoï;
that the houses are waiting for me there; that
the Nevskoïans are walking up and down,
impatient for me to come and contemplate
them. I make a mental apology for keeping
the Nevskoï waiting, in order to indulge in a
warm bath; after which I feel as if I had
divested myself of about one of the twelve
layers of dust that seem to have been
accumulating on my epidermis since I left
London. Then I refect myself inwardly with my
first Russian dinner; and, then, magnanimously
disdaining the aid of a valet de place,
or even of a droschky–driver; quite ignorant of
Russ, and not knowing my right hand from