of the imperial family, for the last engraving
after Sir Edwin Landseer, the last paysage by
Ferogio, the last caricature (not political, be
it well understood, but of a Lorette or débardeur
tendency) of Gavarni or Gustave de
Beaumont, you must go to Daziaro's. His
windows, too, display the same curious
thermometer of celebrity as those of our print-
sellers. A great man is disgraced, and sinks
into oblivion. One day he dies, and then
people suddenly remember him (for about
two days), as he was, before he wasn't.
Presto! his portrait appears in Daziaro's
window. Half-a-dozen copies of his portrait
are sold during his two days' resuscitation;
and then he is relegated to the portfolio
again, and slumbers till his son wins a battle,
or runs away with somebody else's wife, or is
made a minister, or is sent to Siberia, or does
something for people to remember and talk
about (for about two days more), what
Monsieur his father was. When, failing the son's
portrait, the astute Daziaro gives the
respected progenitor another airing in the
print-shop window; and so on till we ripe
and rot, all of us. And thereby hangs a tale.
Is this only Russian? Is it not so the whole
world over? There was a thermometer of
this sort in a print-shop at the corner of
Great and Little Queen Streets, Lincoln's-Inn-
Fields, London, which I used to pass every
morning; and the fresh portraits in the window
were as good as the news of the day to me.
The thermometer in Daziaro's is more
apparent, more significant, and more frequently
consulted; for this is a country where the
news of the day is scarce; where, in an
intolerable quantity of waste paper, there is
about a copeck's-worth of news; and where
the real stirring daily intelligence is muttered
in dark entries, and whispered behind hands
in boudoirs and glozed from lip to ear over
tumblers of tea, and scribbled on blank leaves
of pocket-books passed hastily from hand to
hand, and then the blank leaves, converted
instantly into pipe-lights. As a general rule
you can find out much easier what is most
talked about by consulting Signer Daziaro's
window, in preference to the Journal de St.
Pétérsbourg.

Art, Daziaro passim, is in no want of
patrons. The shop is thronged till ten
o'clock in the evening (when all the shops on
the Nevskoï are closed). The stock of prints
seems to comprise the very rarest and most
expensive; and you may be sure that a
liberal per-centage has been added to the
original price (however heavy) to meet the
peculiar views of the Russian public. The
Russian public—that which rides in carriages,
and can buy beautiful prints, and has a soul
to be saved—the only Russian public that
exists of course, or is recognised on the
Nevskoï; this genteel public does not like,
and will not buy cheap things. Cheap things
are low, common, vulgar, not fit for nous
autres. Ivan Ivanovitch, the Moujik, buys
cheap things. And so articles must not only
be dear, but exorbitantly dear, or Andrei
Andreivitch the merchant, who is rich but
thrifty, would compete with nous autres,
which would never do. Andre will give a
hundred roubles for his winter fur. This
would be shocking to the genteel public; so
crafty Frenchmen and Germans open shops
on the Nevskoï, where a thousand silver
roubles are charged and given for a fur
pelisse, not much superior to the merchant's.

There are dozens of these "Pelz-Magasins,"
or furrier's shops, on the splendid Nevskoï,
and even more splendid are their contents.
In a country which even in the hottest
summer may be described as the Polar
Regions with the chill off—(imagine, if you like,
a red hot poker substituted for the icy pole
itself)—and which for five, and sometimes six
months in the year is a frigid hell, it may be
easily conceived that furs, with us only the
ornaments of the luxurious, are necessities of
life. Ivan the Moujik does not wear a
schooba or fur pelisse, but pauvre diable as
he is, scrapes together eight or ten silver
roubles wherewith to buy a touloupe, or coat
of dressed sheepskin, whose woolly lining
keeps him tolerably warm. But from the
humblest employé to Prince Dolgorouki,
every one above the condition of a serf must
have a schooba of some sort or other for
winter. Some wear catskins, like my friend
the Jew, who wanted me to buy the kibitka,
at Stettin. The Gostinnoï Dvor merchants
wear pelisses of white wolfskin underneath
their long cloth caftans. The fur of the
squirrel, the Canada marmot, and the silver
fox of Siberia, are in great request for the
robes of burgesses' wives and employés' ladies.
The common soldiers wear sheepskins under
their grey capotes, the officers have cloaks
lined with the fur of the bear or wolf. But
nous autres: the Dvoryanin or Russian noble
—the Seigneur, with his hundreds of serfs
and hundreds of thousands of roubles—for
him and for Madame la Princesse, his spouse,
are reserved the sable pelisse, the schooba of
almost priceless furs, thick, warm, and silky;
a garment that is almost an inheritance, and
which you spend almost an inheritance to
acquire. One hundred and fifty pounds
sterling—I have observed this—is the price of a
first-class schooba on the Nevskoï. There
are, to be sure, certain murky warehouses in
the Gostinnoï Dvor, where a Russian with a
taste for bargaining and beating down (and
that taste is innate to the Muscovite) may
purchase a sable pelisse for a third of the
money mentioned. In Germany, particularly
at Leipsic, furs or schoppen are still
cheaper; and one pelisse to each traveller
passes through the custom-house duty free;
yet the Russian aristocracy neglect this cheap
mart, and hold by the Nevskoï Pelz-
Magasins. We all remember what Hudibras
says of the equality of pleasure between
cheating and being cheated.