portion of my stay in Russia, to occupy an
apartment in a very grand house on the
Nevskoï Perspective, nearly opposite the
cathedral of Our Lady of Kasan. The house
itself had an ecclesiastical title, being the
Dom-Petripavloskoï, or house of St. Peter
aud St. Paul, and was an appanage of that
wealthy church. We had a marble staircase
to our house, imitation scagliola columns, and
panels painted quite beautifully with Cupids
and Venuses. A Russian lady of high rank
occupied a suite of apartments on the same
floor; and, late one night, when I was about
retiring to rest, her well-born excellency (I
used to call her the Queen of Sheba, she was
so stately) condescended to order her body-
servant to tap at my door, and tell me that
the Barynia desired to speak with me. I
accordingly had an interview with her at the
door of her apartment, she being also about
to retire for the night. She hdd something
to show me, she said. Russian ladies always
have something to show you—a bracelet, a
caricature, a tame lizard, a musical box, a fly
in amber, or some novelty of that description—
but this was simply a remarkably handsome
black velvet mantle, with two falls of rich black
lace to it. I knew that it was new, and had
come home only that afternoon from Madame
Zoë Falcon's, the court modiste in the Mala
Millionne; so, expecting that the countess,
with the elegant caprice in which her
distinguished position gave her a right to indulge,
wished to have, even at two o'clock in the
morning, the opinion of an Anglisky upon
her mantle, I said critically that it was very
pretty; whereupon, a taper finger was pointed
to a particular spot on the mantle, and a sil-
very voice said, "Regardez!" I did regarder,
and, on my honour, I saw strolling leisurely
over the black velvet, gravely, but
confidently, majestic but unaffected, his white
top-coat on, his hat on one side, his umbrella
under his arm (if I may be permitted to use
such metaphorical expressions), as fine a
LOUSE as ever was seen in St. Giles's. I
bowed and withdrew.

I must explain that I had previously
expressed myself as somewhat sceptic to
this lady respecting the animalcular
phenomena of Russia; for I had been stopping
in a German hotel at Wassily-Ostrow, where
the bedrooms were scrupulously clean; and
it must be also said that the lady in question,
though a Russian subject, and married to an
officer in the guards, had been born and
educated in western Europe. Had she been a
native Russian, little account would she have
taken of such a true-born subject of the
Czar at that late hour, I ween.

Although the violent and eccentric oscillations
of a single-bodied droschky undoubtedly
conduce to a frame of mind which is a
sovereign cure for hypochondriasis, yet the
drawbacks to its advantages (the last one especially)
are so fearful, that I question whether it be
worth while to undergo so much suffering
as the transition from a state of chronic
melancholy to one of raving madness. In
the provinces, I am sorry to write it, it is oft-
times but Hobson's choice—this or none;
but in St. Petersburg (and I suppose, in
coronation time, at Moscow), there is no lack
of double-bodied droschkies, in which you may
ride without any very imminent danger of a
dislocation of the arm, and a compound fracture
of the thigh, or so, per verst. The form
of the double-bodied droschky, though not
very familiar to our Long Acre carriage
architects, is well known in France. The
inhabitants of the Rue du Jeu de Paume, at
Versailles, must be well acquainted with it; for
therein it was whilom (and is so still, I hope)
the custom of the great French painter,
Monsieur HORACE VERNET, to ride in a trim
coquettish little droschky, presented to him by the
Czar Nicholas. In his latter days, his imperial
friend did not like Horace quite so much:
the impudent artist having been misguided
enough to publish some letters which had the
misfortune to be true, and not quite
favourable to the imperial régime. This droschky
was, it need scarcely be said, a gem of its
kind—a model Attelage Russe. The horse—
likewise a present from the emperor—was a
superb coal-black étalon of the Ukriaine;
and, to complete the turn-out, the driver was
in genuine Ischvostchik costume—in hat,
boots, and caftan complete. I want to see
the double-bodied droschky in London,
Ischvostchik and all. I am tired of
tandems, dog-carts, mail-phaëtons, and hooded
cabriolets, with tall horses and short tigers.
What could there be more spicy down the road
than a droschky, sparkling, shining, faultless
to a nut, a rivet, as our matchless English
coachbuilders only know how to turn out an
equipage; with a fast-trotting mare in the
shafts, and a driver with a bushy beard, a
sky-blue caftan, shiny boots, and an
Ischvostchik's hat? I think John Coachman would
not object to growing a beard and wearing a
caftan for a reasonable advance on his wages.
I wonder if any of the stately English
hidalgos I saw just before I left Russia—if any
of those ethereally-born Secretaries of Legation,
and unpaid attaches—will bring home a
droschky from the land of the Russ, or, on
their return, order one from Laurie or
Houlditch. There are, perhaps, two slight
obstacles to the naturalisation of the droschky
in England. In the first place, you couldn't
have the Ischvostchik thrashed if he didn't
drive well; in the next, the English gentleman
is innately a driving animal. He likes to take
the ribbons himself, while his groom sits
beside with folded arms. In Russia, the case
is precisely contrary. The Russian moujik is
almost born a coachman; at all events, he
begins to drive in his tenderest childhood.
The Russian gentleman scarcely ever touches
a pair of reins. The work is too hard;
besides, is there not Ivan Ivanovitch to take
the trouble off our hands? In St. Petersburg,