favourite hue; next, grey. With all horses,
the sensible custom is observed of allowing
the manes and tails to grow; and the
consequence is, that the animals look about thrice
as handsome and as noble (bless their honest
hearts!) as the be-ratted, be-greyhounded
steeds we see at home.

The coachman of the Princess Schiliapoff
(or any other princess you like to find a
name tor), the conductor of those coal-black
steeds (the Schiliapoff has twenty-live
hundred serfs, and half the Ogurzi Perspective
belongs to her), is own brother to the ragged,
dirty Ischvostchik. Nor, though he is
coachman to a princess, is his social position one
whit better than that of Ivan Ivanovitch,
sprawling on his back on the droschky bench.
His caftan is made of superfine broadcloth,
sometimes of velvet, slashed at the back and
sides with embroidery, as if he had been
knouted with a golden whip; his hat is of
the shiniest nap, has a velvet band, a silver
buckle, and is decorated with a bunch of
rosy ribbons, a bouquet of artificial flowers,
or a peacock's feather. He has a starched
white neckcloth, buckskin gloves, rings in his
ears; his hair is scrupulously cut, and his
beard is bushy, well trimmed, oiled, and
curled. He has a sash radiant with bright
colours, and the top of a crimson silk shirt
just asserts itself above his caftan. It is
probable that he sometimes gets meat to eat,
and that he has decent sleeping accommodation
in the stables, along with the horses.
But he is a SLAVE, body and bones. The
Princess Schiliapoff may sell him to-morrow
if she have a mind [to those who have an
idea that Russian serfs cannot be sold away
from the soil, I beg to recall Mr. Fox's
recommendation to Napoleon Bonaparte on the
assassination question, "Put all that
nonsense out of your head "]. The princess may
send him to the police, and have him beaten
like a sack if he take a wrong turning or
pull up at the wrong milliner's shop: the
princess's majordomo may, and does, kick,
cuff, and pull his hair, whenever lie has a
mind that way. The princess may, if he
have offended her beyond the power of stick
to atone for, send him as an exile to Siberia,
or into the ranks of the army as a soldier.
There are many noble families who pride
themselves on having handsome men as
coachmen; there are others, like Sir Roger
de Coverley, who like to have old men to
drive them. I have seen some of this latter
category, quite patriarchs of the box, venerable,
snowy-bearded old men, that might have
sate for portraits of the Apostles in the
cartoons. It is pleasant, is it not, to be six
feet high and as handsome as Dunois, and
to be sold to pay a gambling debt? To be
sixty years of age, and have a white head,
and grand-children, and to be scourged
with birch rods like a schoolboy? And
these good people are WHITE, Mrs. Harriett
Beecher Stowe, White, ma'am!

The Russian imperial court is a court; by
which, on the principle of coals being coals,
I mean that the Czar has always in his train
a vast number of grand dignitaries of the
household, and bonâ fide courtiers, constantly
attendant on and resident with him. These
courtly personages, when they drive about in
carriages, are permitted to have a footman on the
box beside the coachman. This John Thomas,
or Ivan Tomasovitch, to be strictly Russian,
is unpowdered and unwhiskered. There is
no medium in a serf's shaving here; he is
either full-bearded or gaol-cropped. His
shirt, and indeed lower habiliments are
doubtful, for he wears—over all, summer
and winter—a huge cloak descending to his
heels, of the very brightest scarlet,—a cloak
with a deep cape and a high collar.* The
edges of this garment are passemented with
broad bands of gold embroidered with
countless double eagles on black velvet, and
these have such a weird and bat-like, not
to say demoniac, effect, that the Muscovite
flunkey clad in this flaming garment and
with an immense cocked-hat stuck fore and
aft on his semi-shaven head, bears a
fantastic resemblance to an India-house
beadle, of whom the holy inquisition has fallen
foul, and who, shorn of his staff, but with
his red cloak converted into a San Benito,
is riding to an auto da fé in his master's
carriage. Some general officers have soldier-
footmen, who sit in the rumble of the calèche
in the military grey cloak and spiked helmet.
The ambassadors have their chasseurs
plumed, braided and couteau-de-chassed; but
with these exceptions, the outward and visible
sign of the flunkey is wanting in Petersburgh.
Yet everybody keeps a carriage who can
afford it; and many do so who can't. I was
very nearly having half a private droschky
myself; the temptation was so great, the
horses so good, the coachman so skilful, the
difficulties of pedestrianism so great, the
public conveyances so abominably bad. As
I have remarked, the majority of carriage-
keepers don't take footmen out with them.
I have seen the great Prince Dolgorouki, the
chief of the gendamierie and secret police,
the high and mighty wooden-stick in waiting
at whose very name I tremble still,
step out of one of those modest little
broughams called "pill-boxes," open it, and
close the door as if he knew not what
a footman was, and walk up-stairs to the
second-floor of a lodging-house, with his stars,
his ribbons, his helmet, his sword, his spurs,
unflunkeyed and unannounced. Fall not,
however, in the obvious error of imagining that

* The Russians are extravagantly fond of red. That
a thing is red, implies with them that it is beautiful;
indeed, they have but one word (preknasse) to
express both redness and beauty. The favourite Russian
flower is the rose; though, alas! that has far more
frequently to be admired in paper or wax than In actual
existence. A crimson petticoat is the holiday dress of a
peasant girl; und to have a red shirt is one of the dearest
objects ol a Moujik's ambition.