byegone days, which were full of holes, known
as curiosities, and on which the milestones
were so capriciously distributed, that whereas
every squire (of the right way of thinking)
had one on each side of his park-gates,
unpopular localities, and villages where tithe-
proctors dwelt were left without milestones
altogether. Who was it that was chief of
the staff to murderous Major-General
Mismanagement in the Crimea? The hideous
roads from Balaclava to the front. When
the railway navvy took up the spade, the
soldier's grave-digger laid his mattock down.
What is it that impresses us mostly with the
grandeur of the civilisation of that stern,
strong people, who came to Britain with
Caesar, but the highways they made, whose
foundations serve even now for our great
thoroughfares, and which remain imperishable
monuments of their wisdom and industry
—the wonderful Roman roads. And flout
nor scout me none for uttering truisms
concerning roads in their relation to civilisation;
for Paris is rapidly surpassing our vaunted
London City in excellence of pavement.
New Street, Covent Garden, is in a bad way
the Victoria Road, Kensington, leaves much
to be desired; and the Commissioners of
Turnpike Trusts, all over the country, want
looking after sharply. There is need for us
to have sermons on the better care of the
stones. If we don't keep a bright look-out
for our pavements, we shall infallibly
retrograde—decay—as a nation; and M. Ledru
Rollin will rejoice. If we are unmindful of
the Queen's highway, we shall inevitably
come to clip the Queen's English, and break
the Queen's peace, and to the dark ages. It
behoves us especially to be watchful, for our
protectors never forget to collect the Queen's
taxes, roads or no roads.

The Czar's highway, which is literally his
—for everything in the empire, movable and
immovable, animated and inanimated, is his
own private and personal property*—is the
worst highway that was ever seen.

The Czar's highway in his two metropolises,
in his provinces and his country towns, from
north to south—from Karlsgammen, in Lapland,
to Saratchikovskaïa, in Astrakhan—is
the most abominable—I can't call it a corduroy
road, or a kidney-potato road, or a sharp-
shingle road—the most miserable sackcloth-
and-ashes road that was ever invented to
delight self-mortifying pilgrims, to break
postilions' constitutions, horses' backs, and
travellers' hearts. There is the iron road, as
all men know, from Petersburg to Pawlosky,
and also from the northern capital to Moscow.

* I remember once asking a Russian gentleman (not,
however, with the slightest expectation of receiving a
direct answer), the amount of the Imperial Civil List.
He scarcely scorned to understand my question at first;
but he replied, eventually, that his Majesty ''affected to
himself "a certain gigantic sum (I forget how many
million silver roubles, for I am boldly bankrupt in statistics);
but "Que voulez-vous," he added, "avec un Liste
civile! TOUT appartient au Czar, et il prend ce qu'il
veut!"

This last is kept in order by an American
company, and is a road; but you understand
that there can be railways and railways, and
even out of rails and sleepers can Czarish men
make iron rods to scourge, and make a difficult
Avernus to us, withal. From Petersburg
to Warsaw there is a chaussée, or road,
which, by a fiction as beautiful and fantastic
as a poem by Mr. Tennyson, is said to be
macadamised. It is rather O'Adamised;
there is a great deal more Irish gammon
than Scotch granite about it; but it is
perpetually being re-mended at the express
command of the emperor. When he travels
over it, the highway is, I daresay, tolerable;
for the autocrat being naturally born to have
the best of everything, his subjects have an
extraordinary genius for supplying him with
the very best, and the very best it is for the
time being. When the Czar is coming, rotting
rows of cabins change into smiling villages,
bare poles into flowering shrubs, rags into
velvet gowns, Polyphemus becomes Narcissus;
blind men see and lame men walk, so to
speak. The Czar can turn anything except
his satraps' hearts.

Of the provincial highways, and the
vehicles that do roll upon them—kibitkas,
telegas, and tarantasses, I shall have to speak
hereafter. My object in this paper is to give
some idea of the pavement of St. Petersburg,
of which hitherto you have had but
the glimpse of a notion in the words I have
set down about ischvostchiks and concerning
droschkies. I have come, by the way, on a
new reading of the former multi-named
individual. The correspondent of a Belgian
newspaper calls him by the startling appellation of
Ishwoschisky. I am not far from thinking
that his real name must be Ishmael; for
every man's (writing) hand is against him,
and it is by no means uncommon for his hand
to be against every man. There is a village
in Carelia whose sons almost exclusively
pursue the ischvostchik calling. There are a
good many of them in St. Petersburg, where
they have a high reputation as skilful drivers,
and not quite so cheerful a renown for being
all murderers. 'Gin an ischvostchik of this
celebrated village meet with a drunken or a
sleepy fare on a dark night, it is even betting
that he will give the exact reading of the
popular Scotch ditty, and make the fare into
a "body" before he has long been coming
through the ride.

Many persons endeavour to explain the
badness of the St. Petersburg pavement by the
severity of the climate, and the treacherous
nature of the soil on which the city is built.
The whole place is, it must be confessed, a
double dammed Amsterdam; and it has often
been with feelings akin to horror that I
have peeped into a hole on the magnificent
Nevskoï, when the workmen were mending
the pavement—which they are incessantly
occupied in doing in some part of the street
during the summer mouths. At a distance