chevalier-guards went forth to battle, (how
did all the correspondents in the Crimea
make the mistake of imagining that the
Russian guards as guards were sent to
Sebastopol?) and that some of those
stupendous cavaliers were laid low by hostile
sabre or deadly bullet, those boots, I am sure,
would never yield. The troopers might fall,
but the boots would remain erect on the
ensanguined field, like trees, scathed indeed, by
lightning, and encumbered by the wreck of
branches and foliage, but standing still, firrn-
rooted and defiant. But they will never have
the good-luck to see the tented field,—these
boots,—even if there be a new war, and the
chevaliers be sent to fight. The jack-boots
have been abolished by the Czar Alexander,
and trousers with stripes down the sides
substituted for them. They only exist now in
reality on the shelves of the Sapagi-Linie,
and in the imagination of the artists of the
illustrated newspapers. Those leal men are true
to the jack-boot tradition. Each artist
writes from Moscow home to his particular
journal to assure his editor that his drawings
are the only correct ones, and that he
is the only correspondent to be depended
upon; and each depicts costumes that never
existed, or have fallen into desuetude long
since. Wondrous publications are illustrated
newspapers; I saw the other day, in a
Great Pictorial Journal, some charming little
views of St. Petersburg in eighteen hundred
and fifty-six, and lo! they are exact copies of
some little views I have of St. Petersburg in
eighteen hundred and thirty-seven. There
is one of a bridge from St. Izaak's church to
Wassily-Ostrow, that has been removed these
ten years; but this is an age of go-aheadism,
and it is not for me to complain. The jack-
boots of the chevalier-guards, however, I will
no more admit than I will their presence in
the Crimea; for wert thou not my friend
and beloved, Arcadi-Andrievitch? count,
possessor of serfs, honorary counsellor of the
college, and cornet in the famous chevalier-
guards of the empress? Four languages
didst thou speak, Arcadi-Andrievitch, baritone
was thy voice, and of the school of
Tamburini thy vocalisation. Not much afraid of
Leopold de Meyer need'st thou have been on
the pianoforte; expert decorator wert thou
of ladies' albums; admirable worker of
slippers in gold and silver thread;
cunning handicraftsman in wax flowers and
dauntless breaker-in of untamed horses.
In England, Arcadi-Andrievitch, thou
wouldst have been a smock-faced schoolboy.
In precocious Russia thou wert
honorary counsellor, and had a college
diploma, a droschki (haras), stud of brood
mares, and a cornetcy in the Guards. There
are hair-dressers in Russia who will force
mustachios on little boys' lips (noble little
boys), and they have them like early peas
or hothouse pines, for everything is to
be had for silver roubles, even virility.
Arcadi-Andrievitch and I were great
friends. He had been for some months
expectant of his cornetcy, and longing to
change his Lyceum cocked hat, blue frock, and
toasting-fork-like small-sword, for the gorgeous
equipments of a guardsman. He was
becoming melancholy at the delay in receiving
his commission; now, fancying that the
Czar's aides-de-camp had sequestered his
petition; now, that his Majesty himself had a
spite against him, and was saying, "No!
Arcadi-Andrievitch, you shall not have your
cornetcy yet awhile"; now grumbling at the
continual doses of paper roubles he was
compelled to administer to the scribes at the
War-office and the Etat Major. The Russians
(the well-born ones) are such liars, that I
had begun to make small bets with myself
that Arcadi-Andrievitch had been destined by
his papa for the career of a Tchinovnik, or
government clerk, and not for a guardsman
at all; when the youth burst into my room
one day, in a state of excitement so violent as
to lead him to commit two grammatical
errors in the course of half-an-hour's French
conversation, and informed me, that at last
he had received his commission. I saw it;
the Imperial Prikaz or edict, furnished with
a double eagle big enough to fly away with a
baby. Arcadi-Andrievitch was a cornet.
I am enabled to mention my Russian friends
by name without incurring the slightest risk
of compromising them, or betraying private
friendship; for in Russia you do not call a
friend Brownoff or Smithoffsky, but you
address him by his Christian name, adding
to it the Christian name of his father. Thus,
Arcadi-Andrievitch, Arcadius the son of
Andrew. You employ the same locution
with a lady: always taking care to use
her father's baptismal name. Thus,
Alexandra-Fedrovna, Alexandra the daughter of
Theodore.

To return to my Arcadi-Andrievitch.
Though he was but a little boy, he possessed,
as I have remarked, a droschky; and in this
vehicle, a very handsome one, with a fast
trotter in the shafts, and a clever mare,
dressée à la volée, by the side, and driven by
a flowing bearded moujik, his property (who
was like the prophet Jeremiah), he took me
home to see his uniforms. The young rogue
had had them, all ready, for the last six weeks,
and many a time, I'll be bound, he had tried
them on, and admired his little figure in the
glass, late at night or early in the morning.
Although this lad had a dimpled chin that
never had felt the barber's shear, he had a
very big house all to himself, on the
Dvortsovaïa Nabéréjenaïa, or Palace Quay: a
mansion perhaps as large as Lord John
Russell's in Chesham Place, and a great
deal handsomer. It was his house: his Dom;
the land was his, and the horses in the stable
were his, and the servants in the antechamber
were his, to have and to hold under Heaven
and the Czar. I forget how many thousand