roubles, spending money, he had a year, this
beardless young fellow. I saw his uniforms;
the tunic of white cloth and silver; the cuirass
of gold; the brilliant casque surmounted by a
flowing white plume; the massive epaulettes,
the long silver sash, together with a vast
supplementary wardrobe of undress frocks
and overalls, and the inevitable grey
capote. "But where," I asked, "are the
jack-boots I have so often admired in the
Sapagi-Linie, and the military costume prints
in Daziaro's window?" He sighed, and
shook his head mournfully. "The Gossudar"
(the lord) "has abolished the boots," he
answered. "I used to dream of them. I had
ordered four pairs—not in the Gostinnoï-dvor;
for the bootmakers there are soukinsinoï (sons
of female dogs)—but of my own sabakoutchelovek,
—of a booter who is a German hound,
and lives in the Resurrection Perspective.
He brought them home on the very day that
the boots were suppressed. He had the
impudence to say that he could not foresee the
intentions of the Imperial Government, and
to request me to pay for them; upon which,
I believe, Mitophan, my body servant, broke
two of his teeth—accidentally, of course—in
pushing him down-stairs. He is an excellent
bootmaker, and one whom I can conscientiously
recommend to you, and has long since,
I have no doubt, put on more than the price
of my jack-boots and his broken teeth to my
subsequent bills.—Mais que voulez-vous?"—
Thus far Arcadi-Andrievitch; and this is
how I came to know that the Chevalier
Guards no longer wore jack-boots.

I wonder why they were swept away. Sometimes
I fancy it was because their prestige, as
boots, disappeared with the Czar Nicholas. Like
that monarch, they were tall, stern, rigid,
uncompromising; the cloth overalls were more
suited to the conciliating rule of Alexander
the Second. Nicholas, like Bombastes, hung
his terrible boots to the branch of a tree, and
defied those who dared displace them to meet
him face to face. They were displaced, and
he was met face to face, and the Czar
Bombastes died in a rage, like a poisoned rat in a
hole, in a certain vaulted chamber in the
Winter Palace. I have seen the tears trickle
down the cheeks of the Ischvostchiks passing
the window of this chamber, when they have
pointed upward, and told me that Uncle
Nicolaï died there; and Nicholas indeed had
millions to weep for him,—all save his
kindred, and his courtiers, and those who had
felt his wicked iron hand. There is a hot
wind about the death-beds of such sovereigns
that dries up the eyes of those who dwell
within palaces.

Far, far away have the jack-boots of the
Empress's Guards led me from the Sapagi-
Linie of the Gostinnoï-dvor, to which I must,
for very shame, return. More boots, though.
Here are the hessians worn by the dashing
hussars of Grodno,—hessians quite of the
Romeo Coates cut. Now, the jack-boot is
straight and rigid in its lustrous leather all
the way down, from mid-thigh to ancle;
whereas to your smart hussar, there is
allowed the latitude of some dozen creases or
wrinkles in the boot about three inches
above the instep, and made with studied
carelessness. Then the body of the boot goes
straight swelling up the calf. I doubt not
but a wrinkle the more or the less on parade
would bring a hussar of Grodno to grief.
These hessians are bound round the tops
with broad gold lace, and are completed by
rich bullion tassels.

Surely it was a spindle-shanked generation
that gave over wearing hessians; and a
chuckle-headed generation that imbecilely
persist in covering the handsomest part of the
boot with hideous trousers. To have done
with the Gostinnoï-dvor, you have here the
slight, shapely boots of the militia officer,—
light and yielding, and somewhat resembling
the top-boots of an English jockey, but with
the tops of scarlet leather in lieu of our
sporting ochre: there are the boots worn by
the Lesquians of the Imperial Escort, curious
boots, shelving down at the tops like vertical
coal-scuttles, and with quaint, concave soles,
made to fit the coal-scoop like stirrups of
those very wild horsemen; and, finally, there
are the barbarically gorgeous boots—or
rather, boot-hose—of the Circassians of the
Guard,—long, lustrous, half-trews, of a sort
of chain-mail of leather, the tops and feet of
embroidered scarlet leather, with garters and
anklets of silver fringe and beads, and with
long, downward-curved spurs of silver chased
and embossed.

The theme shall still be boots, for the
Sapagi-Linie overflows with characteristic
boots. Are not boots the most distinctive
parts and parcels of the Russian costume;
and am I not come from Wellington Street,
Strand, London, to the Gostinnoï-dvor
expressly to chronicle such matters? Am I not
in possession of this, a Russian establishment,
and is it not my task, like an honest
broker's man, to take a faithful inventory of
the sticks? Here are the long boots of
Tamboff, reaching high up the thigh, and all
of scarlet leather. These boots have a
peculiar, and, to me, delightful odour, more
of myrrh, frankincense, sandal-wood,
benzoin, and other odoriferents, than of the
ordinary birch-bark tanned leather. They will
serve a double purpose. They are impervious
to wet; and (if you don't mind having
red legs, like a halberdier or a turkey-cock)
are excellent things to splash through the mud
in; for mud only stains them in a picturesque
and having-seen-service sort of way; and
if you hang them to dry in your chamber
when you return, they will pervade the whole
suite of apartments with a, balmy, breezy
scent of new dressing-case, and pocket-book,
combined with pot-pourri in a jar of vieux
Sèvres, pastilles of Damascus, Stamboul
tchibouk-sticks, and pink billet-doux from a