rouble notes, and a small wardrobe in a
leathern bag, I have come with my friend,
ALEXIS HARDSHELLOVITCH.  You start at my
fellow-traveller's patronymic, sounding, as it
does, much more of a New York oyster-cellar
than of a district in the Government of Twer.
Here is the meaning of Hardshellovitch.
Alexis, though a noble Russian of innumerable
descents, and of unmistakeable Tartar
lineage, though wearing (at St. Petersburg),
the rigorous helmet, sword, and choking suit;
though one of the corps of imperial pages,
and hoping to be a Hussar of Grodno by this
time next year, is in speech, habits, and
manners, an unadulterated citizen of the smartest
nation in the creation.  For Alexis' father, the
general, was for many years Russian Minister
Plenipotentiary at Washington in the district
of Hail Columbia!  U. S.  While there, he very
naturally fell in love with, and married, one
of the beautiful young daughters of that land;
and Alexis was the satisfactory result.  After
a hesitation of some seventy years' standing,
the general diplomatically made his mind up
to die, and his family availed themselves of
the circumstance to bury him, Madame the
ex-Ambassadress remained in Washington,
and his son, being destined for the Russian
service, was sent to St. Petersburg to be
educated.  Fancy the young Anacharsis being
sent from Athenian Academe to be educated
among the Scythians, or imagine Mrs. HOBSON
NEWCOME of Bryanstone Square sending one
of her dear children to be brought up among
the Zulu Kaffirs!  The unfortunate Alexis
was addressed, with care, to two ancient
aunts (on the Muscovite side), in the Italianskaia
Oulitsa at St. Petersburg.  These ladies
were of the old Russian way of thinking;
spoke not a word of French, took grey snuff;
drank mint-brandy, and fed the young
neophyte (accustomed to the luxurious fare of a
diplomatic cuisine and Washington table
d'hôtes), on Stchi (cabbage soup), Batwinja
(cold fish soup), pirogues (meat pies), and
kvass.  He had been used to sit under the
Reverend Dr. D. Slocum Whittler
(Regenerated-Rowdy persuasion), in a neat white-
washed temple, where lyric aspirations to
Zion were sung to the music of Moore's
Melodies; he suddenly found himself in a land
where millions of people bow down billions of
times every day, to trillions of sacred
Saracen's-Heads.  He was soon removed to the
École des Pages—that grand, gilt, ginger-
bread structure (I do not call it so as in any
way reflecting on its flimsiness, but because it
is, outwardly, the exact colour of under-done
ginger-bread, profusely ornamented with gold
leaf), in the Sadovvaïa, and which was
formerly the palace of the Knights of St. John
of Jerusalem.  Here, he found French,
German, and English professors; but though he
has been four years a page, the poor lad has
been in a continual state of bewilderment
ever since he left America.  He has scarcely,
as yet, mastered the first flight of the Giant's
Staircase of Russian lexicology, the Russian
gift of tongues seems denied to him; his
French smacks of German, and his German
of French; and his English, which, miserable
youth, is of all languages the one he delights
most to speak, is getting into an ancient and
fishy condition.  He misses his grammatical
tip, frequently.  He has an extensive salad of
languages in his head; but he has broken
the vinegar-cruet, and mislaid the oil-flask,
and can't find the hard-boiled eggs.  All his
sympathies are Anglo-Saxon.  He likes roast-
meat, cricket, boating, and jovial conversation;
and he is hand and foot a slave to the Dutch-
doll-with-an-iron-mask discipline of the
imperial pages, and the imperial court, and the
imperial prisoners'-van and county-gaol
system generally.  He is fond of singing comic
songs.  He had better not be too funny in
Russia; there is a hawk with a double head,
in the next room.  He is (as far as he
has sense enough to be), a republican in
principle.  The best thing he can do is to learn
by heart, and keep repeating the Anglican
litany, substituting Good Czar for Good Lord.
What a terrible state of things for an
inoffensive and well-meaning young man!
Not to know whether he is on his head or his
heels, morally.  To be neither flesh, nor
fowl, nor good red herring, nationally.  I
wonder how many years it will take him to
become entirely Russian: how long he will
be before he will learn to dance, and perform
the ceremony of the kou-tou—I mean, the
court bow—and leave off telling the truth,
keeping the eighth commandment, and
looking people straight in the face.  Not very
long, I am afraid.  The Russian academical
course of moral ethics is but a short
curriculum; and, once matriculated, you graduate
rapidly. In no other country but Russia—
not even in our own sunsetless empire, with
its myriad tributaries—can you find such
curious instances of de-nationalisation.  Alexis
Hardshellovitch had a friend, whose
acquaintance I had also the honour of making,
who was also in the Corps des Pages, and
who came to samovarise, or take tea with us,
one evening, in patent-leather boots and
white kid gloves; and who talked so prettily
about potichomanie and Mademoiselle
Bagdanoff, the ballet-dancer (all in the purest
Parisian), that I expected the next subjects
of his conversation would be Shakspeare and
the musical glasses. What do you imagine
his name was?  Genghis Khan!
(pronounced Zinghis Kahn).  He was of the
creamiest Tartar extraction, and mincingly
confessed that he was descended in a direct
line from that Conqueror.  He was a great
prince at home; but the Russians had
mediatised him, and he was to be an officer
in the Mussulman escort of the Czar.  He
had frequently partaken of roast horse in his
boyhood, and knew where the best tap of
mares' milk was, down Mongolian-Tartary
way, I have no doubt; but I have seen him