must, consequently, he held utterly heretical,
schismatic, and abominable) is about twenty-five
feet high. The Preobajinskis are about
two relative inches in stature, horses and
all. The emperor is charging very fiercely
over their heads; he is waving a tremendous
sword, and the plumes of his helmet are
blowing to all the four points of the compass
at once. His toes are manfully turned
in, and his sinister thumb turned out, so that
with his imperial head screwed a little
obliquely, he looks not unlike Saint Nicholas
in a field-marshal's uniform. Were the
sword only a bâton, an ecclesiastical Punch
would be nearer the mark. The gallant
Preobajinskis —or rather their horses—are
all standing manfully on their hind legs;
and the patriotic artist—a Moscow man
—has artfully depicted their mouths all
wide open, so as to leave you no room
for doubt that they are crying, " Long live
the Czar! " as with one throat. There
is a brilliant cortège of princes and generals
behind the Czar; and one of the grand
dukes—Constantine, I imagine—is holding
an eyeglass like a transparent warming-pan,
to his archducal optic. I don't think that
the Russian artist means to imply by this
that his imperial highness is either
short-sighted or affected; but, an eye-glass or
lorgnottsz, is held to be a great sign of
"civlation " in Russia—almost as choice a
specimen of the Persicos apparatus as a Moscow
Madamsky, or French-milliner-made bonnet.
One word about the Preobajinski Guards,
before I finish with number three. I have
read lately that they form a regiment of men
with cocked-up noses, and that every soldier
of a certain height and with a nez retroussé
is sent into this corps. This is one of the
stock stories with which the witty and wily
Russians cram foreigners who go about with
open ears and note- books; and they so cram
them, I believe, with a mischievous view to
the said foreigners afterwards printing these
cock-and-bull stories, and so making
themselves ridiculous, and their testimony
unworthy of credit. There are some eighty
thousand men in the Russian Guards up to
the Preobajinski standard height; and I think
I am giving an under estimate, when I say
that forty thousand of them have cocked-up
noses. It must be remembered that forty
thousand Russian soldiers are as much alike
as forty thousand peas, and that the cocked-up
nose is the national nose. There is much
truth, however, in the story: that great
pains are taken in all the regiments of the
Guards to match the men as much as
possible in personal appearance by companies
and battalions. Thus you will see the blue-eyed
men filed together, the light moustached
men, the blue-bearded men, the small-footed
men, and so on; but to send up all the tall
men with cocked-up noses into the Preobajinski
regiment would be very much like
sending every Englishman who wears a white
neckcloth to be waiter at the Bedford Hotel.
Preobajinski means Transfiguration. The
so-called Guards received their name from
the Palace of Preobajinski, for whose defence
they were first incorporated, and which was
a favourite residence of Peter the Great.

With picture number four, I have done
with this Volnoï Volotschok Louvre; or more
properly National Gallery of Art, for the
fourth tableau is eminently national. The
scene depicted, is one of the episodes of the
late war, in which the Russians were so
signally and uniformly victorious. Scene, a
Russian church somewhere—very small and
trim—a sort of holy front parlour filled with
saints, and with striped curtains to the
windows, neatly festooned. Dramatis personæ: a
band of terrible Turks, with huge turbans
and baggy breeches—quite the March in
Bluebeard Turks,—the magnificent
three-tailed bashaw Turks, not the sallow men
with the tight coats and fezzes whom we are
accustomed to. These ruthless Osmanlis
have broken into the church, smashed the
windows, pulled down the curtains,
desecrated the altar, disfigured the saints, and
massacred the pope or priest, who, in full
canonicals, with a murderous sword sticking
up perpendicularly from his collar-bone,
lies with his head in a tall candlestick, and
his feet towards the door. But the miscreant
pork-repudiators have reckoned without their
host. Behold the eleventh of the line—the
Russian line—who have come to the rescue,
and who turn the tables on the Turks in the
most signal manner!  Behold a whiskered
Muscovite warrior, not dusting a Turk's jacket,
but making eyelet holes in it with his good
bayonet as the unbeliever tries to disfigure more
saints. Behold another miserable Osmanli, his
turban off, and his bare pate exposed, prostrate,
and crying peccavi: suing for any infinitesimal
fraction of quarter, while a zealous grenadier
is rapidly sending him to perdition, by
the favourite Russian process of dashing out
his brains with the butt-end of his musket.
Quarter, indeed! I marvel much where it
was, where the Turks desecrated the church.
Was it in the same part of Terra incognita
in which the English officer was beaten by a
Russian market-woman for attempting to
steal a goose, and in which fifteen Anglisky
mariners and a captain rifled a Moujik's
house of a calf, a kakoshnik, and fifteen
pewter spoons—both favourite subjects of
delineation with the Russians? There are
two little features of detail in this picture
which I must mention, as they strike me as
being very curious. Half-shattered on the
floor of the church, there lies a large image
of a black Virgin and Child—negro black,
with thick lips.  How came this, I wonder,
into the Græco-Sclavonic archæology?  And
the rays from the lighted candles are made
to resemble the aureoles or golden glories
round the heads of the saints, and are ornamented
with intricate geometrical engine-turnings.