oil and used by the painters as a brown
colour, richer than umber. But of its
importation we must add, that it may have
been somewhat checked by superstition.
Although Egypt could well spare its
mummies if a common notion were correct that
however many were received the number in
the sepulchres never became less ; the sailors
had a superstition of their own, founded less
perhaps upon some sense of the impiety of
rifling tombs, than upon association of the
dead Egyptians with crude notions of unholy
magic. They believed that a ship having a
mummy on board was buffeted with storms,
and a traveller in those days, the Prince
Radzivil, tells how, on a certain voyage, his
ship was tempest-tost, by reason of two
mummies that were on board ; and not only
did the ship labour and groan, but there was
caused also such prolonged and terrible
disturbance in the mind of a monk who was of
the company, that he had no rest until the
mummies were thrown overboard.

A JOURNEY DUE NORTH.
MUSIC AND THE DRAMA.

I HAVE in my possession a square piece of
yellow-paper, highly varnished, and with one
corner torn off, on which there is the
ordinary amount of typographical Abracadabra,
or Russian word-spinning, inevitably to be
found in all Russian documents: namely, as
much as can possibly be squeezed into the
space available, and headed (it is almost
superfluous to remark), by a portrait en pied
of that monster Bird, that Roc of Russia,
and yet, decided opposite to a Rara Avis,
the double-headed Eagle. This document is
as large as one of those French schedules of
insolvency, a Reconnaissance of the Mont
de Piété, and is considerably bigger than an
English excise permit. It is, in reality, no
such formidable affair; but simply a
passcheck (something billiet in Russ) — to the
orchestra stalls of the Gossudaria-Tchirk-Teatr'
or Imperial Circus Theatre of St. Petersburg.

There never was, under Jove — with the
exception of the Mandarinised inhabitants of
the Flowery Land, who, in a thousand
respects, might run or be driven in couples
with the Muscovites — such a nation of filling
up formalists as are the Russians. In Russia,
indeed, can you appreciate in its highest
degree the inestimable benefits of a lot of
forms. The Russian five-copeck (twopenny-
halfpenny) postage-stamp is as important-
looking, as far as fierceness and circumference
go, as that foul mass of decayed rosin and
wax, symbolising rottenness and corruption
somewhere, whilom attached, in a species of
shallow pill-box, at the end of a string to a
patent, and called the Great Seal of England.
If, in St. Petersburg or Moscow you wish to
post a letter for foreign parts, and send your
servant with it to the Gossudaria-Pochta or
Imperial post, he brings you back an
immense pancake, like a Surrey Gardens posting
bill, with your name, and your correspondent's
name, and columns of figures, denoting the
amount of copecks charged for postage, and
the date, and signatures, and countersignatures,
and a big double eagle, in black, at the
top, and a smaller one in blue at the bottom,
and a great sprawling white one in the
watermark, besides the usual didactic essay
upon things in general in incomprehensible
Russ ; all which cautious, minute, and
business-like formalities do not prevent the
frequent failure to reach its destination of
your letter, and its as frequent seal-breaking
and spying-into by officials in its transit
through the post-office.

Petropolis, considering its enormous size,
has by no means a profusion of theatres.
There is the superb Balschoï-Teatr'; the
Grand Opera, where Grisi and Mario sing,
and Cerrito and Bagdanoff dance. The Great
Theatre was originally erected by Semiramis-
Catherine; then re-constructed in eighteen
hundred and three, and in the reign of the
first Alexander by the architect Thomon.
It was burnt down, according to the rule of
the Three Fates, in all theatrical cases made
and provided, in eighteen hundred and eleven;
when another French architect, M. Mauduit,
was intrusted with the task of acting as a
vicarious phoenix, and raising the theatre
from its ashes. Some acoustic defects having
been found, nevertheless, to exist in the new
edifice; the Czar Nicholas caused M. Cavos,
again a Frenchman, to turn it as completely
inside out, as our old Covent Garden was
turned by Mr. Albano. It is now, with the
exception of the Grand Theatre at Moscow,
the most magnificent and the most convenient
of all the theatres in Europe, and
(I believe) as large theatre as any. The
Scala may surpass it, slightly, in size, but
in splendour of appointment it is, so the
cosmopolite operatics say, a mere penny gaff
to the Balschoï. At the Grand Theatre, take
place, during the carnival, the famous Bal
Masqués of St. Petersburg.

Next, the northern capital possesses the
Alexandra Theatre, situated in the place, or
squarr, as the gallicised Russians call it, which
bears the same name, and opens on the
Nevskoï Perspective. The Alexandra Theatre
is the home of the Russian drama: that is,
purely Russian plays (on purely Russian
subjects) are there performed. Thirdly, there
is the Théâtre Michel, in the Place Michel,
also on the Nevskoï, built in eighteen hundred
and thirty-three, under the direction of M.
Bruloff; which elegant and aristocratic
dramatic temple may be called the St. James's
Theatre of St. Petersburg, being devoted
to the alternate performances of French and
German troupes, and — being closed a good
many months in the year. There is a fourth
and very pretty theatre, built of wood, in the
island of Kammenoï-Ostrow, or Stone Island
(so called from a huge mass of stone on its
banks in the Little Nevka), a Swiss cottage