sée was and the gay season, when balls and sup- this last summer, those of the hospopers abound, and masquerades occur dar, known from afar by the scarlet almost every night. But in early liveries of the servants, and those summer, before the scorching sun has of the foreign diplomatic agents, embrowned the foliage and driven most of them with chasseurs or away the wealthier of the inhabitants, richly attired Albanians. The numenothing can be more agreeable than rous Austrian uniforms added to the this rural city, belted with pleasant animation of the scene, some of the meadows and promenades, and nest- young staff-officers driving handsome ling in a net-work of gardens and a curricles and tilburies, whilst the bower of vines. During my two crowd was completed by the humble months' stay I saw many English and but ubiquitous birja. As the dayFrench pass through, chiefly officers light waned, the crowd diminished, from the Crimea or Constantinople, although, in the fine summer evenwho chose that route home; and all ings, not a few promenaders remained seemed delighted with their visit, and till after dark, strolling amongst the appeared to depart with regret. Bu- trees, or seated in the carriages, encharest is a city of idleness, and life joying the pleasant coolness; there is arranged so as to while away as here and there vacant vehicles, whose agreeably as possible the superabun- absent owners were well known, dant leisure. The usual dinner-hour afforded pretext of malicious comis three or four o'clock, and after that ment to lingering scandal-mongers. meal many persons go to take ice Towards nine o'clock, the Chausor a stroll in a large and delightful generally nearly deserted, public garden in the centre of the driving into town, many town-also a benefit bequeathed to carriages might be seen Bucharest by Prince Stirbey's ad- drawn up at the door of the ministration, at the cost of the unre- Tortoni of Bucharest, from which quited labour of thousands of un- excellent ices and refreshments were fortunate serfs. The best society, brought out to the fair occupants. however, frequents this garden but A few, braving the heat, would little, or remains there but a short thence proceed to the theatre, where time, proceeding, about seven o'clock, a French company had replaced the to the agreeable drive known as the Italians; whilst the men betook Chaussée, a road out of the town themselves to the Roman Circle, a which is a continuation of the main newly established club, or proceeded street, with plantation and a garden to join parties of a few friends, a sort on either side, and further on, an of Spanish conversational tertulia, avenue of trees separating it from which replace, when the season of luxuriant pastures. It is here that an gaiety is over, assemblies of a more idea is best formed of the luxury and numerous and pretentious descripwealth of Bucharest, whither, in fact, tion. nearly all the rich people of the province repair to spend their money. On the Chaussée assemble the fashionables of the Wallachian capital, a few of the men mounted on fine horses, but most of them, and all the ladies, in elegant carriages of Vienna and Paris build. This, of a summer evening, is the focus of flirtation, and the source and centre of not a little scandal. After a few turns up and down, at as rapid a pace as the throng of vehicles will permit, the ladies generally draw up by the side of the footpath, and either alight and walk, or receive visits in their open carriages. Amongst the crowd of dashing equipages were conspicuous, Night in Bucharest is not without peculiarities which forcibly strike the stranger. For those persons who insist upon pedestrian exercise, it is the best time for a stroll, for although the heat often but partially departs with daylight, the dust is less, and moreover at evening, the Chaussée, the avenues to it, and some of the principal streets, as well as those leading to the Tchismedjiou or public garden, are watered in a sort of primitive way, by men with carts who draw off the water into churn-shaped tubs and dash it over the thirsty soil and heated pavements. Of a clear warm night, when the streets and gardens are bathed in the bright sil ver light of a Wallachian moon, the people of Bucharest may be said to live in the open air. Every window is open, and they stand outside their houses or gossipping at the doors. They are an early-rising population, and by eleven the streets are nearly deserted and stillness reigns. One very curious practice which prevails is that of sleeping in the streets. Walking along between ten and eleven one warm dark evening (gas is unknown in Bucharest, and oil lamps are dim, few, and far between) I suddenly found myself trampling upon cushions. On investigation, the soft substance proved to be a mattress. Fortunately no one was as yet sleeping on it. It occupied the whole width of the narrow pavement, and I stepped off into the carriageway. Just then a man issued from an open door, with a coverlet on his arm; he was making his bed. Several other beds were arranged in succession close to the walls of the houses; it was an al fresco dormitory. Doubtless in a hot climate the plan has its advantages, securing fresh air and avoiding troublesome domestic insects. The risk of being trampled upon is small in a city where scarcely a soul is seen in the streets after midnight. I was informed, just as I was leaving Bucharest, that these out-of-door slumberers are chiefly Jews, there very numerous, and that they have a summer festival which lasts about a fortnight and commemorates the passage of the desert by the children of Israel, during which they do not sleep under a roof, and that a tradition exists amongst them that a child conceived during that period will be the Messiah. This tale was told me by Christians, and I by no means vouch for its correctness, but it is curious, and I was afterwards sorry I had not had time to ascertain positively, by inquiry of the Wallachian Hebrews, whether such a custom and belief really exist amongst them. Many of the street-sleepers have a small dog beside their couch, which rushes out, barking furiously, if one inadvertently steps too near its master's couch. The precaution must, one would think, be as destructive of slumber as it may be useful against marauders, the more so as the bark of the vigilant sentry is usually echoed by that of numerous vagrant curs of all breeds and sizes which at night infest the streets of Bucharest, and frequently molest the pedestrian. It is very difficult to throw stones at these animals, for there are none to be had, as the benighted and exasperated stranger frequently finds when, returning late to his lodging, he is beset by dogs of every description, from the diminutive yelping terrier to animals of a really formidable size and deep-mouthed aggressive bark, and stoops to seek a missile. These wild ownerless dogs, formerly so numerous and even dangerous in Constantinople, but now greatly thinned and wholly daunted there by the deadly blows and rough usage they have received at the hands of French soldiers and British mariners, are still plentiful at Bucharest, where, however, they can hardly be considered dangerous; at least I never heard of their devouring a human being in the latter place, as they have occasionally been known to do in the Turkish capital-especially when the said being had thought proper to take an overpowering quantity of strong drink and to lie down in the gutter to sleep it off; but still they are numerous, bold, and noisy enough to alarm a timid person, and one sometimes hears the affrighted scream of a belated child or woman beset by these persevering plagues. They are more troublesome than bloodthirsty; but, although the noise they make is a most sleep destroying nuisance, nobody seems to think of taking measures to expel them, even from his own premises. At the hotel where I lived, half-a-dozen of them had taken up their quarters in the large courtyard round which the house was built. Some of them were supposed, I believe, to belong to hostlers or hangers-on about the establishment; but I could not find out that their putative owners took any charge of them, and certainly they did not prevent them from raising the most diabolical din at hours when the inmates of the hotel might be supposed buried in sleep, or at least courting it. The gates of the yard were often left open; street-walking dogs would sneak in, predatorily minded and lured by the rank odours of the Wallachian kitchen, and desperate conflicts were the frequent result, the said canine encounters being attended with an amount of barking, snarling, howling, and yelling, enough to waken the dead. I do not believe it woke the Bucharestians, although the complaints of the sleepless strangers staying in the house were loud and frequent. may cause them to toss their blankets abroad. means a As, if I remember rightly, Murray's Hand-book for Turkey, by no means the best of his collection, is extremely brief and unsatisfactory in its notice of Bucharest, I may perhaps be rendering a service to persons whom this imperfect sketch of its attractions may induce to pay a summer visit to that pleasant city, if I devote a few lines to the subject Beside the dogs, the most lively of hotels. In the first place, it is to and noisy creauture in the streets of be observed that furnished lodgings Bucharest of a night is the watch are not to be had in Bucharest,-at man or chinny-accolo, a compound least they were unobtainable in the word which I write as pronounced, spring and summer of 1856; but that and possibly with much offence was perhaps owing to the number of against correct orthography. The Austrian officers who were billeted newcomer to the Wallachian capital, upon the houses of the inhabitants returning home late, is startled by Unless, therefore, you had a friend to the sudden apparition of a dilapi- give you quarters, you had no redated figure which emerges from a source but to stop at an hotel. The dark nook or crazy sentry-box, strikes best of these is the Hôtel de Lona heavy staff upon the pavement and dres, a large house built expressly hoarsely shouts chinnyaccoloooo! the for an inn, and where one finds good last syllable being drawn out ad and lofty apartments, clean and libitum, and relinquished as if with tolerably well furnished, at high regret. Then the figure usually re- prices; but Bucharest, especially peats the chinny, with a short exas- since the war, is by no perate stress on the first syllable, as cheap place. The hotel is of enorif he were angry with or insisting mous size, and full of long galleries upon something. The foreigner has and spacious landing-places. The a vague idea that this discordant and rooms are without bells, and the unintelligible cry is of the nature of mode of summoning the servants is a Qui vive? or Who goes there?-as original and inconvenient. On each in fact it is-but, observing that the landing-place is a bell-rope, below vociferator has no firearms, and con- which is a dial-plate, having around sequently cannot requite silence with it the numbers of the neighbouring a shot, and being moreover in total rooms. When you require anything ignorance how he should reply, he you have to issue forth from your usually walks quietly on; and the apartment, ring this bell, once for guardian of the night, perceiving that waiter, twice for boots, thrice for he is not a member of the dangerous chambermaid, and turn the needle classes, retreats into his nook and of the dial to the number of your suffers him to pass without further room. But it frequently happens question. The Moldo-Wallachians that before the servant answers your are an inoffensive and honest race call, somebody else gives a pull at even now, that they have been to a the rope, and shifts the needle to his certain extent demoralised by foreign number; so that you soon find that military occupations-crime is not the only way of getting attended to frequent amongst them, and the is, after ringing, to lie in wait at chinnyaccolos have little to do. Now your door, and, on the appearance of and then they make a charge upon the slave, to rush out, collar him, an unusually noisy troop of dogs, but their principal employment seems to be that of covering up the sleepers upon the pavement, when restless slumbers, the result perhaps of an unquiet conscience or a heavy supper, VOL. LXXXI. drag him into your room, and release him only upon his solemn promise to do what you require before he even looks at the dial. This is not a comfortable state of things; but bellhangers are scarce in Wallachia, and 15 domestics generally bad. Even in the peasants who manufacture these the better class of private houses, useful but uncouth objects, which good attendance is secured only by are brought to town in carts as antekeeping what in England would be diluvian as themselves, clumsy, considered an unreasonable number heavy vehicles, roofed in with of servants for the requirements of boughs. The only other things I the family. The Wallachian domes- could discover in the fair which were tics are lazy, and imported foreigners manifestly native productions (the soon rival them in this respect. I toys and trumpets smelt of Gertried the experiment of hiring one of many), were rings of coarse, coloured the latter sort, but found he would glass, to thrust over the hand and do nothing but sleep in the porter's wear as bracelets, much the sort of lodge, and, when compelled to work, thing one might look for upon the took sick immediately; so I was ebon arm of the Queen of the Cannicompelled to get rid of him, and to bal Islands, or dangling from the obrevert to the system of lying in am- tuse snout of some Central-African bush for waiters. Upon the whole, slave-dealing sovereign. There were however, one may be worse put up also chimney-piece ornaments formed than at the Hôtel de Londres, of clay, and representing zoological where there is great civility, and a monsters, of which traditions may desire to oblige; but hotel-keeping possibly have been handed down is a science that has still much pro- from the days of the Dacians. gress to make in the cities of Molda- Shows there were, too: a camel via and Wallachia. I cannot say ridden by a monkey, and a gentlemuch for the cooking; and the Hôtel man who sat upon the topmost of a de France, in the Mogosöe Street, is pyramid of bottles and balanced in that respect considered superior, plates upon his nose and chin; and, and passes for a first-rate French in the corner of a tent, the emanarestaurant, although in Vienna or tions from which were far from fraParis it would be set down as a grant, Punch, the ubiquitous, set up gargote, and indeed a good dinner his house, attracted a delighted is to be obtained there only by order- audience, and went through the celeing it beforehand, and paying rather brated drama of his serio-comic exmore than you would for a sumptu- istence, slightly varied from the ous banquet at the Trois Frères. English version, but including even a larger amount of domestic dissension, violent deaths, and desperate struggles with the enemy of mankind; the whole winding up with the appearance of a monstrous head Early in the month of June, in a cloud of dust and a blaze of heat, commenced and concluded the annual mosh or fair of Bucharest. The articles exposed for sale were not calculated to give an exalted idea of the manufacturing progress of the province, whose best reliance for prosperity is evidently upon its agricultural produce. The staple commodities were wicker- baskets, of a wearisome monotony of form, pots of red earth, not even glazed, and the rough-hewn, churn - shaped buckets here universally used, in houses, baths, for street-watering, &c. Anything more primitive than these various articles cannot be imagined; they are just what one might expect to find amongst a newly-discovered tribe of Indians, which, lurking in a remote corner of the backwoods, had avoided all intercourse with the pale-faces. Any idea of ornament seems ulterly alien to the minds of a cross, apparently, between a Skye terrier and a snapping turtle-which caught the reprobate Polichinello by the nose, and dragged him screaming into the showman's box. The streets of the fair were formed of huts of branches, some of them neatly enough made, and comprising two rooms, but which quickly lost their fresh verdant aspect, the foliage becoming embrowned by the sun, and coated with dust. Inside these wigwams a promiscuous throng ate, drank, cooked their food, danced, slept, suckled babies, played upon rude musical instruments, and contrived to exist in an atmosphere and amongst odours that might have stifled an habitual inhabitant of a slaver's hold, or a daily passenger everybody got extremely dusty and tired, and began to wish he had not come, and to long to escape; and there was a general rush for everybody's carriage, which nobody could find, and people betook themselves to bed, and the mosh was at an end in Bucharest for that year. At the period of my arrival in the Principalities, the Moldo - Wallachians were in a fever of impatience to get rid of the Austrian occupation, to them most odious. The war was over, and they could not understand why a foreign army should still be imposed upon them, occasioning them great expense and still greater annoyance. Absorbed by domestic considerations, they did not appreciate or even discern those important European ones which induced the Allies to maintain an Austrian force on the Russian frontier until the terms of the Treaty of Paris should be carried out. Much as they themselves have suffered from Muscovite bad faith and encroachment, their exasperation at the prolonged presence of their detested military guests blinded them to the probability that Russia might seek through the richest streams of Galata. The mere smell of the sausages dropping their unctious superabundance into the wood-fires over which they grizzled, was a week's dinner to a hungry man. Except in the evening, when the beau monde, deserting the Chaussée, drives to the fair, the attendance is almost exclusively of the lower orders, peasants in their round sheepskin caps and antique costume, which has scarcely varied since Trajan's day, many of them stalwart, fine-looking men, with features telling of their Italian origin; women in more various attire, not generally very becoming, although one head-dress, consisting of a thin white shawl gathered over the head, with the ends drooping behind, is not ungraceful. The most original and characteristic female dress there worn was the one I have already described, the shirt, often of a fine and transparent texture, sprinkled with stars or sprigs worked in gold or silver, whilst round the waist are fastened petticoats and a variety of coloured aprons, worn both before and behind. Besides the peasantry, Wallachian soldiers in their ugly uniforms, nursemaids with children, to evade the conditions she had and a few white-coated Austrians, made up the morning attendance at the fair. On the last day the fun terminated with an evening entertainment annually given by the Aga or prefect of police, in a space enclosed with hedges and flags, and lighted with coloured lamps, where music played, and people walked about and ate ices under tents, and where the hospodar came, with gorgeous liveries and a numerous escort, to admire his own portrait hung up in a marquee, and where the aga himself narrowly escaped apoplexy from the violence of his exertions and effervescence of his hospitality; and people who had no tickets jockeyed the sentries, leaped the ditches, and got in through gaps in the hedges, until at last (this being essentially a popular festival) every one was admitted who chose to walk in; and ragged boys and Wallachian roughs " were seen elbowing boyards of fabulous lineage, and making disorderly and destructive onslaughts upon trays of sweetmeats; and, finally, agreed to. It must be owned that the conduct of the Austrian army of occupation had been such as to explain the furious eagerness of the Moldo-Wallachians for its departure. Its bearing had certainly not been that becoming friends and allies in peaceable provinces inhabited by an extremely docile and quiet race. Had the imperial legions conquered the country after fierce opposition, and found themselves surrounded by scowling foes, whose hatred was to be kept from dangerous manifestation by fear alone, their conduct might have been comprehensible. But when they arrived there was no particular ill feeling towards them, and they had only themselves to thank for the bitter one which afterwards arose. The general order by which, at the end of last May, the Emperor of Austria congratulated his army in Moldo-Wallachia on its military spirit and endurance of privations, excited the laughter of all who were aware of the real circumstances of the case. There was little |