Nothing makes a Russian so happy as to be addressed by the emperor; it is curious to observe, how the courtiers lie in wait for a look from their master. Their eyes are fixed, their ears are strained to catch a single word; they crowd around the one who has been so fortunate as to receive it, or retire with downcast countenance, if they have been disappointed in their expectations. A French ambassador said to Paul the First, whom he saw conversing with one of his favorites, "Sire, that, I presume, is one of the great men of your empire." "Be assured," answered the Czar, "that there are no great men here except those to whom I speak; and they are great only so long as I do so." The Russian sits a great deal; the climate compels him to it, and his habits have somewhat of oriental indolence. He prefers lying down to standing, and rather rides than walks. An equipage is the first requisite in Russia. Fashion renders it an imperative necessity; the long distances which one has to traverse in the cities make it indispensable; the cheapness of horses and of fodder, and the ease with which the nobles can take coachmen from among their serfs render it an inexpensive luxury. And therefore, there are but few in Russia who are so poor as not to keep their carriage. The abundance of furs and the cheapness of wood enable the Russians to guard themselves well against cold. The best claret goes to Russia; but claret does not well bear a sea voyage. Several wines of the Crimea compete successfully with the wines of France, and might, with proper management, become a source of great wealth to the country. Nevertheless the drinking of wine is not at all general; in second rate inns its place is occupied by quass and brandy. Tea is the favorite beverage, and there are people who drink tea all the day long, as the Spaniards drink their chocolate. A German traveller has observed, that while civilized Europe cries out loudly for gold, the Russians de mand tea. The Russians smoke a great deal, and their tobacco is good; the government does not yet meddle with it. Some of the young men carry the mania for smoking to excess, and have servants whose sole business it is to fill and light their pipes. Formerly a great deal of magnificence was exhibited in pipes and amber mouthpieces, but now quantity is looked to rather than splendor. The cigar moreover is beginning to displace the pipe. The vapor-baths are still what they have been from time immemorial; for the people a luxury, a means of pleasure, of cleanliness, and of health. The use of linen is not yet so general as one would wish to see it, and frequent change is a mark of distinction for the most refined; and therefore colored linen is preferred, because it does not so soon become soiled, or rather it does not so soon appear to be so. Cards are the usual pastime of the Russians, and occupy a larger part of their evenings than music and dancing; whist and 'preference' are the most popular games, especially among government officers. The most civilized, the most discontented or the richest go abroad for their amusement, and travelling is almost always beneficial to their minds, even if their hearts, on returning, assume the old form. Travelling is frequently a saving as well as a luxury; but the Emperor takes the greatest pains to discourage the excursions of his subjects into foreign countries. The difficulties which are interposed do but however increase the charm, and the wanderings of the Russian nobles have become systematic: they save only to go abroad, and they remain abroad until their funds are quite exhausted, or until the expiration of the period for which their passport is granted, which is five years for noblemen, and three for commoners; the latter is supposed to transact his business more rapidly, or it is believed that he has less important affairs than the nobleman, who travels only for pleasure. The mania for travelling among the Russian courtiers is even more powerful than their subservience to the monarch. The life of the Russian merchant is the exact counterpart of that of the noble. He plays at chequers instead of cards, rides in a wagon instead of a coach, and has the privilege of wearing his beard long, a liberty which a noble is not permitted to take. He is faithful to the Russian kitchen, and drinks his tea out of the saucer, instead of the cup. He spends his superfluous money in ornamenting the images of his patron saints, and in loading his wife with finery in the worst possible taste. The chief aim of his children is to lay aside the national costume, and to dress like coxcombs. Dancing and singing occupy the leisure hours of the populace in their assemblies, and sometimes gambling is added. Their songs abound in dull wit, and are of equivocal import, but when sung in chorus they sound tolerably well. The festival of Easter is celebrated in a peculiar manner. It lasts during a week which is called the holy week; those who then according to custom, address congratulations to each other, embrace three times; and there are some who are not content with exercising their privilege upon their acquaintances, but apply especially to pretty women, who cannot well refuse the toms. salute, unless they belong to the fashionable circles, in which foreign habits have obtained the preponderance over national and religious cusThe emperor embraces his entire court, and all the officers of the guards on Easter-Sunday. The empress gives her hand to be kissed; it is usual to say at the same time, "Christ is risen." The emperor on one occasion saluted a sentinel who was a Jew with these words, to which he replied, that it was an abominable falsehood. Since that time no Jew has been allowed to mount guard upon this day. Eggs painted in various colors, and imitations in china, sugar, and wax, are given in great numbers as presents; it is a common sport to break these against each other; the person whose egg breaks the other is the winner. The frauds practised by government officers in Russia exceed all belief. Great or small they all steal, and that openly and unpunished, from the munitions of war down to the provisions of the soldiers, and the medicines of the hospitals. They even steal men, inasmuch as they conceal the number of those who have fallen in each battle until the end of the campaign. Thus they continue to receive rations and equipments. for those who have disappeared from the ranks, but who are not scratched from the lists until the termination of the war. In the Caucasus, where there are constant hostilities, this abuse had reached an unexampled height. The ranks were empty, the lists full, and the pockets likewise. The captain lives upon his company, the colonel upon his regiment, the general upon his brigade, and so on. "One must not put ideas into the heads of the people," said Count Benkendorff one day to the author B., whom he was scolding for a patriotic article; "they are but brutes, who only serve to draw the vehicle." - Die Rosen. TAXIDERMY IN ROME. it is likewise a strong bond of union between man and man- where shall we find such another? Hounds and horses may connect, indeed, a greater number, but if one of the field breaks his neck, who cares? " he should have been better mount is a gentler and a kindlier community. Where else exists that unanimity to which this body may justly lay claim? Not in the professions, where law detracts, medicine dislikes, and the church does not always hold the truth in charity; nor yet amidst mankind in general, for philosophers misquote, scholars revile, merchants monopolize, courtiers traduce, statesmen deceive: but here no conflicting interests, nor uncharitable surmises, no morbid sensibility, nor false and narrow views of life, arise to estrange those whom Linnæus and Cuvier have once united in fellowship. Constant, cheerful, unaffected, and sincere, the happy members of our coterie, everywhere, and in all ranks alike, show an instinctive tact in mak In turning over the voluminous records of our travels abroad, we pause more particularly at those passages of our journals which relate to the study of Natural History. In these occur frequent references to agreeable pedestrian rambles undertaken alone, or in the company of unaffected,"* or else," he could not ride; "— but ours ed friends, in France and Switzerland, Italy and its islands of whole days spent, and twilight at last surprising us still bending over the unexplored treasures of unexhausted museums. Of Paris winters cheerfully passed in the enceinte of the class-rooms of the Sorbonne; of pleasant occasions in which our ears refused to take cognizance of the sound of town clocks and dinner-bells, while our eyes were so agreeably forgetting themselves amid the profusion and variety of southern fish and bird markets. On this, if on any portion of our by-gone life, we look back with sadness indeed, but with a sadness unembittered by regrets; our only sorrow here being, that we knew not earlier in life those studies of which it may be pre-eminently said, that while they "delighting each other out, and once friends continue so abroad they hinder not at home." Happy indeed are the children who dream of butterflies, and wise the parents who encourage theirs to intertwine objects of natural history with their earliest associations! Not only has this charming study a strong tendency to confirm the health, to embellish the mind, and to improve the moral character of those who pursue it; "Pour le bien savourer, c'est trop peu que des sens; Il faut une âme pure et des goûts innocens;" for life. We speak from long and intimate ac "Gentlemen," said a quondam acquaintance of ours, rising to return thanks to a party of fox-hunters drinking my health, and E. for speaking as he has just who had proposed his health" I thank you all for done of my riding. You all know that a younger son has not much choice in horse-flesh; but should it please Providence to take my elder brother, you would see me differently mounted, and I might then, perhaps, be able to do something more worthy of your commendation; so allow me to propose, in return for your kindness, 'The chances of the chase." 66 quaintance with many naturalists: to some, cour- | eye, a waning moon, resting on the grass, with teous reader, we purpose, with your consent, its horns upwards, formed a couch for Diana and hereafter to introduce you. Our object mean- Endymion; from this we had turned to a naked while is, to set before you now two humble for- nymph with a pretty face, and a torso half hideigners of the gentler sex, who have passed their den under a cataract of dishevelled tresses, “not whole lives in the study and practice of taxider- penitent enough for a Magdalen," thought we, my. Real and zealous enthusiasts are Annetta when mother and daughter, entering together, Cadet and her mother, who, in order to surprise "Ecco la mia madre," said the girl, pointing to in their haunts, and study before they embalm the picture in question. "Come?" asked we, them, the various inhabitants of the Campagna "that mother?" your Certainly, it was paintabout Rome, think nothing of braving any ed by my own father, six months after their maramount of heat, fatigue, and inconvenience; and riage; she was then, as you see, una bella giosuch adepts are they in this art, that when stuffed, vanne assai." "Was your father, then, a painter their birds, beasts, and reptiles seem to have re-by profession?" "Not originally," interposed ceived new life at their hands, and to be about to spring from the ground or to leave their perches and glide out of sight. When, therefore, you shall have examined the out-doors* antiquities (and unless you would reconstruct the Forum for the thousandth time on some original plan of your own, or were to go mare's-nest hunting amidst the ruins with certain German Barbatuli, -the Bunsenists of a season, ten days will be more than sufficient), we charge you not to fail calling at No. 23, Via della Vite, where, if you should possess any lurking propensities for natural history, they are sure to be elicited. As to your first reception, if this should be of a somewhat abnormal kind, why, so was ours;- - for Cadet and her mother are certainly originals: but that you should not be disconcerted, and in order to prepare you for the personal appearance, as well as the unusual qualities of our friends, we transcribe the memorandum of our own introduction to them. Prince Musignano, whose birds they mounted, Professor Metaxa, who sent rare insects for them to determine, and W—, who affirmed (par parenthèse) that no one could stuff birds like them but himself, had all præconized their accomplishments to us; so one morning, with a note-book full of queries, and a bottle full of insects, we descended the Scalinata, and knocked at the door. It was opened by a cord pulled from above, while a female voice demanded, more solito, "chi c'e?" On answering, that our visit was to the Signore who prepared insects, the voice said, “Come up, go in at the door to the right, and we will join you as soon as we have made ourselves tidy." Observing this Little-red-riding-hood invitation, we entered the reception room, and began to amuse ourselves with a survey of a score or two of queer-looking pictures (for the most part without frames) with which the walls were adorned: strange landscapes were there, and allegorical subjects, treated with equal perversity. On one that first caught our *Out-doors-because, as we have said in Birboniann, it would take years to explore the numismatic and other treasures of the museums. the old dame: "he was designed for a missionary by his patron, who brought him over from his native country, San Domingo, when a boy; but the old man dying shortly afterwards, the Propaganda undertook to complete the youth's education with the same view. As, however, he chose to think that painting, not preaching, was his calling, and as an attachment had sprung up between us, and I preferred passing my life with him rather than with Santa Ursula and her virgins, to whom my friends would have dedicated me, we determined to take our own case into our own hands, married without asking permission, and then, to support ourselves, I turned my attention to Taxidermy, and he to the Fine Arts. Thus we managed to subsist till Annetta was nine years old, when I lost him.” “And I," interposed Annetta, "gained a score of old botany books, and these beautiful paintings; I wonder no one comes to propose for “E pazza quella ragazza!" said the mother; and, to judge by her appearance and attire alone, she might have been so. Her descent sufficiently accounted for her woolly hair; but in addition to its negro texture, it was unteazled and neglected, being mixed with bits of feather and other extraneous elements. She was swathed from head to foot in coarse soiled dimity; in one hand she was holding a half stuffed hawk, in the other a sponge, dipped in some arsenical solution to preserve it. Our eyes had never rested upon so wild, so plain, so apparently hopeless a slattern; but these unpromising appearances were soon forgotten, and amply made amends for by the intelligence of her remarks, and the sprightliness of her conversation; and we know, "Bfeore such merits all objections fly, me." Pritchard's genteel, and Garrick six feet high." The officina was a curious place, and worthy of its mistress. It was something between a shambles, a museum, and a tanyard, and exhaled in consequence the mixed effluvia of decomposing flesh, alcohol, tannin, and the oil of petroleum. In one corner stood a large tawny dog, stuffed, and fixed to a board, with a new pair of eyes in his head, and his mouth well furnished with grinders. "Era molto vecchio questo cane," going up to introduce him to our notice, and patting his back affectionately: "his sockets have not had such eyes in them for many a day, nor his jaws such teeth. I have strengthened his legs with wire, and restored the proper curl to the tail; nothing further is now lacking but some tufts of hair to cover these bare patches on his haunches, when his master will at once recognize unaltered the favorite of fourteen years ago." "And whence the supplies necessary for your purpose?" "From this," replied she, drawing out from under the table a skin of the same tawny color. "Eccola," and then pinching off with her tweezers a small tuft from the supplementary hide and gumming over with a camel's hair brush, a bare spot, she proceeded to cover it. "And what's your remedy here?" said we, laying our hand upon a large duck,* whose glossy grassgreen neck had lost much of its plumage, especially at the base, where it is wont to be encircled with a cravat of white feathers. "By robbing others of the same family: for I always think a bird, while he lacks any of his feathers, is looking reproachfully at me; and if a parrot could find tongue it might say, "Tis cruel to look ragged, now I'm dead; But here are my stores ;" and touching a spring, the door of a small room opened, and revealed unstuffed skins of all sorts, dangling from strings like Fantoccini near the Sapienza at Christmastime. "Yonder is a bird, Annetta, that shot across our path yesterday in the villa Borghese; was he not then a foreigner of distinction escaped from the prince's aviary?"—"No, a Campagna bird, but rare;" and she proceeded to display his lapis-lazuli wings, which shone like burnished armor, and were set off by a brilliant edging of black feathers, as polished as jet, while the back was a rich dark brown, and the neck and breast light azure. "Oh! stuff' us one of these birds, pray!"-"Non dubitate, one shall be on his perch expecting you when you "And we return to Rome in November." must have, too, that beautiful neighbour of his who wears a short silk spencer over his back and shoulders, and a full-breasted waistcoat of buff." "The Alcedo Hispida: he shall be ready too: they call him hereabouts, Martin the Fisher."" We took leave for the time, but frequently returned to the workshop. On one occasion we asked Cadet how she attained such skill in taxidermy? "Our art," she replied, “like yours, consists mainly in observation, and there Anas Boschias. --- fore it must needs come slowly. In fact it has taken my mother and myself fifteen years to learn the natural instincts, habits, and attitudes of the birds and beasts of the Roman Fauna; every summer we visit their haunts, and bring back such specimens as we may catch, or as the peasants, who all know us, may bring. Thus, we return ever richly laden, sometimes with the carcase of an eagle, or it may be of an African Phenicopterus; or, failing in such large game, we are tolerably sure of porcupines, fine snakes, a nest of vipers, specimens of our three several kinds of tortoises, and different species of land crabs; to say nothing of the Tarantulas, Scholias, and Hippobosques, which I pin round my bonnet, or pop into spirits of wine. As to stuffing, - the witnessing how some, who call themselves naturalists, stuff birds, has been long as a beacon to me! They really seem to forget that it is one thing to prepare a goose for the spit, and another to fill his skin for the museum; they cram whatever they have in hand, as Fuocista Beppo crams a sky-rocket to repletion. Few take the natural shape as a model for the embalmed body. In such hands, sparrows become linnets, owls appear to have died of apoplexy, kestril eyes shine in Civetta's sockets, and the jackdaw has a pupil like the vulture. Then in grouping, they make all to look straight forward, as if, when a hawk has swooped upon a teal, his eyes did not turn downwards in the direction of his victim, or those of the poor teal upwards in the direction of the expected blow; he, too, should be represented as striving to extend his neck beyond the drooping screen of the other's impenetrable wing. Then birds of prey should not perch like barn-door fowls, nor a parrot divide his toes before and behind unequally; yet some taxidermists there are, who consider these things trifles!" "Well, sir, what do you think of my daughter's stuffing?" said the old woman. Why, that she stuffs beautifully, but the smell of those old hides in the corner makes me sick." Whereupon they both laughed out at our affectation. “A doctor, and made sick!" said they, and they laughed again. "Have you heard of the Brazilian consul's lion?" interrogated the daughter, endeavouring to make us forget our sickness by exciting our curiosity. even that he had a lion." 'Oh, tell the story to the Signor Dottore, mother!" said the girl; "I can't for laughing." Upon which the old woman, summoning to her aid a ludicrously solemn look, prefaced the anecdote by supposing. "We must know the Brazilian consul!"-"Not even by name."-In that case we were to understand that he was by nature a man of great tenderness of character, but had once been chafed into an act of extraordinary ferocity, kill 66 "No: nor ing with his own hand, during the last year of his consulate (but unfortunately, like Ulysses, without a witness), a lordly lion; as there was no embalmer on the spot, he simply flayed his victim, and preserved his skin with spice till his return last year, when the wish naturally arose to have the lion mounted after the most approved models, in order that the dimensions of the body and the respective length of tusks, tail, and claws, might appear to the best advantage, making it very evident that this had been a lion that none but Hercules or a Brazilian consul would have ventured to cope with. On making inquiries for an accomplished embalmer, our diplomatist unfortunately stumbles upon a Frenchman- a gentleman of rare accomplishments, as they all are, perfectly versed, by his own account, in that ancient Egyptian art in all its branches: this man, on seeing the skin, takes care duly to appreciate the courage of the consul, in killing so immense a beast, whom he promises forthwith to restore to his pristine dimensions, and fierceness of physiognomy; his adroitness is rewarded by carte blanche, to purchase any amount of spices and cotton he may require, and his honoraire is fixed at fifty scudi on the completion of the job. Hoping to increase the family satisfaction by showing them the lion once again on his legs without their previously witnessing the steps by which this was to be effected, he requests that in the interval no one would visit the workshop. "Mind you make him big enough," says the Consul, signing the contract. "Laissez moi faire," rejoins the other. After three weeks' mystery, the artist sends for his employer, who, speedily obeying the summons, finds the exhibition-room arranged for a surprise, and the Frenchman in anticipation of an assured triumph, rubbing his hands before a curtain, on the other side of which is the object of his visit. "Hortense, levez la toile!" says the Frenchman, giving the word of command. Hortense does as he is bid; up goes the curtain, and the Consul beholds his old friend, not only with a new face but with a new body: whereat, astounded and aghast, "That's not my lion, sir," says the Brazilian. "How, sir, not your lion; whose lion then? - you are facetious." "I facetious, sir," roars the impatient lion-killer, "and what should make me facetious?" "I have the honor to tell you, sir, that this is your lion," says the Frenchman chafing in his turn. "And I have the honor to tell you, then," reiterated the other," that you never saw a lion." When the Consular family assembled, it was worse still; the children laughed in his face, and the lady said "that but for his mane and color she should not have guessed what animal he personated." It was a family misfortune. * 66 "Why did you trust a Frenchman with it?" asked his affectionate spouse: "you recollect that Alfieri calls them a nation of Charlatans, whose origin is mud, and that all he ever learned of them was to be silent when they spoke." "But what's to be done now?" demands the disconsolate man. "Send for the little women who understand stuffing, and take their advice." "So we went," continued the old woman, "and were personally introduced to this lion." "Ah! che Leone!" interrupted the daughter, laughing at the recollection of the quizzical beast. "A lion indeed!" said the mother laughing, but less boisterously than her daughter. "What a king of the forest!" said the girl, going off again into inextinguishable merriment: "mother, do you remember his eyes sunk in his head as if he had died of a decline, his chest pinched in to correspond, his belly bulging out like the pouch of an opossum, with all her family at home, his mouth twisted into a sardonic grin, his teeth like some old dowager, one row overlapping the other, his cheeks inflated as if his stomach was in his mouth, and then the position of one of his fore-legs, evidently copied from that of the old bronze horse on the Capitol, while his tail wound three times and a half round its own tip!” “ Busta! basta!” said the old woman, "he was a queer lion, and looked easy enough to kill, if you could only keep your gravity while you attacked him." "And what said the Consul?" asked we, laughing with them. "The Consul cospettoed again and again, and was for knocking him off his legs at once, and then giving him to us to re-arrange. You and your daughter,' said he, 'will take him home and do what you can for me;' but we told him plainly, that to expect a new birth, after such a miscarriage as this, was only to indulge a vain hope, sure to issue in new disappointment. Why, the very tail would have taken us a fortnight to uncurl and make a lion's tail of it; the ears were quite past redemption; the bustle might have been removed from behind, and the wadding placed in front, where it was wanted; but the hide itself was corrugated into plaits that nothing could have removed. 'Cospetto!' said the Consul, poveretto, who had nothing else to say and am I thus to lose my lion, the only lion I ever killed, and such a fine lion too!' and then he fell to abusing the Frenchman. 'I can't keep him here to show my friends,' pursued he; for it is obvious, if I do, that instead of admiring my courage, they will only ridicule me, and perhaps betray me into the hands of that rogue Pinelli as a fit subject for his caricature.' We could not say they would not; so we recom |