to temperament. One, with a leaning towards mechanics, may work like a batter striving to evolve some piece of mechanism more powerful than had been made before. Another, with less athletic frame, may study Greek and Roman YÊ ology, tracing its influence on the religion of the present day, in which it is now seen as Higher Criticism. A third may take pleasure in rearing, riding, and driving splendid horses; indeed it was from this pursuit that the word 'hobby' arose. It is derived from the Greek hippos, meaning a horse, and the Angk Saxan hoban, a strong, active horse. This derivation will be easily proved to be correct, by comparing it with the expression so often used, that of riding a hobby to death.'

Hobbies help one to concentrate one's attention on some definite object, to strive to attain that object by accurate thought and deed, while they keep the mind from dwelling on harassing subjects for the time being.

No hobby can be entirely useless if entered into intelligently; and many have been of no small service in revealing Nature's secrets. Some great scientists have derived their knowledge from the hobby, taken up in youth, of wandering alone with Nature over the warm bosom of Mother Earth, and learning Nature's lessons there. Besides, one has scope to exercise individuality in one's hobby, and by exercising it to increase the importance of one's opinions, and in that way to make one's self no insignificant unit in the nation.

H. C. BEECHING.

769

REMINISCences oF A DIPLOMATIST.

ST. PETErsburg bEFORE THE CRIMEAN WAR.

III

My progress in the descensus Averno having made the araucarias and archives of Pencarrow as far from me as the Winter Palace, the present narrative cannot benefit by a kindly suggestion that it might be improved by extracts from my letters to my friend of the Cabinet. If Sir William Molesworth, conformably to Lord John Russell's advice, kept my later epistles in his own hands, his behaviour would have been very un-English. When war against Perseus of Macedon was settled in Rome, the matter did not leak out for four years, although all the three hundred members of the Senate were in the secret. In London the equivalent period of reliable official reserve might be three days. The accounts received by our Chancery of the communication of Sir Hamilton's reports to the London press may have been guesswork; but, to judge from the 'Greville Memoirs' and similar books, the Ministerial practice of the time was remarkably liberal in regard to despatches labelled 'Secret and Confidential,' the contents of which, or even the documents themselves, not unfrequently found their way into private hands. The question whether much harm is done by such infractions of the laws of red-tape need not be ventilated here, and I proceed to other topics.

The foreigner visiting high latitudes thinks the proceedings of the sun very strange. Your winter breakfast must be eaten with a lamp which at lunch you require again, as the orb of day is generally invisible. In the summer you long for a little darkness, but it never comes, except during a few minutes of 'twilight grey' good print is always easily readable out of doors, or at a free window. This boreal specialty has its advantages. There could be no more charming excursion than an evening steamtrip down the Neva, and over the ȧvýpiμov yếλaoμa of the head of the gulf of Finland to the lock of the street door,' as the Tsar Alexander called Cronstadt. The study of books and periodicals, and talks with Russian officers, who were mostly VOL. XIX.-NO. 114, N.S.

49

communicative enough on professional topics, had made me a S Intelligence Department regarding the fortress and the fleet, and in the summer I added fresh scraps of knowledge to my existing modicum of information. There was no visible jealousy of strangers. and you could wander round the shore defences of the 'Ra Island' without interruption. You might even walk into the jaw of the terrible Fort Mentschikoff (see my No. 1) and count the twelve-inch guns at your leisure. One evening, the little steamer having dropped me at the pier on the northern, or Finnish, side of the island, near the back of the War Harbour, I passed over a drawbridge through a defended gateway adjacent to a guardhouse and a wall pierced with sixteen loopholes constructed on the semi-casemate 'Haxo' system. This minor apparatus of protective masonry satisfied the needs of the local situation; for the water-road between this end of the island and the promontory of Lisi Noss, on the opposite Finnish coast, was obstructed by a double line of wooden piles filled in with masses of granite, so that the passage of an enemy's fleet by this back channel of approach was out of the question. Getting into a pairoared boat at the pier, after taking a look round, and ascertaining from the men that the local depth of water did not exceed two fathoms, I ordered the boat to put about, whereupon, skirting the War Harbour and the awful Mentschikoff, we made for Oranienbaum, a small town on the south side of the gulf, where the Tsar had a summer residence. The pull over the six miles of the Oranienbaum spit afforded a delightful view of Cronstadt's tiara of proud towers' rising at airy distance' above the water, with its gleams of pearl and silver. In the boat the usual horological puzzle came forward: with broad daylight my watch-hands pointed to 12 P.M. The nocturnal row ended, one of the men found an istvoschik, who seemed to be an unusual proficient in the Russian science of bargaining, without resorting to which you never paid away a single kopeck. To the usual question Skolko?' (How much ?), my friend in the kaftan answered Vossem rubleicerebrom' (eight silver roubles), a proposal met on my side by the offer of five, which was accepted. The jolting of a good three hours' homeward canter did not keep me awake, and after the door of the Legation had been opened for me by the dvornik, I went quickly upstairs, and was again soon in the sleep of the just.

The residential splendours of the Bay of Cronstadt are not confined to the capital. Over the pleasant meadow and villa

country within a radius of twenty miles from the city is scattered a profusion of palaces and châteaux, each in its park and garden, built for Peter the Great and his successors by Italian and French architects. I must skip the delightful summer resort Oranienbaum, called from its walks and flower-beds the Russian Versailles'-a comparison which Lenôtre would probably have resented. Of more magnetic interest than that favourite residence of Peter and Catharine, and its Chinese garden and other adjuncts, were the golden cupolas of Peterhof—a name now familiar enough— rising above a noble terrace in park-like grounds beautified by purling brooks, water-basins, cascades, and other appurtenances of horticultural and stone-work decoration. The resources of verbal description are baffled by the array of gilt statues and vases encircling a marble basin faced by a double waterfall, where a golden Samson, holding apart the jaws of his lion to let him spout up a huge jet of water, points the way to rows of further fountains leading through a park to the shore of the gulf.

The spacious central palace, copied (not without limitations) from Versailles by Peter and Catharine, was much occupied by Nicholas I. for his villeggiatura. The splendid internal appointments of silk, Gobelins, and gilding, the furniture of tortoise-shell and Oriental lacquer, the crystal chandeliers, the pictures, especially the portrait hall of pretty women, constituted a display of the gorgeous which some of the Tsar's summer banquet guests were disposed to criticise. The list of the sights of Peterhof is not exhausted by the above short catalogue. There are several parks, islands, streams, and gardens; there are, for instance, Peter's little home Marly, his familiar Monplaisir and its pictures, the small garden château, the Belvedere, with its broad steps and statues of marble and bronze, the 'English' park, the palace, and pheasant-house, and, to give another example, an extra Hermitage and its dininghall with a hundred pictures; and last, not least, a marvellous anticipation of a modern invention-a lift in the middle of the table for fresh dishes and dirty plates, which enabled the Tsar and his company to guzzle ad libitum without the interference of servants. The Strelna region, a few miles nearer the capital than Peterhof, and Krasnoe Selo, a town somewhat further south, tell the same palatial story, and you are then not far from Gatschina, where you find another large imperial residence of Romanof proportions, flanked by colonnades, and holding six hundred rooms (who has counted them ?), besides a theatre and many works of

art, all environed by beauties of wood and water scenery. It are then ten miles from Tsarkoe Selo (now known as the Russi Aldershot), where, again, is another park crowded with bridg towers, grottoes, monuments, arches, marble gateways, and s sidiary picturesque objects too good for the over-decorated and painted Rococo palace in which they stand. Within, the building is a treasury of pictures and sculpture. There are floors an walls inlaid with mother-of-pearl, amber, lapis-lazuli, and lacquer and there is a bedchamber furnished with indescribable luxuries glass and porcelain. But your travels are not yet ended: on the wooded heights commanding a little neighbouring town is the pari of Pavlovsky, a labyrinth of grand avenues, lakes, streamlets, rich flower-beds, temples, towers, marble steps, and statues. The retively modern edifice may be of decadent style, but its columns: façades and pillared arcades with marble adjuncts have an inposing air. As to the interior, the walls of the grand suites of rooms are hung with pictures, and judiciously decorated with antiques. There are choice collections of books, coins, and cameos, the fine fleur of the porcelain of Sèvres being represented by a noble set of cups and saucers and an unrivalled bedroom service.

At Pavlovsky, if tired of the artificial picturesque and the expensive magnificent, the visitor could find repose in pleasures of another strain. The park was, and still is, a Vauxhall, with a restaurant where, conformably to the enjoyable customs prevalent in every country of civilised Europe except our own, you can lounge, eat, and drink in the open air of heaven. There was an outdoor pavilion for the orchestra, whose members were no scratch lot, but a band of finished artists. Over fifty years ago, as my good luck would have it, the illustrious Austrian, Johann Strauss II. (the composer, I need not say, of the Schöne blaue Donau' waltz), took an engagement for the Pavlovsky summer concerts. The piece might be the melancholy 'Retour' waltz, of which I spoke in a previous page, or a movement of a symphony, or an overture by Mozart or Weber, masters recognised in those benighted days as great. The tempos taken, and the devices of instrumental expres sion employed, always showed that the bâton was in a master's hand. The eatables of this suburban restaurant were of such artistic quality that you thought Vienna must be paramount in the kitchen as well as in the orchestra. One afternoon, after a few appetising nibbles at a pile of caviare of fine Astrakhan brand, I called for a plate of the inimitable national soup made from