Russia in 1839 -Empire of the Czar: A Journey Through Eternal Russia

the case in his family; they say it is a gift which he has inherited from his mother.

He shines among the young people of his suite without our discovering what it is that preserves the distance which may be easily observed to exist between them, unless it be the perfect gracefulness of his person. Gracefulness always indicates an amiable mental endowment; it depicts mind upon the features, embodies it in the carriage and the attitudes, and pleases at the very time that it commands. Russian travellers had spoken to me of the beauty of the prince as quite a phenomenon. Without this exaggeration I should have been more struek with it; besides, I could not but recollect the romantic mien, the arch-angelic form, of his father and his uncle, the Grand Duke Michael, who, when, in 1815, they visited Paris, were called " the northern lights," and I felt inclined to be severe, because I had been deceived : yet, notwithstanding this, the Grand Duke of Russia appears to me as one of the finest models of a prince that I have ever met with.

With the inelegance of his equipages, the disorder of the baggage, and the carelessness of the servants, I have been mueh struck. In contrasting this imperial cortege with the magnificent simplicity of English equipages, and the careful superintendence that English servants bestow upon everything, one is reminded that to have one's carriages and harness made in London would not be all that is requisite towards attaining that perfection in material, or external arrangements, the possession of which constitutes the superiority of the English in so matter-of-fact an a¤;e as our own.

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Yesterday I went to see the sun setting on the в 3