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

294BEDS.—VISIT TO PErøCE .

The articles of furniture least used in a Russian house are beds. The women servants sleep in recesses similar to those in the old fashioned porters' lodges in France; whilst the men roll themselves up on the stairs, in the vestibule, and even, it is said, in the saloons upon the cushions, which they place on the floor for the night.

This morning I paid a visit to Prince. He

is a great nobleman, but decayed in estate, infirm and dropsical. He suffers so greatly that he cannot get up, and yet he has no bed on which to lie, — I mean to say, nothing which would be called a bed in lands where civilisation is of older date. He lives in the house of his sister, who is absent. Alone in this naked palace, he passes the night on a wooden board covered with a carpet and some pillows. In all the Russian houses that I have entered, I have observed that the screen is as necessary to the bed of the Slavonians as musk is to their persons:—intense dirtiness does not always exclude external elegance. Sometimes however they have a bed for show, an object of luxury, which is maintained through respect for European fashions, but of which no use is ever made. The residences of several Russians of taste are distinguished by a peculiar ornament — a little artificial garden in the corner of the drawin£f-room. Three long- stands of flowers are ranged round a window so as to form a little verdant saloon or kind of chiosc, which reminds one of those in gardens. The stands are surmounted by an ornamented balustrade, which rises to about the height of a man, and is overgrown with ivy or other climbing plants that twist around the trellis work, and produce