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

258DRESS 0Г THE WOMEX.

Russia, and, assuredly, one which no man who thinks, would regret the trouble of going to contemplate.

The social, intellectual, and political state of present Russia is the result, and, so to speak, the resume of the reigns of Ivan IV., surnamcd, by Russia herself, the Terrible; of Peter the First, called the Great by the men who glory in aping Europe; and of Catharine II., deified by a people that dreams of the conquest of the world. Such is the formidable heritage over which the Emperor Nicholas holds sway — God knows to what purpose, and our posterity will know also !

I continue to meet, here and there, a few female peasants who are tolerably pretty, but I do not cease to exclaim against the ungraceful appearance of their costume. It is not by their attire that the taste for the picturesque, which I attribute to the Russians, must be judged. The dress of these women would spoil beauty the most perfect. They are, I think, the only females in the world who have taken it into their heads to make themselves a waist above instead of below the bosom. Their shapeless sacks rather than gowns, are drawn together close under the armpits. At the first sight, their entire person gives me the idea of a bale or large loose parcel, in which all the parts of the body are confounded together without care, and yet without liberty. But this costume has other inconveniences rather difficult to describe. One of the worst is, that a Russian female peasant could suckle her child over her shoulder, as do the Hottentots. Such is the inevitable deformity produced by a fashion which destroys the shape of the body. The Circassian females, who better understand the beauty