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

that they introduce upon them new figurantes. They cany with them, in these journeys, cargoes of engravings of the most celebrated pictures of France and Italy, which furnish them with subjects for tableaux vivants, which they cause to be represented with certain modifications of costume.

The villages, and all that they contain, are their own ; so that it may easily be supposed the privilege of the nobleman in Russia extends further than at the Opera Comique of Paris.

Thetavern, open to all the world, is situated

in one of the public squares of the city, a few steps only from a guard-house full of Cossacks, whose stiff bearing and severely gloomy air would impart to foreigners the idea of a country where no one dares to laugh even innocently.

As I have imposed upon myself the duty of communicating the ideas that I have formed of this land, I am obliged to add to the picture already sketched, a few new specimens of the conversation of the parties already brought before the reader.

One boasted of himself and his brothers being the sons of the footmen and the coachmen of their father ; and he drank, and made the guests drink, to the health of all his unknown parents. Another claimed the honour of being brother (on the father's side) of all the waiting-maids of his mother.

Many of these vile boasts are no doubt made for the sake of talking : but to invent such infamies in order to glory in them, shows a corruption of mind that proves wickedness to the very core—wickedness worse even than that exhibited in the mad actions oí' these libertines.