nary examination by a Russian physician, we were drafted off, each to a separate but most comfortable apartment; we were obliged to strip there, and having esconsed ourselves in an odd-looking costume, consisting of a flannel gown, calico cap, and low quartered slippers, were permitted to wander whither we pleased about the grounds. Thus commenced our quarantine; and this pretty range of buildings, with its charming grounds overlooking the Black Sea, (which, by the way, looked always white to me,) was the Lazaretto. Quarantine and Lazaretto are words of fearful import to the ears of a traveller; they were so to me once, and I am bound to make the amende honorable by stating, that during my fourteen days of purification, I have seldom passed a pleasanter period. We had an excellent bill of fare each day, provided by an officer attached to the establishment, and at a moderate rate; books, billiards, coffee, and conversation were to be had at all reasonable hours, the only drawback on our feelings of enjoyment being, that like Sterne's starling, we could'nt get out," and that whither we went, there also travelled by our side or at our tail a grim, withered, grey-moustached, black-belted veteran, called a guardiano, and fully entitled, by the constancy of his attentions, to that appellation.

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As a tourist for pleasure, time was a matter of little moment to me, but with many of my companions in captivity it was very different. The Jew, whose soul was in his traffic; the Georgian, hurrying back for another cargo of beauty to glad the eyes of a Turkish voluptuary; the French modiste, anxious to change Parisian fashions into Russian roubles; all these, and we had samples of each, were clamorous for liberty, while my young Russian acquaintance chafed upon his bit with a better grace and from lofter motives, but with equal impatience.

The successful issue of his present mission would help him on, he hoped, in his profession, and in a country where military rank was considered of such value, this was a matter of paramount importance; but coupled with his dreams of glory and ambition, there were others of a softer, though not less exciting nature, which rendered his present delay doubly irksome, and promised to lend added impetus to the motion of his drosky wheels, once it was over.

This latter cause of his wish for liberty I discovered by accident-and thus:-When we were examined and obliged to resign our garments for the purposes of purification by

fumigation, our resignation was positive and our deprivation literal; no matter how valu able or how insignificant the article was, our loss of it for four and twenty hours was certain, at the end of which time all our goods and garments were returned to us with great civility and in perfect good order. His and mine, as it chanced, were returned at one and the same moment, and while he treated rings, brooches, watch chains, and such like, with perfect nonchalance, stowing them away with an utter indifference as to their shine or polish, after their recent exposure to the fumes of sulphuric aid, there was one small article of virtù which he received back with the trembling eagerness of an accomplished connoisseur, looking, and twisting, and lingering over it with a devotion which never halted or tired until he appeared thoroughly satisfied of its perfect escape from damage in the ordeal it had undergone. This was a chain very delicate in its texture, and manufactured of bright hair, to which was attached a locket, bearing on one side a portion of hair similar in colour to that which formed the chain, and surmounted by a cypher, and on the other the portrait of a beautiful girl, with the blue eyes and bright hair proper to the north, but whose lips, cheek, brow, and exquisitely innocent and confiding expression of feature, would have done credit to the most genial clime that the sun visits.

He and I were pretty nearly of the same age-our course of travel had been over the same ground, our tastes and habits were similar, and with these materials of assimilation, we found ourselves every hour advancing to that point where men cast the acquaintance and commence the friend. With us, too, the consummation was possibly arrived at the sooner in consequence of my accidental glance at his treasure. Dull indeed must that tongue be that love cannot render loquacious, and this proverbial privilege was never honoured more or used in a truer spirit than by him, who, as we strolled and sauntered through the walks or seated ourselves beneath an acacia, touched upon his own feelings and the worth and beauty of her who called them forth, with an ardour, and at the same time a delicacy, which touched me from its truth and delighted me with its manly and dignified simplicity.

His father had been improvident, and had died, leaving a noble name and many debts; but his mother had redeemed the credit of the man she loved, by parting with all that she could dispose of, retaining but a pittance, and retreating to privacy; comforted, amid

privation, by the sacred thought that her husband's grave was unvisited by the tear or the curse of those whose means he had squandered with a prodigal generosity rather than a reckless profusion; and content to hope that the manly boy, who was ever at her side or looking into her eyes for affection or information, would again redeem the fame and fortunes of that house, whose unstained dignity she had suffered many sorrows to uphold.

of her child! For one boy that has been spoiled, a thousand have been saved; where she has weakened one brave spirit, she has imbued many and many an irresolute one with-but I forget my limits, and must not be seduced from my subject.

My young friend was an accomplished linguist, and this attainment he owed to his mother, as he owned, and with a sparkling eye, he did many others. In truth he had seldom quitted her side for any length of time, until, at her particular and often repeated desire, he had proceeded to travel, to which she had urged him with a double motive of allowing him to see something more and better than the manners and customs of his own still demi-civilized country, and to wean him from an incipient passion, whose growth she looked upon with apprehension, and whose further progress she wished to cut short if she could.

It was not that she disliked the object, for she was her own dearest although youngest friend; and had the fortunes of his house been at their highest, and he the possessor of them, she would have welcomed Eglina M*** to her home and heart as a participant of her son's fortune and affection, with pleasure at his selection and pride in his having made it. But he had his way to make in the world, with no better weapon than his sword, and no other shield than a fair reputation. In the prosecution of his designs years must roll by before he could hope, in an uncertain profession, to arrive at fortune sufficient to claim the hand of one who, though humble in her own estimation, was looked upon by her father as a means, and a certain one, too, of retrieving his affairs, and even of adding an increased splendour to a name already noble.

There is now, and I believe always has been, a prejudice in the minds of the majority against what has been called home education, particularly for boys, and principally from the fear that the maternal softness would cling to them through life, or permit, by over indulgence, the growth of a still greater evil. To all this I am a sceptic. The chicken-hearted boy will be an effeminate man, though he had fagged at Eton and capped at Cambridge. His spirit, such as it is, will be secure at home from those rude and tyrannous assaults, which are much better calculated to break it utterly than to redeem or arouse it; while his peaceful tastes and habits stand a much better chance of being nourished, fostered, and made capable of useful public exhibition or application. On the other hand, I doubt the propriety of sending even the sturdiest sapling to take fresh root and put forth its first buds of promise among strangers. Far be it from me to doubt the good sense, trustworthiness, or benevolence of the many clever men who maintain themselves as principals of seminaries; but yet, let their system be ever so complete, let their care be ever so diligent, there is, or ought to be, a never ending and untiring patience about the guardianship of a parent to which no other can hope to arrive. To the fulfilment Prince M*** was a character common of this duty I can admit no excuse; none enough among the Russian nobility; he had in the occupation of time, for we have known commenced life as the possessor of sixty and seen men immersed in affairs of over- thousand serfs-the management of whose whelming moment, find leisure for it ;-none, labour, as my readers know, goes to form surely, in the pursuits of pleasure, since that, the best source of revenue to their owner; and that alone, ought to be their greatest;- but serf and soil had gradually changed none in ignorance, since the same sum that is hands beneath the temptations of a gamexpended abroad will procure an instructor at bler's spirit and a spendthrift's anti-social home; while in that home, ruled by a cheerful pleasures; and those dreams which selfishspirit and regulated by a religious one, the ness had prolonged were only broken when germ of error is observed and uprooted before his dearest friend came to demand possession it can become a canker to vitiate the whole of his last demesne, risked and won the moral constitution, and all those domestic night before, and to let in the unwelcome ties strengthened and cemented, which con- tidings that his parting with it would leave verts our plaything into our friend, our as- him little better than a pauper. This, howsociate, and, if need be, our supporter. Ne-ever, he was too proud to acknowledge, and ver tell me of the weakening influence his fortunate friend too prudent to hint at; of a mother upon the conduct or character the debt of honour was therefore paid,

although many another remained due. From that time he had lived a life of mean and truckling dependence on the good offices of his connexions or the bounty of government, too old or too indolent to redeem his errors by honourable exertion, pride battling with a late remorse, (not for his acts but the consequence of them,) and with but one earthly vision to keep hope alive, and that a wretched one-namely, that by his daughter's acknowledged beauty he might once more arrive at independence.

My young friend's mother was a connexion of the Prince's deceased wife; she had promised her to keep watch over her child, and so far as the very irregular movements and passions of the surviving parent permitted, she had kept her word, by corresponding with her when absent, and receiving her with a kind and motherly feeling when she was permitted to make her a visit. To the little Eglina these visits were of consequence in more ways than one; she had the good feeling to appreciate her friend's anxiety for her welfare, and the good sense to turn all her lessons to account-all but one, at least, for she never could be taught the reason why the love she felt for Feodor should not be proclaimed to all the world. Time came at last, however, and discovered to her the true reason; since, as she advanced from childhood into maidenhood, during the interval between her visits, and as Feodor was springing from a pretty boy into an extremely well-looking, well-educated, and accomplished man, even she herself began to think that the mirror of the world is not always to be placed before our hearts, and that there are more sentences written thereon than it is either necessary or desirable that its eye should be brought to bear upon.

There were two persons, however, who made discovery of what she was now doing her best to conceal, and who acted, though after a different fashion, in consequence. The first of these was Feodor himself, and his proceeding was a simple one: he gave her secret for secret-returned her love for love-poured into her ear those burning words of youthful ardent passion, which sink from the blushing cheek into the beating heart-words that never can be spoken in truth or received with sincerity but once in a life; he had received her troth and returned it, and now, come weal, come woe," had committed himself before the eye of heaven and his own honour to have henceforth but one object in life, and that object her happiness. The other individual to whom her struggles, not against love but

against being betrayed into an exhibition of it, were obvious, was the Countess Demidoff, Feodor's mother. Her proceeding was simple in its way, too: without apparent design she spoke in general terms of her son's utter want of fortune; of the habits and probable expectations of the Prince; of her own dislike to marriage in which love is the only provider: and, finally, she concluded by stating her strong hope that many years would pass away before Feodor would give way to a passion, which becomes an unmanly and a weak one, when circumstances are known beforehand to be adverse to its indulgence. To all this Eglina had but one answer to make-tears, bitter tears; and although to them were added those of Feodor, when he learned the nature of the conversation, and although the youthful and devoted pair knelt before the Countess to pray for her blessing on their love and her approval of it, she was resolute in her negative, and another day saw the maiden returning to her father, and Feodor's preparation for travel begun.

Love has its mysteries, and of them are its added growth from opposition, and its continued intensity during absence. The first may perhaps find a solution in selfishness, vanity, a desire to conquer obstacles for the sake of the triumph, or some other of the thousand foibles to which we give a better name; but the latter is a different and a holier thing. It matters not how bright may be the face of the woman we love, absence lends it a lovelier aspect-casts round her beauty an additional halo-lends to her voice a softer tone-gives to her mind a more spiritual essence, and is apt to convert the lover, by the force of his own feelings, into the adorer. And then what man worthy of being loved is there, that does not fling by the mere ignorant present, and accustom him to look upon himself, even from the very dawn of well-founded passion, as the future protector and champion of the one heart which is content to cast itself upon his generosity and confide in his love?

leaving father, kindred, country-trusting to him, and him alone, for joy, honour, comfort, and support; making him, under God, its sole stay-its happiest hope on earthits deepest regret in death. In the soul of such men love establishes itself as in its own home, teaching all other passions to yield to his, and making all other purposes subserve to his more powerful ones. Absence can have no power over that whose hopes lie ever in the future; which can call up a beauty heightened by distance-a home, hopes, prosperity, children-looking through

the vista of time, and seeing as the boundary of the prospect an honoured old age after a quiet life, in which hand in hand the love of his youth, the wife of his manhood, walks with him towards the last great trial, which neither of them shudder at, because both are prepared for.

In the above paragraph I have but given to my reader sentiments gleaned from one of the many conversations I enjoyed with my young Russian friend, and it may therefore be conjectured that love with him had lost nothing of its intensity by travel. His three years of absence glided by, and he returned but to seek out, to renew, to reiterate, to witness the fullness of woman's beauty and of woman's love; and he once more departed upon his present mission, assured that its success was the high road to fortune, and only valuing the prospect because brighter, dearer, holier ones were linked with the association.

black and white stripes, which always stands before the post-house, is, as you think, out of sight, your smoking wheels stop, your door is opened, and the villainous Jew physiognomy of the post-master appears, to learn from the titles set down in your podoroschni, how far and how much he can extort. If you are untitled, his demands are only bounded by what he thinks it possible your purse can bear, while your complaints are treated with cool and contemptuous neglect; if your titles are of the lower grades of nobility, still he makes his venture; but if you happen to be a man of high rank or an official travelling on government business, it is "tout autre chose;" his look falls, his back bends, horses, traces, driver, appear with the celerity of thought, and without a murmur, he closes the door, and again you start with whoop and a yell to receive the same attention at the next post. Thus it happened with me; my companion's military With such feelings and hopes it may be and diplomatic character served me in good well supposed that our days of quarantine stead, hurrying us forward, and saving my were any thing but white ones in his calen- roubles in the way of bribery. Without dar; and when we had paid our restaura- stopping even in the renowned city of Chioff, teur, compensated our guardiano, shaken we still rolled onward over the Bog and hands with the principal director, fixed our- across the Neiper, through Orel, Toula, and selves each in a corner of a very respectable I know not how many villages with barbasort of travelling carriage, purchased for us rous names, until at the close of, I think, by the kindness of the said director, and the eleventh day, we came in full view of found ourselves travelling with break-neck Moscow, with its thirty versts of cireumferspeed at the tail of four wild, shaggy, light- ence, its six hundred churches, its innumelimbed steeds, driven by a postillion as wild rable convents, its great bell and greater gun and shaggy as themselves, on the high-road-its Kremlin, and its Russian baths, which to Moscow; my Russian's spirits rose with I warn the tender or thin-skinned tourist the occasion, life, love, glory, seemed all never to indulge in-except as a foretaste of within his grasp, and it must have been a purgatory. far greater evil than the ordinary accidents or delays of a journey, that could have shortened his laugh or disturbed his equanimity.

There is no country in the world in which travelling post is so delightful to a traveller who loves a speedy termination to his journey, as in Russia, and there is, possibly, no other country in which the means and appliances of travel look so miserable. A small race of horses, whose hides, manes, or tails seem utterly innocent of sheers, brush, or currycomb; traces and head gear of ropes, (at least in nine cases out of ten,) and a driver looking more beastly than the beasts themselves, in a sheepskin dress, "with the woolly side in," a wool cap, a beard and moustaches that look like wool too, and brains that have gone wool gathering. Yet with this miserable turn out, verst after verst is flown over, and before the last high square post, with its

After our two thousand miles' journey it was agreed that we should stop a day or two in the city, as well to take rest as to view whatever was worth seeing. So strong was my sympathy with my companion's very evident and natural impatience, that I would have most willingly proceeded on the next morning towards Petersburgh, but that he would by no means permit. Accordingly, at the discretion of our postilion, we stopped opposite an excellent hotel, when the door of our carriage was opened by a short-jacketed, unbearded son of Kent, who bade us welcome in the accents of genuine Cockaigne, told us that the host was a true-bred Englishman, and that so long as we stopped, English fare and fashions were at our service.

This was all very comfortable to me, so I ordered a dinner of roast beef on the spot to begin with, and then entered the hotel, leaving my friend in the carriage to proceed in quest of letters from home at the post-office,