place the palaces which were formerly kept up along this road, at a great expense, for the use of the Imperial family, without any advantage to the public at large. We travelled from eight to ten miles an hour, and reached Torjok on the morning of the 3rd instant, after a journey of forty-nine hours. The post-horses are in general miserable-looking little animals, but they are much better than they appear, and can go both far and fast. No sort of care is taken of them, and the manner of treating them would soon destroy less hardy creatures.

The Russian postillions, istvostchiks, or, rather, yemstchiks, as they are called, always drive from the box. A great deal of time is lost in changing horses, an operation which we seldom performed in less than half an hour: there is always a great deal of bargaining and disputing as to who is to go, among the peasants who keep the post-horses, and the question seems generally to be decided by lot: they have, however, rules, though I do not understand them. We frequently were driven by a lad of fifteen, but they all seemed perfectly skilful in driving four-inhand, though in a very different fashion from the team of an English coach. The istvostchiks seem, generally speaking, a gay good-humoured set of people one stage, however, we had a very sulky fellow, who did not drive at all to the satisfaction of the conductor, and the latter rated him, till at last the man, in rage, stopped, jumped down, and was pro

C

ceeding to take off his horses, and leave us in the road: the conductor, however, was soon at his back, threatening him with the police, and abusing him most violently, hitting him all the time tolerably hard over the head with a thick leather pipe, till the istvostchik, whom I at first expected to return his blows, at length remounted the box and proceeded.

The dress of the istvostchiks, is that of the Russian peasant in general. They wear a shirt, usually red, which is made without a collar, and which hangs, confined round the waist by a leather belt, over a pair of loose trousers, of blue linen or calico, which are tucked into a pair of boots reaching half way up the leg. Over this dress the Russian seldom thinks it too hot to wear his coat of sheep-skin, with the wool inside; this, however, he throws off when he enters his house. The hat is low crowned, with a large buckle to the band, and the crown projecting all round: many of the istvostchiks adorned their hats with a peacock's feather twisted round them. The use of a razor is unknown among the peasants, and the rough untrimmed beards, in the colour of which red certainly preponderates, give the people a wild uncivilized appearance. The men wear the hair divided on the top of the head, and cut all round the neck like the edge of a bowl: they generally, when working, wear a band round the head to prevent the hair from falling into their eyes. The women as well as the men wear

sheepskin coats and boots, and they generally tie a handkerchief round their heads, so as to conceal the hair: they certainly are not very engaging specimens of womankind.

We travelled day and night without stopping, for we were anxious to make up for the time lost by our detention at Petersburg. Night journeying is, however, the ordinary practice in Russia, excepting for very weak and sickly people: every one is accustomed to it, and post-horses are obtained by night as readily as by day. There is little accommodation for sleeping at the inns; and where it is necessary to rest on the road, as in the case of bad health, or a very long journey, Russians always carry their own beds with

them.

In point of view, we certainly lost little by travelling in the dark, for nothing can be more dreary or monotonous than the greatest part of the road from Petersburg to Torjok: after the first ten or twelve versts we entered a tract of forest, which stretched with few intervals for more than a hundred miles. The whole distance indeed exhibits little but a succession of bleak open country, and thick forest: the road runs generally in a straight line, and one proceeds for miles together along a dead flat, without seeing a human habitation; on each side, a boggy space of fifty or a hundred yards wide is kept clear of trees, and beyond that lies an impenetrable mass of birch and fir wood growing up so thickly that the produc

tion of fine timber is impossible; indeed I hardly saw a tree which appeared more than twenty or thirty years old here and there, where the trees had been cut down, was a neglected space full of grey stumps, and long drawn-up saplings, bending or broken for want of their former support, and many of them black and charred by fire; and the general desolation of the scene was enhanced by heavy rain, which fell almost incessantly. A journey through these forests is like a sea-voyage; one spot resembles another so much, that the traveller seems always to remain in the same place. The only part of the country through which we passed where the view is at all attractive is in the immediate neighbourhood of Valdai, a small town about two hundred versts from Torjok, on the edge of a handsome lake, in which is an island containing a monastery, and around which is some pretty broken ground covered with wood. The only two other towns of any consideration, through which we passed, were Novogorod and Vishny Volotchok. The former, though its name, if literally translated, would be simply New-Town, is one of the most ancient places in Russia: it is situated about two hundred versts from Petersburg, on a fine navigable river, the Volchova, over which is thrown a new and handsome stone bridge. The fortifications of Novogorod were in former times considered impregnable; the place sustained many a siege, but I believe that it retained to the last its reputation as a

was

maiden fortress: there is in the town a ruined Kremlin, a name which seems to have been generally applied to the fortified palace or citadel of a Tartar prince. A few miles on this side of Novogorod, the road crosses another considerable river, by a bridge of boats, which will soon be replaced by a solid structure of stone. Here, the last time Min Russia, travelling with her brother, she narrowly escaped a somewhat serious adventure. They were in an open calêche, and their istvostchik drove them, as these men often do, at a gallop, down upon the bridge, without perceiving that it was open in the middle for a boat to pass. M-, however, instantly remarked the danger, and pointing it out to her brother, they both called loudly to the driver to stop; but this, at the pace they were going, was not easy to effect, and carriage and horses would most probably have been precipitated into the river, had not the istvostchik contrived to run the pole into a load of hay, which was fortunately standing in the way, waiting for the closing of the bridge.

On the road, we met frequent droves of fine fat oxen on their way to Petersburg; they were mostly of a dun colour, and came from Little Russia and the southern provinces. The cattle of the country through which we passed were invariably small and poor, and the sheep and pigs long-legged and ugly. The sheep are of all colours, black, brown, and speckled, but seldom white.