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473

and thankful to find myself this evening at Misseri's hotel, which from long association and kind attentions. has become for me more than an ordinary haltingplace.

CHAPTER IX.

LONDON TO KARACHI, VIÂ ST. PETERSBURG, MOSCOW, AND AN EPISODE OF THE EASTERN

NIJNI NOVGOROD.

CRIMEA.

UNDER instructions from the Right Honourable the Secretary of State for India, I returned from Constantinople to London in May 1865; whence, after assuming a general superintendence of the Persian Gulf cable and Anglo-Persian land-line, so far as her Majesty's Government was represented in the latter, I again set forth on the 23rd June, charged with a special mission to Tehran. A Convention was to be concluded with the Shah, in supersession of existing provisional arrangements for the conduct of the telegraph; and I was to impart and be responsible for all details which her Majesty's Minister at the court of Persia might require to be put before him pending negotiations.

Four days in Paris enabled me to confer with the Director-General of Ottoman telegraphs, Agathon Efendi, then on a special mission from Constantinople connected with the resilient question of Turkish finance; as well as to accomplish work incidental to my charge, and proposed journey. Au reste, the time was not one to choose for sight-seeing in this galère. The beau monde had

CH. IX.]

CARA PARIGI.

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fled the bourgeoisie were in the ascendant. Monceaux and St. Cloud were all very well in the way of crowds, of grottoes and waterworks; but what they had to show, animate or inanimate, was of a most familiar kind. The Académie was open, and Marie Saxe and Faure were drawing fair houses to the "Africaine," with its impossible Brahmins and other dramatis personæ ; but the weather was too hot, and there was too little attraction, to make theatres generally desirable to passersby. That huge caravanserai, the Grand Hotel, so largely patronized by American travellers, was as full and unlike a home as usual: but the cafés, the restaurants, the boulevards, in fact all recognized Paris, wanted the verve which makes it so pleasant a reminiscence to the many.

When looking at this beautiful city as it is,' I cannot avoid contrasting it with what it was, not half a century ago; when the Champs Elysées were a kind of out-oftown garden or promenade. There was a Beaujon there, or minor Vauxhall, where fireworks were exhibited at night, and the Montagnes Russes amused loungers in the day. And the streets, how wonderfully improved, not only in width and architectural display, but in order and cleanliness! The shops are brilliant in the extreme: the crowds of passengers on foot, and of vehicles, are increasing the pavement of the busiest thoroughfares is exquisitely smooth and still. If Baron Haussmann has failed to please the Parisian, he has surely merited a statue from the cosmopolite. Much has been done of late years to beautify and improve London; but we have not connected our principal railway stations one with the other, above-ground and through the metropolis, as they have

1 In 1865, before the war and its disastrous consequences.

done across the Channel, to the convenience of the million, if only to the taste of the hundred. The mind which designed the Rue Lafayette, and similar main streets, might have continued the few suggestive yards opened out by the North-Western Railway at Euston in one grand line of thoroughfare to Waterloo Bridge. This en passant, and irrespective of money or property considerations.

On the 28th June, I left Paris for St. Petersburg, and breakfasted the next morning at Berlin. The next morning I crossed the Russian frontier, and at four o'clock on the following afternoon I was dining at the Russian capital; thus accomplishing, in round numbers, some 1,750 miles in less than 80 hours, or 3 days and 3 nights.1

There was little worthy of record on the journey. Between Paris and Cologne, I found myself in a carriage with two smoking merchants, a lady and gentleman who might have been father and daughter, and a Hamburgher who, not content with asking me many substantial questions, answered others of an imaginary nature; for I am not aware of having put them to him, and his replies were addressed with painful directness to myself. He told me of his family, his travels, that he was on his way home, and that there would be great joy on his return: subjects which one perverse nature is apt to put to another perverse nature at unfortunate seasons, when an appeal to sympathy is, at the least, ill-timed. Passing through Berlin, in the omnibus, it was my chance to hear a warm discussion between two fellow-passengers divided

1 In 1871 I made the journey from St. Petersburg to London in much the same time; and in 1872 the improved railway communication in Russia enabled me to reach London from Persia in 13 days.

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CONTINENTAL RAILWAYS.

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in opinion on France and Germany, both as to towns and inhabitants. One was loud for French, and one for German soldiers. In considering Prussia as a military nation, it was questioned whether the military spirit had free action under the influence of pipe-clay, and whether over-attention was not paid to the dress and tenue of the soldier. All the railway stations, for instance, turn out soldierly-looking officials, many admirably dressed men, and the duties are performed with great military precision and discipline: but was this the class of heroes. for war? and had they the élan of the rough, ready, and slipshod Zouave or Turco? On the other hand, France was criticized for her want of solidity and inordinate love of display. To me it seemed that there might be some reason and truth on each side of the question but I little dreamt of the practical solution to be publicly proclaimed, a few years later, to at least one phase of the discussion.

The Prussian first-class carriages on this line are exceedingly comfortable, and seldom, I take it, at ordinary seasons full. Refreshment is fairly provided, and time given to partake of it. I plead guilty to utter ignorance of Königsberg, or when we arrived there; but its hour by the Livret Chaix is 3.47 A. M., and we were all up and stirring at the frontier, four hours further. In the first place it is the Prussian station of Eydtkuhnen ; and five minutes afterwards the Russian one of Wirzboloff. At the latter was an inspection of passports and baggage; and realizing here the very disagreeable position of hearing unintelligible words and wanting some to give in exchange, I took a gloomy view of travelling in general, and was disposed to conviet every man of a surreptitious act who came to a country without know