you any account of our journey, I may as well say, that although Petersburg is now so full, that it is difficult to meet with lodgings, we have been fortunate enough to engage an excellent set of rooms, clean and well-furnished, and in one of the best situations in the town-The Little Million—at the Hotel de la Bourse, kept by a Frenchman. Here we established ourselves yesterday; and since we are also provided with an English servant, who has been many years in Russia, we are comfortably settled for the remainder of our stay in this country.

In my last letter from Tamboff, I told you, that from the state of the weather, we were afraid that the ice on the rivers would be unsafe, and the roads become altogether unfit for sledge travelling. The thaw, which excited our alarm, continued for two days after I wrote. On Saturday (the 3d) Reaumur's thermometer stood six degrees above the freezing point; the snow was melting fast, the streets flowing with water, and the account which we received of the roads were such, that we determined in the evening to risk no longer delay, but to set out the following night on our journey, instead of waiting till Tuesday, as we had previously fixed; we feared, indeed, that we had already postponed it too long. About half an hour, however, after we had determined on this precipitate flight, a friend came in and said he had good news to tell us, for that the wind had changed to the north, and that we might expect

a return of frost, and, in fact, to our great delight, before we went to bed, the thermometer was below zero, and the snow was beginning to grow crisp. The following morning we had three degrees of cold; but we did not choose again to alter our plans or trust to the continuance of this favourable weather, since it might prove but of short duration: by the evening, therefore, every thing was ready for our departure.

The last moments of our stay were, as is always the case on such occasions, any thing but agreeable: we took leave of our countryman R—, whom we left with much regret alone in this distant spot, and bade adieu to some other friends, and finally, to my brother and sister-in-law, whose kindness and hospitality had been unbounded during the long period which we had spent in their house, and who, on our departure, as during our stay, forgot nothing which could contribute to our comfort and accommodation. At length, well wrapped up, we arranged ourselves in the kibitka, and set out a quarter of an hour before midnight, to the great satisfaction of our Russian attendant, who would not willingly have commenced the journey on Monday. The road, as we expected, was in a very indifferent state; but the cold, which at first was not intense, increased rapidly, and therefore the snow became hard; and though its surface was much broken, we were able to proceed tolerably fast, and, by eight

o'clock in the morning, we had come about forty miles.

For some reason or other, however, we were driven without stopping, through the town of Kazloff, and we came to no other place where any tolerable accommodation was to be met with, till five o'clock in the afternoon: having therefore travelled for seventeen hours without stopping, except to change horses, we were by this time exceedingly hungry, as it was out of the question to eat in the kibitka, and were somewhat cold; I had, however, slept the greater part of the way in spite of our incessant tossing up and down and from side to side, in the ouchabas.* We had now come a hundred and seventy versts, and in the small town of Riask, we enjoyed the luxury of entering clean and warm rooms, in which we had breakfasted on our way from Moscow in the autumn. Here we disencumbered ourselves of cloaks, warm boots and caps, which we placed around the stove, while our basket, well stored by our kind friends at Tamboff, with every thing we could require on the road, was produced; a steaming semavar,† soon made its appearance; and hot tea and cold partridge pie were not the less agreeable for our seventeen hours' tossing over the snow. After remaining here about an hour and a-half, and getting thoroughly warm, we wrapped ourselves up once more, and travelling all

* Holes in the snow worn by sledges.
†Tea-urn heated with charcoal.

night, reached Riazan about eight o'clock on the Tuesday morning. At Riazan, we were driven to a very fair inn, where we got a comfortable breakfast. We had found the road very bad all night, and we constantly felt the sensation of being upset, when the kibitka tilted sideways on the projecting elbow; after a time, however, we paid little attention to these occurrences, though the shock with which the vehicle righted itself after one of the runners had been lifted off the ground, was not always very agreeable. Owing to the piercing wind which met us, we were forced to keep the leather veil which closed up the front of the kibitka almost always lowered, so that we travelled in the dark, which was unpleasant, although nothing in truth can be more dreary and dismal than the monotonous waste of snow extending around on every side. From Riazan, we were obliged to engage horses to take us all the way without changing, to Columnia, a distance of more than seventy miles, which they accomplished in ten hours, including a stoppage of two hours to bait, half way. We left Riazan at ten in the morning, and got to Columnia by eight in the evening. During the greater part of this day we travelled along the ice of the Occa and another river which runs into it. So long as we were on the ice, the road was smooth and good, but the banks which we had to ascend and descend were steep and dangerous, and we were more than once nearly upset, owing to the carelessness of our istvostchik,

who drove us down these slippery places, in such a manner that the kibitka overpowered the horses and swung round sideways. Towards evening the frost became very intense, and when we reached Columnia, we were told that there were then twenty-five degrees of cold by Reaumur, and this with a searching wind. We, however, stopped here no longer than was necessary to procure horses, which we did after a long delay. At the next station we supped, and were obliged to proceed again with the same horses. The road, during these two stages, was worse than ever, and we got on very slowly, expecting constantly to be upset, in spite of our previous experience, and it was ten o'clock on the Wednesday morning before we reached the second station, the horses which had brought us from Columnia being thoroughly jaded before they had finished their journey. The window at the inn where we breakfasted was filled with writing, and I discovered among the various inscriptions, a few lines in English. had now the satisfaction of knowing that we were but twenty versts from the end of our journey, and procuring fresh horses, we were driven rapidly along over an excellent road, and our passports were demanded at the gates of Moscow before one o'clock. We drove to the Hotel du Nord in the Tverskoi, to which we had been recommended, and here we got rooms, though I cannot say much for their comfort or cleanliness.

We