as they afterwards found to be the case, the Russian peasantry in general read the Scriptures: the poor man's joy on his being told the book was his own, is said to have been indescribable; and such was his feeling of gratitude, that it was with the greatest difficulty he could be prevailed on to accept any remuneration for the trouble and expense of accommodating his guests. As a contrast to the conduct of this poor man, we give the following account of their reception at Krestzi by the wife of one of those dissenters from the old faith,' named Staroværtzi, who are as averse from having any concerns with the members of the orthodox Greek church, as the ancient Jews were from having any dealings with the Samaritans.'

'One of our number happening to have metal buttons on his travelling coat, and another having a tobacco-pipe in his hand, the prejudices of the mistress of the house were alarmed to such a degree, that all the arguments we could use were insufficient to prevail on her to make ready some dinner for us. When compelled to do any service of this kind, to such as are not of their own sect, they consider themselves bound to destroy the utensils used on the occasion; to prevent which loss, those who are more exposed to the intrusion of strangers, generally keep a set of profane vessels for the purpose. As the proprietor of the house we had entered appeared to be in affluent circumstances, it is not improbable that he might have furnished it with something of the kind; but the tobacco-pipe proved an insuperable obstacle to their use. So great, too, is the aversion of this people to snuff, that if a box happen to have been laid on a table belonging to them, the part on which it lay must be planed out before it can be appropriated to any further use. They live in a state of complete separation from the church; only they cannot marry without a license from the priest, for which they are sometimes obliged to pay a great sum of money. The sacrament, as it is usually called, they never celebrate; and baptism is only administered to such as are near death, on the principle adopted by some in the early ages of the church, that such as relapse, after receiv ing this rite, are cut off from all hopes of salvation.'-p. 26.

At a place called Vodova, our travellers met with another religious sect, named Bezpopootchini, or the Priestless :' their village had recently been burnt down by lightning, or, as they said, burnt by the will of God.' It seems they have a superstitious fancy, (which, our author says, prevails also in some parts of Germany,) that milk alone will quench fires kindled by lightning; and the consequence is, as may well be supposed, it not unfrequently happens that, when this is resorted to instead of a plentiful supply of water, whole villages are consumed, and the inhabitants reduced to circumstances of great misery.'

The town of Tver is estimated to contain a population of twenty thousand souls. It is considered one of the finest towns in the empire for its squares and edifices. It has a beautiful

cathedral

cathedral of Gothic architecture, twenty-eight churches, three monasteries, a magnificent palace, and other public buildings, which altogether give the town a very imposing and agreeable appearance.' Here, too, the public seminaries for the education of youth correspond with the wealth and extent of the place.

Moscow has so often been described that we must pass over what Mr. Henderson says of this splendid city, and its richlydecorated churches, in one of which,-the cathedral of the Assumption, he was told that the French, in 1812, erected a furnace at one end of the church in which they were proceeding to melt all the candlesticks, and other articles of gold and silver which they could collect, but being surprised in the very act by the sound of a retreat, they made off with as many articles as they could carry, but were stopped by the Cossacks, who recovered to the amount of eighteen and a half poods of gold (six hundred and sixty-six pounds weight English), and three hundred and twenty poods of silver (five thousand five hundred and twenty pounds.') In this, and in the cathedral of the Archangel Michael, are deposited many curious and valuable antiquities and Greek MSS.; and a still greater number in the library of the Holy Synod and the patriarchal residence. In the great hall of the latter, Dr. Henderson attended the preparation of the holy oil, which is conducted with much ceremony every third or fourth year, and with such ingredients only as are prescribed by the Levitical law. We must also pass over two chapters of seventy or eighty pages on the origin of the Slavonic people, their name, language, and alphabet, with an account of the various editions of the Slavonic bible, and the Russian versions of the Scriptures. These chapters, we doubt not, will deeply interest many readers; but to examine them critically, nay, even to give a mere abstract of them, would occupy a larger space than we can at present afford.

Our author pauses at Maloi Jaroslavitz, which, says he,' will ever be memorable in the annals of Europe, as the spot where Napoleon lost his first battle on the disastrous retreat from Moscow.' This unfortunate town was successively taken and retaken seven times in the course of three days. It was at a short distance from this place, and on the bank of the Louja, that Buonaparte, according to Ségur, took refuge in the habitation of a weaver-an old, crazy, filthy, wooden hut; in a dirty, dark room of which, partitioned off by a cloth, this singular man abandoned himself to a state of despondency as soon as he was made fully sensible of the unassailable nature of the Russian position. Here he is said to have spent the night in great agitation-now rising, now lying down again, and calling out incessantly, yet not a single word would he utter to those about him.

Proceeding towards Tula, and passing one of the estates of

the

the Princess Galitzin, of Moscow, the only people observed at work were females; some breaking hemp, some mending the roads, and others managing the plough. More robust pictures of health,' says our author, we never recollect to have seen in any country.' Tula has been called, and Mr. Henderson says not unaptly, the Sheffield of Russia-we have even heard it called the Birmingham; but it is little deserving of either appellation. Excepting the imperial manufactory of small arms, which is under the superintendance of an Englishman of the name of Jones, and in which it is said upwards of nine thousand people are generally employed, the manufacture of other species of hardware would be nothing thought of, even in one of the villages appended to the two English towns above mentioned. It is but recently that coal has been discovered in the neighbourhood; and that is so mixed with pyrites, as to be unfit to be used in the manufacture of iron. Tula, however, is a thriving place, and the valley in which it is situated is beautiful. It has an excellent gymnasium, containing two hundred and fifteen scholars; a Lancasterian school, and a spiritual academy, affording instruction to nearly six hundred students. Everywhere, as our travellers proceeded southerly, they observed that new buildings had been erected for the increased population, and improvements of various kinds were obvious. Among other matters, the state of the roads, that first and most essential point, seems to have been receiving much attention. These,' they tell us,

were also improved, and we had now a fair specimen of their size, which is such as necessarily fills a foreigner with surprise. They are formed by digging six ditches, that run parallel with each other, and leave intermediate spaces, the middle one of which is about forty feet in breadth, and is appropriated for the use of the military, the posts, and travellers. On either side of this is a fine walk, lined on both sides with a row of young trees, which, when grown, will afford an excellent shelter from the rays of the sun; and without the walks are two ordinary-sized roads for the boors, carriers, &c. Having been once made, the roads in Russia are maintained at little comparative expense, as they consist merely of the soil, which is either sand or a kind of hardened turf; and excepting some places where the wet is collected, afford the most agreeable and easy travelling of any in the world. That between the two capitals used to be extremely bad, as, indeed, part of it still is, consisting of planks or branches of trees, laid across the road; but a fine chaussée, almost equal to any in Europe, is now forming, which will greatly facilitate the intercourse between those large cities.'-Henderson, p. 146.

At Orel the Bishop Jonah entered cordially into the views of our travellers. He informed them that the number of churches in his diocese amounted to nearly nine hundred; but that, from extreme poverty, few of the priests were in possession of copies of

the

that

the Holy Scriptures,-indeed that some of them were so poor they had never, at one time, in the whole course of their lives, had so much as six rubles (about five shillings) in their possession; and yet, at every town Dr. Henderson visited in this district, hundreds of youths were found in training for the church. There was present, however, at the committee of the Bible Society, one venerable priest, turned of ninety years, who had not only the desire, but the means of doing good. He has sometimes at his house three hundred poor persons, entirely dependant on him for their subsistence; he reads and expounds the Bible to them, prays with them, and endeavours, by personal conversation, to direct their attention to the "bread of life," and the infinitely important concerns of eternity.'. Every morning at four o'clock, this good old patriarch is, we are told, to be regularly found at his devotions in the church, and not even the rigours of a Russian winter are able to cool his zeal.-In walking the streets of Orel, our travellers were struck by the appearance of a large house, the windows of which were secured by iron bars, and filled with the heads of females, whose demeanour induced the strangers to suppose them confined in a house of correction. It was found, on mentioning the circumstance to the bishop, that these ladies belonged to a theatrical band, supported by one of the nobility; and mistake,' says Dr. Henderson, wonderfully pleased his eminence, as it furnished him with an additional argument on the demoralizing tendency of the stage.'

6

our

At Bielgorod, or the White Town,' a spectacle presented itself to our travellers, which, they tell us, quite overpowered their feelings. At an early hour, the people who had collected from all parts of the government, and many of them from the governments adjacent, began to assemble in and around the cathedral; and after mass had been performed by the bishop, and an oration pronounced by one of the priests, an image of the saint, whose festival they were celebrating, was taken down from its niche, to be carried in solemn procession to a monastery at the distance of about thirty versts, where it was to remain during the fair about to be held in that place. Some of the priests, dressed in robes of yellow silk, embroidered with gold, carried a copy of the Gospels, richly gilt, and thickly studded with gems; others the banners; numbers supported crosses of silver and gold; and, last of all, followed the image, placed in a large ark, or car, borne upon the shoulders of four of the priests. As the procession entered the grand square in the middle of the town, it was joined by the pilgrims, to the number of twenty thousand, who all moved forward, with sticks or branches of trees elevated in the air; and on their leaving the town, an immense cloud of dust, carried up into the atmosphere, marked the direction in which they proceeded.'-Henderson, pp. 155, 156. Leaving the government of Kursk, our travellers entered the

luxuriant

luxuriant pasture-grounds of the Ukraine, or Malo-Russia (Little Russia), which supply the markets of Petersburgh, Moscow, and other great towns of the empire with cattle. The Malo

Russians,' says Dr. Henderson, 'seem more disposed to cultivate the comforts of life than the generality of their neighbours; their manners are simpler and their morals more incorrupt, and a considerable degree of mental cultivation is discoverable in their ordinary intercourse.' The country they inhabit has always been described as the finest portion of the Russian dominions, and our travellers seem to have found it so. The large herds that were grazing in every direction; the peasants engaged in agricultural pursuits; the number of carriers passing on the road; and the constant succession of hill and dale, with beautiful copses of different sizes, afforded altogether an interesting and delightful prospect.' The scene, however, was entirely changed when they passed through Valki, and entered Little Tartary by a breach in an earthen wall, erected in former days as a defence against the Tartars. It was eight feet high and twelve thick, and is said to run, from south-west to north-east, to the distance of more than five hundred miles. Here every vestige of wood had disappeared, and that vast steppe commences, which stretches, without interruption, to the Palus Mæotis, the Black Sea, and the mountains of the Caucasus, and from the Austrian frontiers to the grand Uralian chain. 'To whatever side we turned,' says Mr. Henderson, nothing presented itself to our view but sepulchral heights, and the remains of ancient camps and intrenchments, so that we literally travelled over an immense Aceldama, the awful memento of human depravity.' It is remarkable enough that the sepulchral mounds, scattered in such profusion over these regions, run in an eastern direction, exactly in the line in which the Tartar hordes pursued their way into Europe; and they bear precisely the same character on the Jenesei that they exhibit in Russia.

At Pultowa, where Charles the Twelfth fought the disastrous battle which obliged him to abandon his brave but vanquished warriors, and take refuge in the dominions of the Grand Signior, our travellers visited the large tumulus which perpetuates the memory of this event. It is a mound of earth, twenty-five feet high by one hundred in circumference round the base. The inhabitants are said to repair to it annually, to celebrate the victory of the Russians, and charitably to perform at the same time a mass for the souls of the slain.

Tchernigof is but a miserable town. The population amounts to upwards of seven thousand, among whom is a considerable number of Jews, a poor, ragged, miserable-looking set of human beings as are to be seen anywhere in the world. During our stay here, the mus

quitoes