Russian Life and Society

CHAPTER THIRD. BRUSSELS. THANKSGIVING IN BERLIN. WILNA. — Letter to My Mother . — Berlin in 1866. — Thanksgiving Dinner. — My Fairy Sleigh. — Stop Over at Wilna. — The Russian Beggar. — A Tour of the Town. — The Russian Horse, Sleigh and Coachman. — At Wilna. The Chief of Police.

I happen to be aware of this fact, Mama, because yesterday, strolling about the Berlin gallery we met first Mr. Urbino (Dealer in choice foreign books in Boston) and afterwards Mr. Kellogg, (My brother Willie’s travelling friend) the latter of whom told us that all the Americans were to have a big Thanksgiving dinner at some hotel here, and so we also put our names down, and mean to do “the eminent American.”

Almost twelve and not breakfasted as yet! How lazy one does get, and we have tickets to see the Schloss at twelve, precisely.

Well then, to begin,—We really left Paris on Saturday, arriving at Brussels in time to take a cup of tea, a chicken cold, and retire, and you have no idea how nice it is again to be on the move!

WILNA.

Sunday, a drizzly day, we drove all the way out to Waterloo amidst the hoots of the “rag, tag and bobtail” of the villages taking us for British 69tourists. We scanned the scene of conflict with military gaze, bought a cane and a lunch, chaffed the natives, and returned in time to see Déjazet the celebrated old actress perform in a charming little piece. Monday we strolled about the town, looked at a few pictures, flattened our noses on the shop windows, very pretty they are, too, that is, the things within, and would find ourselves suddenly bringing up at some grand old cathedral, or a fascinating marketplace, with statues to old “swells” whose heads had been discontinued there; gilt-edged houses in which the ancient guilds and clubs held forth, crooked streets, high hills, etc. etc.

That evening after dinner we billeted ourselves for Berlin viâ Cologne, and I soon had an excellent opportunity of airing my execrable German, and thanking myself for the little I possess.

Well, here we are in Berlin, the city of music and philosophy, and here is Charlie,—by the way, the best travelling companion imaginable,—ready to descend for breakfast.

P. M. I am now in my evening harness with just time to finish this before going to dine. Yesterday we went to the Gallery, which I liked exceedingly, although there are only a few real masterpieces, many of which I knew well from your book “The Berlin Gallery,” at home. The Murillo is perhaps the finest. The building itself is charmingly arranged, all the different schools in order, and the temperature just right, which you won’t find in the Italian galleries. We then sauntered along to Unter den Linden, and caused a great sensation. Whether our reefing jackets and little hats and blue scarfs, or our truly distingué and chic,—tell Willie the word is still a favorite in Paris,—appearance were the cause, I know not. 70I can here say that the Berliners are not exactly “swells,” though big on metaphysics, and now on diplomacy and war; certain it is, however, that many were the smiles bestowed upon us as we gaily marched along.

In the evening we saw a very good ballet at the Victoria Theatre. Today we have not accomplished much except the King’s old palace, and got fur lined boots, very necessary for travelling, and filled our pockets with roubles. Tomorrow we go to see the paintings in company with Mr. Thies and probably in the evening start for Königsberg, where I will get you an amber bracelet. The weather is quite mild now, but I think after leaving Wilna it will be fresh enough. It is rather an odd city, this Berlin, with a feeble little stream called the Spree, just under our window. Charlie sends love to all. Good night, for I go to the feast of Bacchus,—roast turkey and plumb pudding.

Professor Thies, whom I met in Berlin, had been curator of the Gray Collection of Engravings at Harvard College, and showed to a party of us in the second term of my Junior year the famous prints, collected by Francis Colley Gray principally abroad, which he bequeathed to the College, and which were then in one of the alcoves of Gore Hall, or the Library, up stairs. Our party consisted of Professor Longfellow and his son Charlie, George B. Shattuck and his sister, my sister and myself. It was a great treat and gave me my first real knowledge of art. We examined all the engravings, taking several weeks, and the remarks of Professor Thies were full of knowledge and charm. It was an education not only in the art of different 71kinds of engraving, but of painting and sculpture, as many of them were copies of the masterpieces of these two branches of art. The Collection was transferred to the Boston Museum of Fine Arts when it was opened, and now forms a part of the Fogg Museum at Harvard.

In Berlin, the palaces, houses and stores on the principal thoroughfares, stand before you as dull and unsentimental looking as the Prussian sentinels. The people whom you meet, while appearing as respectable and worthy as church deacons, have no elegance nor grace about them, they come and go on every side as gravely and soberly as is permitted to human beings, with nothing disorderly or gay in their manner. They impress you all as being in what is called “comfortable circumstances,” wearing a look of contented commonplaceness, and with the most unbounded respect for things as they are in Prussia, from the Kaiser down, and a corresponding ignorance of and pity for the situation in other less favored countries. There is an egotistical patriotism in this which is delicious, and which must have its merits, but it certainly makes its supporters more objects of curiosity than of interest to any outsiders, with whom they may come in contact. But, on the other hand, there is a compactness in the forward march of the North Germans as a nation, which is irresistible, and which is certain to accomplish great results, and for it the philosophical student of history cannot but feel an admiration which he does not accord to the more attractive and mercurial inhabitants of other countries. He respects 72intensely the Prussians, but he does not care to live among them.

The next morning after our arrival in Berlin we sauntered forth to see all there was in the city, and to provide ourselves with a complete outfit of furs: caps, coats and boots. The weather was cold and we would need these protections for the rest of our journey, and we knew there was no better market in Europe for obtaining them of good quality and at reasonable prices than in the city of Frederick the Great.

I begin you a letter here as we have some time before the train starts for St. Petersburg which I will finish there, and will take up my story at Berlin, where I left myself just going to dinner.

The dinner was quite successful and amusing: about one hundred Americans of all styles collected together, one pretty girl, Miss R. of Springfield, my classmate Green (The distinguished oculist Dr. J. Orne Green.), lots of old professional buffers, and a good deal of ruff skuff in long coats and red scarfs, and several military men. Charlie and I got an old Russian gentleman between us and talked philosophy and la vie Russe.

The minister, Mr. Wright, presided, and went through very gracefully the rather difficult performance of drinking the health of the President!

The Opera House at Berlin is quite stunning, and they have the best female singer in the world, Lucca. We did not have the good fortune to hear her. Berlin is ahead of all the world in music. In other respects I think it rather a dull city, but then, we have not as yet shaken off the glitter of Paris from our garments.

STATUE OF KANT. KÖNIGSBURG, 1866.

73The next day we went to Königsberg on the Baltic, where we passed twenty-four hours, and visited the Schloss where the Teutonic Knights in ye ancient time held their revels, and where later the King and Queen of Prussia lived when Napoleon captured Berlin and made the peace of Tilsit. There is an old modern church in which the numberless columns almost prevent your seeing across, and a very old cathedral, with lots of interesting monuments.

Yesterday we came here, a flourishing Polish town before Russia “gobbled it up,” and go through the experience of having our trunks and passports examined every few hours, although, when they find we are Americans, they are very civil. They can’t quite make us out, and look upon us as curiosities, especially stopping at Wilna. America seems to them so far off. The Russian surveillance is very strict in the Polish cities, more so than in Russia proper, and it was here that lots of Poles were hung only a few years ago. Napoleon slept in the palace here the night after Alexander left it.

It is so awfully funny, this first taste of Russia, little sleighs just holding one man all covered with furs, and a big hoop over the horse like the pictures in our geography,—narrow streets with crowds of Jews, great bulb like steeples to the churches, and everything different. They keep the houses so warm that you almost suffer. Well, I must close for tonight.

The spring previous to this Russian journey I received the following note from Mrs. Harrison Gray Otis, on receiving a photograph of myself in my fancy sleigh:—

“Mrs. Harrison Gray Otis presents her regards to Mr. Appleton, and very much thanks him for the interesting photograph which she had already admired. She hopes he will have more snow the next winter to enjoy his fairy like equipage, and wishes him health and happiness as a reward for his wounds in the service of his country.”

Mt. Vernon Street,

14th March, 1866.

My pretty sleigh had the appearance of a Russian one as I had arranged what looked like a “duga” over the saddle of the horse, with a waving plume. I once drove down State street in it with my colored groom, the same old “Joe” who was with me in the army, sitting behind in the rumble, and from its striking appearance, with the white fox robes, made a mild sensation.

We broke the journey from Berlin to St. Petersburg, which is long and uninteresting, by stopping over twenty-four hours at Wilna, once the capital of Lithuania, afterwards an important Polish and at present an unimportant Russian town. We thought we ought not to jump into the middle of Russia at once; we ought to look a little at the edges, and study the ways and customs of the provincials, which we were sure would be curious and worth seeing, so it was decided that we pass a day at Wilna.

SINGLE SLEIGH.

75There is probably no part of the civilized world where the annoyances about passports and baggage are greater than in conquered Poland. Everyone who enters the land is looked upon with suspicion, and the difficulty is not by any means over when you get in, for there is the same trouble to get out again, sometimes even worse. But few tourists stop there, and so any well-dressed stranger seen is an object of curiosity, and is most carefully watched by the police. Particularly is this system of espionage strong in the small cities, and one’s life there by it becomes a burden.

It was late at night when we arrived at the depot. Our passports were carefully scrutinized, our names recorded, the name of the hotel where we intended to stop was taken down, and we were told that owing to the lateness of the hour our trunks would not be examined that night, but that we must come for the ceremony at ten o’clock the next morning. We were also informed that we could not leave the city without again having our passports examined and the proper visa put on.

When we looked out of our hotel window the next morning the street in front was filled with beggars of every description, who on seeing us at the window began going through every imaginable kind of pantomime which might appeal to the pity or the pride of those to whom they were addressed. Perhaps of all the types of beggars in the world, the Polish Jew is the most striking. His long greasy hair, his longer and greasier coat, his trowsers tucked in his boots and his peculiar cap, are distinguishing traits. And then how he can pile on 76the agony in facial expression and gesture! No imagined grief of Dante’s Inferno can excel what the Polish Jew would make you believe are his sufferings as he stands thus piteously addressing you. For a handful of copper coins flung among the crowd, they fought hard and long.

After, with some difficulty, getting possession of our trunks, and showing that they contained no infernal machines, nor suspicious looking insurrectionary pamphlets, we jumped into a sleigh, as the ground here was well covered with snow, and wrapping ourselves up in our shubes started off on a tour of inspection through the town.

There is something very fascinating in the first suspicion of the Orient as seen in the outlying frontier towns of the Sclavonic race. The bright colored churches with their bulbous steeples albeit dull and in miniature, give a suggestive hint of what the glories of Moscow and Constantinople will be. The queer costumes of the people, neither Asiatic or European, and their manners in which the patriarchal reverence for authority of the East is tinged with the curiosity and thirst for knowledge of the West, make you regard them as a sort of stepping stone or connecting link between Eastern and Western customs and civilization. And then it is all so different from life in the other European capitals, where each one is more or less a stilted copy of the others. Here you have the mixture of the European and Asiatic elements in such a peculiar way, that something astonishing strikes you continually, and the social relations are so vague that real adventures are likely to befall you in all the classes of society.

77The rough wooden sleigh in which we were whisked through the place, with its brightly painted duga over the horse’s head, the light ornamented harness, with the strange dress of the driver, made visions of winter pleasures in St. Petersburg fill our imaginations, and we thought what a sensation we would make could we only be transferred just as we were into the Harlem Lane!

Your sleigh follows you round by day and night, always within call, and so, enveloped in the dark furs of Astrachan or Siberia, you sally forth on your round of conquest. The horses are superb, very fast trotters, with high knee action, and holding their heads gracefully; the favorite colors are black or dappled gray. The ordinary sleigh, that of the grand seigneur, such, indeed, as the Emperor almost always uses, as well as those you pick up anywhere in the streets, are not unlike our well-known Portland cutters. Between the regular seat and the dash-board is a little narrow seat on which the driver perches, with one foot inside, and the other in a sort of stirrup outside, from which he braces himself to hold the horse. A fur robe, or rather a thick cloth robe trimmed with a deep border of fur, comes over you and is fastened around you, and hooked at the corners of the sleigh in such a way that you cannot tumble out. The sleighs are very plain, generally of varnished wood, not even painted. The coachman is a type quite different from what you will see in any other country. The most stylish are stout, impressive looking men of middle age, with a long beard like a French sapeur. They wear a dark, thick garment, which in shape I can only compare to a 78dressing-gown, fastened around the waist with a brilliant sash, and then falling nearly to the feet in great plaits.

The fashionable owners of these turnouts are seated behind their drivers as comfortable as possible, and take as much interest in racing on the road and passing those about them, as we do when handling the ribbons ourselves. By far the most elegant turnout is the single sleigh with a trotter in the shafts and a horse on each side, making three abreast, galloping along. They are trained specially for this when young, and they do it well; bending their heads down to the right or left, as it may be, and rushing along madly. The Prefect of Police of St. Petersburg had a stunning team of that kind.

Besides all I have mentioned there are many handsome double-seated sleighs, with a flunkey standing up behind on a board near the ground in some gorgeous livery, and cocked hat with turkey feathers of different colors, like a major general’s.

I must not forget to mention the net that goes from the horse’s back to the dash-board of the sleigh, to prevent the snow from being kicked in your face, a most sensible idea, and one we could well copy in America. These nets are of brilliant colors, red, blue, or green, to match the livery and the sleigh, and the effect is fine as they float in the wind. The winter of 1870-’1, after my return from Russia, I used the net to keep the snow from being kicked in my face, a blue one, which I bought in St. Petersburg. A young fellow who saw me passing and did not understand what it was for, cried out:—“Look at that man, he’s afraid the flies will bite his horse!”—Not a bad remark for mid-winter, and I came to the conclusion that Russian 79ideas of sleighing were not altogether appreciated in America.

The most amusing scene of our stop over at Wilna, was at the office of the Chief of Police. To arrange our passports for departing we went to the office during the afternoon, but as it was jour de fête, as it generally is, in honor of some saint, the bureau was closed and the head official was absent. In consideration of the great regard Russia felt for the United States, the second in command agreed to attend to our case, as we were in a hurry to leave the city, with the understanding that it must be submitted to his chief for approval. The interview was characteristic and ludicrous. The official spoke a little bad German, nothing else except Russian. We had both neglected our German studies and only knew a few phrases, sufficient to demand the necessities of life in travelling. The gaps were filled up with gestures, and the interrogatory of name, age, residence, occupation, went on slowly and unintelligibly enough until the hotel keeper, having heard of the dilemma in which all parties found themselves, came to the rescue with the little French he knew and assurances of the good character of the persons on trial, affirming that he had conversed with us long at his hotel and he was certain there was nothing suspicious about us. This only confused things more, and the poor official hardly knew what to do. He was unwilling to take so great a responsibility upon himself and began to think he had got some important political offenders. It is difficult to say how the interview would have ended; it began to look as if he intended 80locking us up until he should have time to reflect, but fortunately the Chief of Police at this moment came in. He was a gentleman of education and delicacy of feeling, one of those polished Russian officers so often met, and what was more to the point spoke both English and French fluently. He sat down quietly at his table, and in a dignified manner saying a few words in Russian to his now abashed assistant, examined carefully the passports, and finding everything en regle, asked us a few simple questions, which being satisfactorily answered, he said:—

“I must apologize, gentlemen, for the annoyance to which you have been unavoidably subjected, but we poor officials have very strict orders in Polish Russia, and mistakes will sometimes arise.”

When it was time to leave we were consigned to the best attention of all the conductors and railroad officials of the line, with orders to be treated as became American princes. The train was well filled with passengers, and we took our places in carriage 722, C, première classe, St. Petersburgh and Warsaw Railroad.

NEVSKI PROSPECT ST. PETERSBURG.

CHAPTER FOURTH. ST. PETERSBURG. TSAR ALEXANDER II. — Letter to My Mother. — To My Sister. — To My Mother. — Great Sea Street. — Pretty Russian Maidens. — Charles K. Smith. — The New York Club. — To My Mother. — Emperor Alexander II. —Presentation. — The Presentation. — The Invitation. — Gortschakoff. — Letter to my Mother. — To Cronstadt—An American Party. — The Imperial Stables. — Ross Winans.

St. Petersburg, December 5, 1866. (Continuation of letter written at Wilna.) Here we are at last, having arrived yesterday evening, and I must say that our first impressions are in the midst of difficulties, for on awakening this morning we found it actually thawing, and the streets are all filled with slosh, but the funny little sleighs rush about incessantly, and perfectly silently as there are no bells on the horses. We have been occupied today going to the banker’s where I found your letter, and to the American legation where we saw the minister, who told us that my classmate, Jeremiah Curtin, had gone only yesterday to Moscow for two or three weeks, and in looking up some kind of good apartment.

I think we shall stay here some time over Christmas, which I believe comes later in the Russian calendar than with us, and devote some time to learning Russian and continuing our French. In fact for the latter there can be no better place than 82here. There are only about six or seven hours of daylight now, and these we must give up to sight seeing, which I mean to do thoroughly, and to skating and sleighing. In my next I will give you a good account of Saint Petersburg and its sights.

Till then adieu.

... Well, isn’t it droll, here is your young brother established as a gay flâneur in St. P., who means to delve into all the gayeties of the Russian life.

Our Minister, General Cassius M. Clay, (Of Kentucky, then 56 years of age.), presented Charlie and myself the other day to a most lovely Russian Princess, who lives in a gorgeous palace worth about one million roubles,—a rouble in gold is just our paper dollar. (This was true at that time when our currency was depreciated.) After going through suites of apartments, billiard room and salons, we found her in the boudoir, and she received us with such a graceful cordiality that she won both our hearts immediately, and we are now at her feet. Tomorrow General Clay is to take us to the reception of the Spanish Ambassador, as they are to give a ball soon to which he wants us to be invited. The Minister seems very inclined to be attentive and kind. We shall presently be presented in due form to the Imperial family.

Charlie and I are very comfortably established in a nice apartment with our books, and I want to stay here indefinitely. One must pass the winter somewhere, and why not here, where so few Americans have tried it?

HON. CASSIUS M. CLAY, MINISTER TO RUSSIA.

83We have a jolly sleigh at our disposition, with a horse who rushes off like mad. Vehicles are a necessity here, where the distances are so tremendous, and no one ever walks, and you can hire excellent traps by the day, week, or month, much cheaper than taking them by the course. The sleighing has been splendid for the last week, and the Nevsky Prospect any afternoon is a sight worth seeing, filled with all kinds of sleighs. I have even seen one or two of our American cutters. All the strange equipages you read about are actually true, and the troika with one horse trotting and the other two galloping is no uncommon sight. The sleighing, when it once begins, lasts right along, as there is no sun at all to melt it, the days being very short, and what little sky there is overcast. You don’t feel the cold much either as there is very little wind,—how I shiver when I think of the Mill Dam,—(The “Mill Dam Road” a favorite Boston drive.), and we are learning many a wrinkle in the art of keeping warm, which we shall bring out in America. The shops, too, are fascinating, and I expect to invest heavily during my stay in all kinds of Russian articles, Persian silks and Circassian silver, Russian amulets, and the thousand and one things which you don’t see even in the cosmopolitan shops of Paris; among others a complete Russian harness, with a cap for the driver. There is a huge bazaar, where everything can be found, built in a parallelogram, with shops on the four sides.

The most fascinating things are the hoods all the ladies wear, covering just half their little fur caps. These are made of different colored cloths with embroidery of gold or silver. The fur lined slippers, too, are not bad, but I won’t tantalize you with descriptions. As I do not anticipate coming 84here again soon I mean to do the thing up this time. I skated today for the first time on a pond belonging to the Russian Yacht Club, to which we have received tickets, but there were only a few there, in fact the skating does not fairly begin until the Neva Skating Club is open, which is the swell place, where all the nobility go. It is gotten up by the English, and is a large square, fenced in with pine trees planted in the ice, situated on the Neva in the city, with nice houses to put on your skates and warm yourself, very necessary here, and several times during the season they give fêtes by night. We have subscription tickets for the season, and I think it will be open in a few days. But with all this we must not forget our art, and here we have the magnificent gallery of the Hermitage, one of the finest though not the best known in Europe, and we can wander a whole winter through its endless galleries without exhausting the treasures.

Sunday morning: I hope the little jacket and hat will be pleasing to Master Billy, which Mr. Burgess is to bring from Paris. I will get him a few of the Oriental and Cossack children’s dresses, which are stunning and very plentiful here, and then I think he will make a sensation on Beacon street.

Well, my dear, I must close and dispatch this. Today we are to skate on the Yacht Club Pond, as they have a fête there every Sunday, and tonight at midnight is the first bal masqué at the Grand Opera. “On with the dance,” and vive la jeunesse! Last evening we passed at the English consul’s and met some very pretty young Cossacks, quite civilized, however. Charlie sends lots of love to you both. He is now in front of the fire with his feet in the air. Well, goodbye, and pinch Billy’s cheeks for me.

85There is a pretty arrangement in Russian houses, which is not to be found elsewhere that I know of. Part of the large drawing-room, generally a corner by windows, is often fenced off by itself, raised on a platform, about a foot above the rest of the floor. Here is formed a sort of garden in the house. The light iron fence is covered with some green, flowering vine, and inside are some exotics, palms and other tropical plants, and the effect is enchanting. The ladies select this as their especial haunt, transforming it into a boudoir where they read their favorite novels, write their notes, or work at embroidery.

I made my purchases of Circassian trinkets and toys, to send home to my nephews and nieces, in the Passage, a much frequented place for the idlers of the town, in imitation of the Burlington Arcade in London, and the Passage des Panoramas of Paris.

Those were pleasant skating parties we had on the Neva, in the open rink of the Club, where all the nobility and swells of the place came out to show their agility. Thanks to much practice and many a tumble upon the Frog Pond of Boston, I was a skillful skater, and my partners were also proficient in that difficult accomplishment. How we dashed along over the place where Peter the Great had often been paddled in his rough-hewn boat, now forward together arm-in-arm, now one backward and the other forward, each bending in time to the graceful curves of the outside edge!

Your letter containing the tribute to Charlie Smith I found at the bank yesterday. How true and good the account of him is. You expected it would reach me in Paris, but you see we have got off before. We are getting somewhat settled here now, though we are not as yet fairly lancés into the gay life. This is partly on account of the horrid weather, for ever since we have been here it has been gradually melting into slosh and the sleighing rapidly disappearing. Sudden changes are common, and today is cold again with snow falling.

We have got a very nice little apartment on the great Moscow street, just in the centre of the city, and the house opposite being very low we get as much light as is possible anywhere.

We are in a French maison meublée with a very pleasant Arthur O’Leary style of table d’hôte, where we meet half a dozen different gentlemen from all kinds of countries, and we talk in French of the relative merits of our respective nationalities. In fact, we do more French talking here than in Paris. In the afternoon before dinner we take a lesson in Russian, our teacher using French as the basis of instruction, and I presume by the time I leave Russia, I shall be unable to speak any other language. It is considerable difficult though, but I go on the principle of learning everything.

BOLSHAJA MORSKAJA (GREAT SEA STREET).

The Church of Sault Isaac, which is about the only sight we have seen, is perfectly gorgeous, with its huge pillars of malachite and lapis lazuli from the mines of Demidoff. You enter, and a mysterious feeling, half oriental and half European, carries you away. The perpetual incense, the prostrate worshipers, the delicious temperature and the ornaments which combine the luxe of Europe with the savage gorgeousness of Asia, form a whole which the churches of Italy do not have. Perhaps this combination of East and West is the great charm to the life in Russia. The toilettes of the ladies have come from the brain and fingers of Parisian couturierès adapted to climate here. The Oriental element you see strong in the livery of servants and the uniforms of officers. The feeling of caste is very marked, and while the London flunkey beats the world in servility, and the Italian beggar in woe-begone dejection, the Russian servant seems to be afraid of you, recognizing the superior man in everything.

CHRISTMAS SHOPPING IN ST. PETERSBURG.

I have not yet had a good chance to see all the different sleighs in their glory, but from what I have seen I think they will be stunning. We saw two pretty little Russian maidens, with their white furs, driving along in a jolly sleigh, the horse in the shafts trotting gaily, and one on his left cantering beside him.

The omnibuses have three horses, but I have not seen a swell in his troika. The horses certainly trot faster than any except ours, and some I see on the Nevsky Prospect would make a very creditable show on the Brighton road.

P. M. We have been out today to visit Mr. 88Pierce, (A relative of the Longfellows, who had been secretary of legation during President Pierce’s administration, and at the time we were in Russia connected with the Winans in the railroad building business.) who lives about four miles outside the city, and after passing the place by mistake and returning, we succeeded in finding him, and received a most hospitable reception. He seemed much inclined to help us in any way to have a jolly time. The sleighing was fine and the air deliciously cold and clear.

The Russian youths at the theatres are a most enthusiastic crowd, and I have seen singers at the Opera, ballet dancers, or even a circus star called out five or six times. The Grand Opera House is very fine, and the ballet troupe gorgeous, quite as good, if not better, than the one in Paris. There is a theatre (Saint Michel) where they give French and German plays, so that one can have most everything.

Well, I have lots of letters to write and no time to write any of them, so that this must suffice you for the week.

The theatre is large and finely decorated. The Imperial box is always ready to be occupied by the Tsar or some member of his family, the sentries standing on each side of it in their gorgeous uniforms as motionless as statues. The pit is filled with the viveurs of the city, young and old, who are in their stalls, lorgnettes in hand, watching every movement on the stage. Between the acts all file out into the smoking room, when a papyrus is inhaled, and some cooling beverage partaken of in the interlude of the play.

The ballet itself is a masterpiece of skill in its 89peculiar style. The dancers are trained carefully for years in a school under the Imperial patronage, and only appear upon the stage after having gone through a long apprenticeship. The story of the piece, of which the scene takes place in Russia or some of the Oriental countries, is most carefully worked up by the author, and entirely acted in pantomime and dance. All the passions of love, hatred, jealousy and revenge will be exhibited by motions aided by the changing strains of an excellent orchestra. When a favorite danseuse comes bounding across the stage, attired in Russian costume, delineating in her movements sentiments which appeal to the pride or patriotism of the audience, the enthusiasm of the house knows no limit, and words and shouts of applause rend the air long and loud.

I went to New York on my seventeenth birthday, February 2, 1860, when I was a Freshman at Harvard College, to pay a visit to the family of David Lane, whose wife was Caroline Lamson, sister of Colonel Daniel S. Lamson, friends of my mother, who lived at 12 East 10th Street or Brevoort Place, as it was called. The firm was Lane, Lamson, & Co. The American flag in my trophy was given me by one of this family. It was on this New York visit that I made the acquaintance of Charlie Smith, and he seemed to take a great liking to me.

In my diary of Feb. 2, 1860, I find, “In the evening people came, it being the Lanes’ reception evening, Mr. Smith and others.” This is the first mention of him. One evening, shortly after this, 90he invited us all to go to the Italian opera at the Academy of Music, in Brooklyn, and we accepted, driving over and back.

The next mention is in regard to a visit to Weston, Mass., “Feb. 16, 1860. Went to Weston in a glorious snow storm. Stunning dinner. Went for two of the party in an ox team to the station. Took profiles in the evening. Supper stunninger.

Sunday, Feb. 19, 1860. There was no church but we went out in the sleigh to see Mr. Smith’s protégé, deaf and dumb. (A boy he was interested in and was having educated.) Good dinner.”

Daniel S. Lamson, our especial host and entertainer in 1860, was commissioned Major 16th Mass. Infantry, Aug. 1, 1861, Lieutenant Colonel July 23, 1862, and resigned for disability Sept. 29, 1862. But this was the year before the War.

I always called him “Uncle Dan” and do so still (1904).

Charlie Smith was about ten years my senior, and that sort of regard from an elder is always appreciated by a boy. At the time of my visit to New York he was stopping at the Brevoort House. He was a member of the New York Club in Broadway, the crack one at that time, and won my heart and esteem at once. I was devoted to him. One day we strolled down Broadway and he treated me to oysters and a glass of beer, and I thought I was a man of the world.

When we met at Weston he fascinated me more than ever, with his stories and songs, and we had many merry evenings. I was treated as a young man, not a boy, and I look back to those old times with unmingled delight.

The letter I received from my mother announcing Charlie Smith’s death at San Francisco, I can 91now recall and explain. Of Boston parentage, he had gone to California in the early days, and made what at that time was considered a good fortune. He was killed accidentally by a shot when out gunning. He was so popular in the city of San Francisco that the body was laid in state in the rooms of the Union Club of that city, as a tribute to the appreciation in which he was held by its members.

The New York Club, corner of Broadway and Great Jones street, I never visited with Charlie Smith, but during the War they moved to the Haight house, Fifth avenue and 15th street. That was the apogee of their greatness, and I was introduced and became a six months’ member. Great Jones street was near property which belongs to the Jones-De Trobriand-Post families.

I begin you a letter now, to finish sometime if possible. Your last one talked to me about the furs. I think you are quite right to want lots of Russian things, as they are fascinating, and you will probably never have as good an opportunity of getting them. Be easy, then, for I am to buy no end of various things, and send them all off to Boston, by the first Spring boat of Mr. Ropes. Mr. Prince, who is the head one of the house here, is very obliging, and being a good judge of furs, 92I think I can satisfy you in that line, though they won’t be in time for this winter. I shall buy the skins only, and you can have them made up in Boston to suit you, as the fur goods they wear here are different from ours, and might not please you. For instance, I have not seen a pair of cuffs in St. Petersburg. I shall get handsome, dark Siberian sable skins, worthy of a princess, Persian table cloths, malachite ornaments, slippers, Circassian silver, etc., etc., and also something which will make you very happy—a little box or two of the stunning tea, which is brought across from Pekin in caravans.

We are to dine with Mr. Prince next Tuesday, which is Christmas day, and have since had to decline an invitation for the same day, given us by the English Ambassador.

Two days ago we were presented to the Emperor. We were quite alone, no other people being presented the same day. We marched through suites of apartments, and were formally ushered into His Majesty’s billiard room, where we were received by two of the chamberlains, and from there we went into the reception room where we soon had a little conversation with the head of all the Russias in our native (?) language of French. He is very nice, I give you my word, but we were disappointed in not seeing the Empress, though this comes some other time.

We have a good many occasions of airing our French in the beau monde of Russia, and I find that there is no trouble with it; the only thing to do being to go right along regardless of errors, 93for I see that although I do not speak very well, there are plenty who speak quite as bad and worse, and this being a neutral ground of course one is bolder. However, a great many of the well educated speak English admirably.

All this goes to show that we are in for society now, and have to await quietly a round of balls, operas, and dinners, and return our calls most punctiliously, a form of etiquette about which the Russians are very exacting.

We went to a jolly young count’s (Koucheleff Besborodko) the other day, who immediately made us at home with a delicious cigar. His house, take it all in all, was about as lovely as any I have ever seen, with an Oriental smoking room, a Pompadour boudoir, a Chinese room, a long gallery of paintings, an immense dancing hall, and a conservatory arranged with grottoes and cascades, a rustic bridge, and an original old statue of a satyr, picked up in Rome. The Count is a great connoisseur of art, and his collection in all its branches is magnificent, with souvenirs of every city of Europe, and all the ages of the world, enough to drive to despair any such little dabblers as myself.

I have met quite a charming young Austrian lady, who lives with the Spanish Ambassador’s wife, but I shall take good care of my heart and bring it back to Boston.

Our acquaintances, thus far, are eminently diplomatic, as you see, the English consul’s family especially being very attentive.

We skated yesterday on the Neva Club place for the first time, as the grounds are only just opened, but today it is thawing again, and we must wait a bit for it to freeze.

94I think you would be rather frightened at the way they drive here in the sleighs, rushing off as fast as possible, yelling to people and carriages to get out of the way, and then bringing the horse up suddenly with a droll sound—bhr-r-r-r!—which corresponds to “whoa” in English. In some letter I will describe a sleigh for you, but they are all alike, from the Emperor’s to the street cabs, except in finish. There are very few covered vehicles here to hire, and you always go, by night and day, in an open sleigh, so you can judge from that, that the cold is not so awfully severe here as you imagine. We take very good care not to be frozen, as we both have a horror of the amusement, but enough for today.

The Hon. Cassius M. Clay, the American Minister, presented C. A. Longfellow and myself to the Emperor.

Ministry of the Imperial Court.

Direction of Ceremonies.

St. Petersburg, 5–17 December, 1866.

The Grand Master of Ceremonies has the honor to inform Mr. N. Appleton, that he will have the honor of being presented to His Majesty the Emperor tomorrow, Tuesday, 6–18 December, at half past one in the afternoon at the Winter Palace.

You are requested to come to the door of Her Majesty the Empress.

[Seal]

[See binding of this book.]

95The invitation was gladly accepted, not only from the desire of meeting in person the Autocrat of all the Russias, but also because once done your name was put upon the list of distinguished visitors to the capital, and, as a matter of course, you were invited to all the balls and festivities of the season. General Clay called for us in his sleigh, and we drove to the Winter Palace, where we were met by some of the officers of the staff, on horseback. The regulation dress prescribed for us was “black or blue dress coat, black vest and pantaloons, white cravat and white kids,” as stated in a marginal note by General Clay.

Having been ushered into the presence of the Emperor, as detailed in my letter to my mother, we had a little chat with him, principally answering some questions about America, and then retired, and went down stairs.

While waiting in the hall below for our sleigh to drive up, the Tsar came bounding down the staircase, followed by his favorite Newfoundland dog, with which he was often photographed, and before jumping into his sleigh and dashing off on some call, he stopped and exchanged a few more words with us. Indeed the whole interview made a most agreeable impression upon me.

“The days when the great Nicholas leaned on him sweep back from the mists of the buried years. In his old age, he is the Richelieu of another Tsar, for Russia draws the sword in fight once more.”

—Col. Richard Henry Savage on Gortschakoff in 1876.

I was naturally very much delighted with the prospect of being presented to the distinguished 96veteran Russian diplomatist and chancellor of the empire. This occurred in December of this year, 1866. General Clay had arranged the interview beforehand with Count Gortschakoff, and one morning called for us at our hotel in his sleigh to take us there. Another person was of the party, and strangely enough a negro, a certain Captain Chester, who was out in Russia on some special business.

We started off through the cold, clear air, and were soon at the door of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, where we were expected, and ushered in. We first met Mr. Westerman, a gentleman who for some time had been Count Gortschakoff’s right hand man and assistant in the tremendous duties of his office, and were then shown by him into the private cabinet of the chancellor.

Our interview was, of course, not lengthy, but most interesting. The old gentleman chatted with us very pleasantly on different topics, and in his manner and reception of us was as simple and unaffected as a child. He looked hale and hearty, and as though he had before him many years, which he meant to devote to aiding the development of Russian progress and civilization, and he did live two years after the death of the Tsar and died in Baden-Baden March 11, 1883.

Another week has glided rapidly by, finding us still at St. Petersburg, and I have two of your letters to acknowledge, the last one bearing date of December 9th.

What have we been doing? Among other things yesterday a party of Americans went to see Cronstadt. We were, General Roberts, U. S. A., a good specimen of an American general (Benjamin Stone Roberts, graduate of West Point, served in the Mexican war and the Rebellion, brevetted Brig. Gen. U. S. A., and Major Gen. U. S. V., inventor of the Roberts breech-loading rifle, which he was trying to introduce to the Russians. He was a remarkably genial fellow, and had lots of good stories which he delighted in telling.), Mr. Sawyer, correspondent of the New York Herald, and a very pleasant companion, C. A. L., and myself, and we had a Russian colonel put at our disposal to open the gates of everything. We went down by rail to a place opposite Cronstadt, and then crossed over the Gulf of Finland on the ice, with two funny little Finnish ponies to each sledge, one trotting and the other galloping, but going like the wind, and doing the five miles in less than half an hour, without lessening speed once. It was very cold and our fur coats were necessary. We visited some of the forts, and afterwards breakfasted at the Navy and Army Club of the place. The whole effect of the day and the adventures were eminently Russian. We had to get up long before daylight, and saw the sun rise about 9 o’clock, something one does not often see here, as we are generally asleep at that time.

One day last week we visited the Imperial stables, which I thought very shabby, although 98many of the horses were stunning, and afterwards we examined all the swell carriages and sledges, which have been used at coronations, weddings and fêtes from the time of Peter the Great to the Princess Dagmar. They showed all varieties of taste, and are more magnificent than those at the Trianon at Versailles.

On Christmas Day Charlie and self dined with Mr. Prince, and attended just before dinner the christening of his youngest child. It was quite a large dinner, Anglo-American, and most decidedly respectable. It is curious how very few American families there are living in St. Petersburg. Last Sunday we dined with Mr. Whistler, (George W., father of the artist James Abbott McNeill W.) who is one of the gentlemen connected with the Winans car manufactory. There were about twelve, all gentlemen, and all Americans, indeed it included almost all the American males here,—General Clay, and the Consul, Mr. Winans, Mr. Pierce, and others, and it was jolly enough.

On Saturday next Charlie and I think of starting for Moscow, spending ten days, or so, and then returning, as we give up the Odessa plan, but we have not quite decided.

Well, I must stop now, as I go in a minute to drive with the Spanish Ambassador and his wife, the Duke and Duchess d’Osuna et de l’Ynfantado, but whether it is a “grand diner diplomatique” or a “petite causerie intime” I know not.

Friday morning: I have just time to finish and dispatch this now, before going out to perform the numerous last duties on the eve of our departure for Moscow. Cards must be sent round, etc. etc.

The dinner yesterday was very good, rather in 99the heavy diplomatic line, old swells with countless decorations, and jewelled dowagers nodding over the table, with a sprinkling of youthful attachés and officers filling up the corners. Later in the evening I went to a ball at the rooms of the Artists’ Club, and danced a little.

Well, I must rush out, one is always hurried here, as I have before observed. My next will probably be from Moscow, where I can give you an account of our cousin Eliza, and deliver her your present; also, the Kremlin, and the tea-drinking gardens. A hard snow storm which looks like continuing.

In a letter from my mother visiting Baltimore in 1852, to my sister and myself in Boston, she wrote:—“This morning we have been to see the most superb house in the country, built by a gentleman of the name of Winans, who has been employed by the Russian government in the construction of railroads and cars, and has made an immense fortune.” This letter was sealed according to the custom of the time with a red wafer.

Ross Winans, a native of New Jersey, was an inventor and manufacturer of railroad machines in Baltimore, and undertook the Russian railroads by the advice of George W. Whistler. He died in Baltimore, in 1877, at the age of eighty-one. He had two sons who went to Russia; Thomas de Kay, who died in Newport, R. I., June 11, 1878, aged fifty-eight, and William Louis, who never returned to this country, but went to England after the completion of the St. Petersburg and Moscow railroad, and died in London, June 25, 1897, aged seventy-five.

CHAPTER FIFTH. MOSCOW. THE CITY AND ENVIRONS. TROTTING IN RUSSIA. — From St. Petersburg to Moscow. — First Letter from Moscow. — Russian Tea-drinking. — Fast Trotters in Moscow. — Snow Hills. — The Carnatz Connection. — The Carnatz Children. — A Russian Mansion. — The City and its Environs. — Trotting in Russia. — To Harness a Horse a la Russe. — Letter to my Mother. — The Christmas Tree. — The Patriarchal Cathedral. — The Russian Bath. — The Mazourka. — Off to St. Petersburg. — From My Mother in Boston. — The Staigg Portrait. — New Year’s Day in Moscow. — New Year’s Day. — The Russian Groom. — From My Sister in Boston. — The Staigg Portrait. The Surprise. — On the 11th My Mother Wrote :— — Letter from Geo. B. Shattuck. — Allston’s Rosalie. — Thomas Sully. — Mary E. Nealy to N. A. — My Brother Tom and Allston. Letter from T. G. A. to Mrs. Samuel Appleton. — From My Mother at Boston.

“Say, Mandarin, fresh from the Orient old,

Will they give us the queue when they give us the gold?

Rise, Curtin, arise! Let the Manchu declare—

Is he under the paw of the Great Northern Bear?

You uncovered the Pole, brought Pan Michael to light,

Ran Sienkievitch down through the vast polar night;

Then, skirting the coast to the isles of the Celt,

You caught the sweet ballads that make the heart melt,

Thus linking two worlds. Nate Appleton tried,

But the Gulf was too deep, or the Isthmus too wide.

Brother Pratt had the keynote—he doesn’t know which,

Art, music, the lingo of Ivanovitch.”

—James Herbert Morse.

Harvard College Class of 1863. Poem at Class Dinner of 1901.

The journey from St. Petersburg to Moscow is a long ride, and in winter when the days are short, seems to be a night which will never end. You take the train in the afternoon and have not accomplished many scores of versts, or disposed of many hours, before twilight fades into dark, and the great snow plain on every side loses its brilliant whiteness, and has a grey and mysterious look. So, too, in the morning, though late, the sun is not more than fairly up when you behold in the distance the gilded domes and fairy minarets of the old Russian metropolis, as they first appear, and you feel that at last you are in the heart of the Empire. But the hours passed in the cars are far from tedious. “Car” is the word that can be used, for those on that railroad line much more resembled what we have in the United States, than anything to be found in Europe. They were divided into small rooms or compartments, a large saloon being left in the middle, and a passage going the length of the car, so that you could pass from one end to the other, and get off on either platform. At that time no regular beds were made up, as in our “sleepers,” but the cushions could be comfortably arranged and the weary traveller repose very satisfactorily. There was, too, a room overhead for smoking, which you entered by climbing up a narrow, ladder-like staircase, and where the fragrant Havana could be enjoyed in security. Double doors and windows kept out the excessive cold, and a good stove plentifully supplied with wood made the temperature within all that was to be desired. The buffets on the road could not be excelled, and a table d’hôte dinner was taken at one of the stations about six o’clock, which offered a glittering array of glass and silver as you entered on leaving the train, while the display of viands alone would tempt one, were he not ravenous with travel.

THE KREMLIN, MOSCOW.

101The occupants of the car, in an easy fellow-feeling way, soon get acquainted with each other, and throwing off the reserve they might otherwise have, mix together in democratic freedom. Their nationalities are soon known, if not their names, for there is always one man aboard who has a knack of finding them out and of communicating 102adroitly his information to the others, and stories of travelling adventures in different countries, with accounts of the queer persons met, and the dangers escaped, beguile the hours.

St. Petersburg is entirely a modern city, and a modern city like other European capitals, or, rather, like the modern parts of them. The stranger going there expects, very naturally, to see predominant the stamp of Muscovite nationality but he does not find it, as the principal public buildings were designed by foreign architects, and show plainly traces of the country from which the brain that gave them birth has come.

Moscow, fortunately, is quite different, and is well worthy of being the place where the Tsars are crowned. Any one who dropped down their blindfold would, as soon as the bandage was removed from his eyes, cry out like the soldiers of Napoleon’s army, as its green roofs and gilded cupolas met their anxious gaze, “Moscow, Moscow!”

No city in the world has a more marked style, which is neither of the East nor of the West, but rather suggestions of both. Constantinople, Venice, Vienna, all can be seen in part, and as you look at it calmly, in awe and admiration, you can only say, “This place is unique, it resembles nothing else,” and you know why it is so, in reflecting that here is the old homestead of the great Slavonic race, a race sufficiently different from all others to be well warranted in leaving one typical city as a monument.

To my mother from Moscow I wrote as follows:—I cannot date this as there is no French paper 103about, and also, what with the Russian and our difference in the calendar, time is considerably mixed up. This cannot be better shown than by the agreeable fact that we have two Christmas Days this year, one which we passed in St. Petersburg, and the other which comes next week, when we are to see a real German Christmas tree at the Carnatzes.

Well, then to begin, Mrs. Appleton, we are now in Moscow, a truly Russian city, and as different to St. Petersburg as Boston is to Paris. We left St. P. on Saturday afternoon, and after a journey of hours, with several Americans in the train, we arrived here, and are comfortably established in the Hotel Dusaux.

I first went to find Curtin, my old classmate and the secretary of our Legation, who was much surprised at seeing me, and said he would do his best possible to make our stay pleasant. We then called on my cousin Eliza Carnatz, and had no difficulty in finding her and making ourselves known, and she was delighted at seeing her relatives and appreciated your present, which I am happy to say has finally reached its destination safely. This picture (The letter-head showing a colored view of the Kremlin.) will do for your scrap book, so I will leave it entire.

In the evening Curtin took us to a Russian party, and I think I passed about the pleasantest evening there in Europe. It was at the house of General Behring, a lineal descendant of the one who discovered the Straits, and the soirée began with private theatricals in Russian and French, afterwards dancing, then the mazourka, then a sit down supper, the universal custom at parties here, and finally the cotillon, something as with us, and home between four and five.

104The General received us with charming cordiality, and would make us believe we were doing him a favor in coming, and his lovely daughters,—their mother being dead,—acted well in the plays, and did the honors of the house most gracefully.

There were several pretty Russian young ladies there, and many were the sentiments and toasts for the friendship between Russia and America, the two great rising nations of the world!

The young ladies here nearly all speak English well, besides French, German, Russian, and also, sometimes, Italian. This is true of many of the young men, too, and although this seems to make us very ignorant, still, in the matter of general education, the classics, philosophy, mathematics, etc., I imagine we are their superiors. Moreover, languages are almost a necessity here, while with us they are only a very desirable luxury.

Wednesday p. m.: The day after the ball we did not rise much before dinner time, when we dined with the Carnatzes. The party consisted of Coz. Eliza and husband, Mr. Watson, the father of his first wife, a brother, a French lady friend, and one or two others. It seemed quite natural there, as there were several family portraits on the walls, and her album was filled with photographs of all of us. We had a quietly pleasant evening, with long chats about Russia and America, family events, literature, politics,—and drank tea indefinitely.

Tea is the national drink of the Russians, and a genuine tea-drinking restaurant is very curious. We went to one the other evening which is the resort of the isvoschiks (cabbies) and the peasants. Your true Russ orders a pot of tea and another larger one of hot water, the latter of which is often replenished, and he will sit over it several hours, drinking fifteen or twenty cups of tea, and not finishing until he can get no more color out of it. What do your delicate nerves think of this?

DRINKING TEA.

105The tea is wonderfully good, and the commonest stuff here would put to the blush the very best hotel article in America and much of that you have at family tea parties also.

Yesterday morning we went with Mr. Young, a very pleasant and attentive young American from Niagara, who has been here several years in the business of agricultural implements, to see the Kremlin, and all the big bells therein, which are truly wonderful, and can make much noise when they try, and in the evening to the Carnatz’s box at the ballet of the Grand Theatre. The building is considered, perhaps, the finest in Europe, and the ballet itself as is always in Russia, remarkably fine. After the ballet Charlie and I went to a ball at the Kosakoff’s, where we had a good idea of a fine Moscow house and the Muscovite beau monde. Dancing, supper, music, etc., and finally I had for my partner in the German cotillon the prettiest girl in Moscow, a Miss Martinoff.

We went out today to the race course, where they often have races in sleighs, and saw the sports of Moscow exercising their fast trotters. The scene was very like ours at home, and we conversed on the relative merits of Russian and American 106trotters, and one enthusiastic old Russ wanted to bet two hundred thousand roubles on his country, so that if I buy and import “Dexter” (The fastest trotter of the time.) I can make a goodly sum.

The snow hills are a national institution on the same principle as our coasting, only the hills are artificial and are all ice, and you take a lady on the sled with you, and dash down like the wind. There are two hills opposite, so that they go from one to the other and then return.

My diary when a boy of fourteen had the following entry:—“January 16, 1858. Our Russian cousin sent us some nice things; among them were a malachite pin and sleeve buttons, and one of the medals thrown to the peasants at the coronation of the present Emperor Alexander.”

My mother’s mother, Mrs. Jesse Sumner, was a daughter of Mrs. Nathaniel Coffin, whose son Thomas established himself in business in Moscow about 1829, and died in Perovo, Russia, in 1832. His daughter Eliza married Mr. Carnatz, a German. In 1870, we received the intelligence that they proposed to remove to Dresden.

Nothing has ever shown me more conclusively how easy it is for children, when very young, to 107learn and speak several languages, than my experience with my little Carnatz cousins. Of course being Russians by birth, that may naturally have been their first language, but their mother, who insisted upon being an American, the country of her father, had them at once instructed, probably by herself, in the English tongue. Then her husband, their father, being a German the language of the Fatherland had its proper place. After that came French, which was the cosmopolitan language of all well-to-do people in the Russian empire. They could rattle off these various languages “as easily as rolling off a log,” and so can any one who begins them in childhood.

A good type of the elegant Russian mansion was large, made of wood and only two stories, with a long array of rooms running en suite. At the door stood the ever watchful porter, ready to take the shubes and overshoes of the guests, and never forgetting to whom each belonged, resplendent in his showy livery with the eagles embroidered in the wide border of his cape, looking the picture of comfort as he stood by the blazing fire, the thermometer outside showing a temperature well below the zero of Fahrenheit. Beyond him, at the foot of the stairs, a huge, stuffed black bear stood erect, in his paws a salver, with a pitcher and glasses, as if bidding you welcome to the hospitalities of the house.

We went on many excursions in the city and its environs. The Kremlin, with its endless interesting 108objects, the churches so numerous that they say there is one for every day in the year, and the old historical monuments from which can be gleaned a knowledge of all the phases from barbarism to civilization through which the vast Muscovite nationality has passed, were carefully and intelligently studied. We would ramble for hours through the curious bazaar, the Gostinny Dvor, gazing at the different wares exposed, talking and bargaining with the shrewd Jew shopkeepers, and picking up many curiosities, from Persian talismans to Siberian rugs, which had found their way to this cosmopolitan mart in boats through the Caspian Sea and up the curving Volga River, or in caravans all along the dreary plains and through the steep mountain ranges, from the interior of China and Hindostan. Malachite from the mines in the Ural Mountains, fragrant packages of high-priced tea, chain-armor from Circassia, and quaint Albanian gems, gorgeous colored silks, pipes of every description, in short, a perfect medley of bric-a-brac, we hunted up leisurely, sending daily some newly discovered treasure to our collections.

The trotting during the winter months takes place on the ice, when a large river or pond is accessible; as, for instance, on the Neva itself at St. Petersburg, which is the favorite place of all. But a well made track on the frozen snow is nearly, if not quite, as good, and this can be found and laid out anywhere. The course, which is one or two versts long,—the Russian verst is 3501 English feet,—is in the form of an ellipse; that is, the 109length of two of the curving sides is much greater than that of the other two, as is often seen in American tracks, where a long and narrow piece of ground only can be obtained. But now comes the great peculiarity of the Russian race, which is, that the horses do not start or trot together. One starts from a line in the centre of one of the long sides of the course, while the other starts from a line exactly opposite and on the other side. Should there be four horses entered they have two parallel tracks close to each other, and for six horses three of these ellipses, and so on. When there is more than one track the effect is most peculiar: for, at the signal for starting, the horses all seem to be rushing off in different directions.

Then, too, the horses all start from a standstill, each one toeing the line before the word “go” is given. Of course, in this system, there is not the excitement of seeing the horses together, changing places, now one ahead, and now another; those who break held in, and all trying to secure and keep the pole from the others. They merely trot round the course at their greatest speed and the one which returns to his goal or starting point first, is declared the winner. In case of breaking, a certain number of steps at a gallop only is allowed during the heat, and any horse that is not brought down into this allotted number is thrown out of the races by the judges, and loses his chance. It is common to have a running horse by the side of the trotter to excite him to his utmost speed, but generally this horse is not harnessed, but is mounted by a skillful rider, who keeps close alongside of the other, knowing exactly the pace at which he can go without breaking.

The sleighs used are very light, seemingly made 110of some kind of basket-work, and also very low, the driver being seated not more than a foot off the ground or snow, bracing himself with his feet in a sort of stirrup on either side. Low vehicles are also used for racing on the gravel track, and primitive they are in appearance, a narrow board supported on the axles, with four small wheels nearly the same size, and the American twowheeled spider-sulky has come into use, as the small wheeled vehicles detract from the speed, on account of a badly regulated centre of gravity and excessive friction.

For getting the greatest pulling power out of the horse with the least fatigue, and leaving all the muscles unimpeded and in full play, the Russian method of harnessing is excellent. The shafts of the drosky or sleigh, the collar of the horse and the duga meet at one point on the horse’s shoulder, and at this point is all the strain of pulling. There are neither traces nor breeching to interfere with the action. The collar, made of wood, is carefully fitted to the horse’s neck, and while the shafts are inclined to press it against the neck, the duga exerts a corresponding pressure out on either side, and these three parts of the harness are so lashed together by leather thongs that they remain firmly in place, and it is a rare sight to find a horse with his neck galled from exercise.

A COURSIER.

The horses are put on the track very young, at the age of two, three or four years, and after that time, are found rather to lose than increase their speed. Perhaps there may be peculiarities in the breed which gives them their greatest strength when young, or it may be the climate brings out forces which in milder regions it takes more time to develop. Certain it is that the Russian horse, 111of which the Orloff is the handsomest type, when taken to a foreign country soon loses his grace of action and fire. At home they are the beau ideal of beauty, with great natural knee action, arching necks, distended nostrils and flashing eyes, but it has often happened that the same horse which would attract the attention of every passer by on the Nevski Prospect, when seen in the Bois de Boulogne or Hyde Park has lost his distinguishing traits and seems but an ordinary animal.

As there is always a question as to the beauty of “banging” the horse’s tail in accordance with the English taste, or of leaving the natural growth as was more common in America some years ago than at present, I would state that the tail in Russia is left as nature made it, long and waving, and sometimes even trailing on the ground. And for another disputed question, whether or not it is beneficial to clip the horse in winter, without touching on the numerous arguments which humanity, convenience and preference have brought plausibly up on either side, I will simply say that in Russia it is the universal rule to leave the horses, whether they be for work or for pleasure, with the long-haired coat, God has given them, untouched all through the months when they need some protection against the cold.

First put on the bridle, which is merely a headstall without blinders. Saddle and surcingle together. Collar and breeching together. Put the horse in the shafts and put on the hoop, strapping the shafts and hoop together with a long strap, which is afterwards wound around the shafts. 112There is a strap on each shaft just opposite the saddle. The one on the left shaft goes over the saddle, passing through rings, and is wound around the right shaft. The one on the right shaft goes through loops under the surcingle and is wound around the left shaft. These straps help to keep the shafts firmly in place. The horse pulls from his collar. The ends of the shafts and hoop must just meet, the hoop going inside of the shafts and pressing them out. Of the four straps from the top of the hoop, two go under the check strap and fasten to the bit ring, and the other two, with the loops through which the reins pass, are fastened to the shafts, behind the hoop. The bit should be simple snaffle.

The running horse is on the left side. A strap goes from his bit to the shaft of the wheeler, passing through the martingale ring. This strap is quite long, and gives him considerable play. The rein, only one, goes from the outside ring of the bit.

For a pair of horses there are no saddles. The traces are fastened to leather rings on the collar. A surcingle is fastened on the traces and passes under each horse, close behind his forelegs.

They always drive with four reins but this is useless.

The ridiculous custom of having blinders over the horse’s eyes is unknown to the Russians, except as imported from other countries. The animal is allowed to see for himself on all sides, pleasant or ugly sights, and is not treated like an infant, whom his human doctors suppose is going to be frightened at what may meet his gaze. Sensible both for horse and man is this, as the former doubtless derives pleasure in his way from the sights of the street or the scenery of the country, 113while the latter enjoys seeing what is one of the finest points of a horse—his eye.

Check reins are happily not a part of the Russian harness.

The men who congregate about the race-course are pretty nearly the same types in all the nations of the world. There are the elaborate dandies, known as petits crévès in France, who go because it is the fashion to see and be seen, whether or not they have any taste for the racing itself, and can tell one horse from another. There are gentlemen who really are devoted to the noble animal, who are interested in improving the breeds, and who, if possessed of fortune, generally have some of their own stock taking part in the races. Then comes the sporting fraternity of all degrees, horse dealers sharp for making a good bargain in buying or selling, trainers, jockeys, stable boys and besides them plenty of loafers who are there for betting on the race, or for “turning an honest (?) penny” in any way that their wits suggest.

Moscow, Dec. 27, 1866. This is dated by the Russian calendar, which is just twelve days behind ours, so you can calculate. I have a few minutes before going to dine with Cousin Eliza to begin this and I will dip promiscuously into some of the events of the past week.

Let me see,—Christmas has come and gone for the second time this year, and we have seen the way it is done in Russia. It is the same old story—a 114tree, arbre de Noël,—everywhere, though the custom has been brought here by the Germans.

We went to the Carnatzes about half-past seven, and they being German of course all the arrangements were a la mode Allemande. The tree always comes off Christmas eve, and is generally a family gathering, gotten up especially for the amusement of the little ones. A large tree just like ours at home, greeted our gaze on entering, placed on a table, brilliantly lighted, covered with all kinds of things, bonbons, gold balls, etc., topped off with an American flag in compliment to us. The presents were all lying around on tables, and the tree remains untouched for a week, so that poor children can come in and enjoy it on different days.

Charlie and I were not forgotten, and we received each a portfolio filled with different views of Moscow.

Every guest, on leaving, also, takes a huge box filled with almonds, sugar plums, cakes, etc., etc., quite enough to make you ill for a week. The party was not very large, and we broke up just before midnight to go to the French Catholic church to hear the mass, but the place was jammed, and we did not stay long. Charlie and I then jumped into our sleigh, and the great bells of the Kremlin and the neighboring churches were booming all around.

We wended our way up the hill and pushed into the Patriarchal Cathedral of Russia, where all the Tsars are crowned, and here we saw the Russian mass. The crowd was so dense that it was impossible to penetrate more than a few feet into the church, and we soon left.

One evening last week we did the Russian bath. It is perfectly delicious, a general steaming all over first, and then you are bodily champooed by the careful attendant,—the soap suds being, so to speak, whipped in with a bunch of rushes flourished round you,—and then recline at your ease, as long as you please, and finally cool off with differently moderated showers of water.

We have made the acquaintance of a Mr. Arnoldi, who has a charming wife. He is a great lover of horse flesh, and took us over a stable, where we saw splendid specimens of the different types of the Russian horse, and afterwards we went to the trotting track and saw the sports with their fast trotters. The scene was not unlike Riverside Park at home, and very interesting to me. They want to get up international races.

We afterwards dined with Mr. A., quite en famille.

We have been to another party at the aunt’s of my lovely Miss M—, and I again watched her going through the graceful slides of the mazourka.

There are two public balls every night now during the holidays, sometimes a masquerade at the Nobility Club or the Grand Opera, or again a dance or concert at the German Club, and so on, but the masquerades, after Paris, are tame.

The holidays are much made of here, and every one celebrates them by getting tipsy, for the Russian, besides his everlasting tea, also manages to dispose of considerable vodki, the alcoholic drink 116of the country. (Spelled vodki and vodka, distilled from rye, also from potatoes.)

To a hard working Yankee it is odd, the slowness and want of ambition of all. For instance, Sunday is a holiday, and the day before he prepares himself for it, and the day after he gets sober, and as there is on the average one fête day during the week, when the same game is tried, it does not leave many days for work.

Thus you see the days slip along on golden wings, and your flâneur looks with horror on the bore of packing up his traps, but we may be off on Saturday to St. Petersburg. I have your letter No. 11, with the Boston gayeties. I will get you some nice postage stamps some time, but for the present these will suffice. Accept, also, the photograph of Chawls and myself à la Russe, with the Kremlin in the background, and us in the front, done up in our shubes and boots, and waiting the approach of many bears. (See frontispiece.)

Fear not for our ears and noses now, for although the thermometer keeps down steadily in the region of “Niblo” (Meaning zero, an old joke of First Lieutenant Peleg W. Blake of the Fifth Mass. Battery, who when speaking of the weather always called zero “Niblo,”) we are much more comfortable in the streets than we are at home, where it seems to be the fashion to be cold always out of doors.

The photographs of Moscow are the best in the world. (I had never seen such beautifully glazed ones at that time.) We do not get much news here about Americans, as there is no French paper in Moscow, and even if there were there would be no time to read it, we are in such a whirl of excitement. Going to bed at four gives you a short morning.

THE STAIGG PORTRAIT.

117I read the President’s (Johnson’s) message with interest, and great satisfaction in regard to everything except the internal politics of the United States. How pleasant, too, is the report of the Treasury. People here look upon our diminishing debt with perfect amazement. Indeed the influence which our country is giving to the world is more perceptible every day and very noticeable here.

We are of course much interested in the great yacht race, and want brother Tom to come over in the Spring, and give the graceful little Alice another wetting in the Channel. Tell him she must not go home in May. I want to sail in her once in the summer. What a carnival there will be in Paris, and how much nicer to be a “swell” in Moscow than an individual in the former.

You can judge of my amazement, my excitement, on going up to the drawing-room after dinner on Christmas Day, to find before my eyes a portrait of you, my dear Nathan, gracefully standing with your arm holding the bridle of your horse, and looking so like life that I really started, reading the announcement, put on by Hattie:—“By Atlantic Telegraph, St. Petersburg. A Merry 118Christmas!”—Why, I felt that it had actually come from there! It is a charming picture. What a villain you are! Of course it is not finished, and is to go back to have some alterations.

Oh you sly boy! Coming up from Lynn (Our summer home at the beach.) every day to give me this delightful surprise! I thank you.

We had a charming Christmas dinner, and, will you believe it? the presents for the third time were so hid they had great difficulty in finding them, and some were obliged to be told.

I begin you this, Dear “Mum,” from Moscow, but I may finish it in St. Petersburg. Children of chance, that we are, how dare we calculate on even the events of a few days? With this moral question at the beginning, I will tell you that we are still here, and have been through various adventures. Among others was the dedication of a church in the Russo Greek style, and the magnates of the city thought we had better see it. I did not object, as a dinner formed an important feature. Accordingly, one of the selectmen of Moscow routed us out of bed, and I gave him audience in my robe de nuit, and after he had conversed some time in Russ he thought matters would be expedited by an interpreter. I soon discovered that his sleigh was at the door, and that he wanted us to be off, so I hastened, and was ready,—Charlie following in our sleigh with Curtin.—He wore a medal and his horse was a high stepper. We soon reached the church, and had standing places of honor, vide Moscow Gazette 119of the next day with our distinguished names in Russian print,—for above three and a half hours, and we were not sorry to rattle off to the good dinner, which the opulent merchant, who had given the church, had had prepared for his guests. The lunch was stunning, entirely à la Russe, with some little wrinkles I mean to remember, and the menu on very gorgeous frosted paper, and a photograph of the church under each plate. We returned from our day’s work very much satisfied.

The society of this place is quite funny. We have got into the very “swell” little clique of the town, the Faubourg Saint Beacon Street of Moscow, and like the same set in our own blessed “Hub,” it is a close oligarchy with an endless array of cousins. The other evening we saw a most pretty phase of the holidays. About twenty young ladies and cavaliers of this set, with one or two matrons, went round the town in masquerade with fancy domino costumes, stopping at half a dozen different houses, at each of which they would dance once, with a supper later. Chawls and I went to two of the houses to see them and the effect was stunning; a postillion rushing in first, and then the others following in couples, Poles, Spaniards, and Tartars, Folly, a Cook, a Baby and her Nurse, &c., and so on. The coachman and footman, even, were in mask, to make the disguise as complete as possible, but we soon discovered our friends.

I think we will try it in Boston next winter.

The society of the merchant families is quite another set, but as they have the money now their entertainments are on a most gorgeous scale.

After all how like people are in all countries. This is well shown by yesterday, the Russian New Year’s Day. We got up a very “swell” trap,—a trotter and a runner by his side,—and went about slaughtering all our acquaintances. It was precisely the same as in New York, except that they gave you no grub anywhere, nor wine, though we did see one inebriate youth driving off. Every one always drives about the city and you get into the state of being unable to walk ten steps. You wo’n’t do it. Sleighs are very cheap, and the distances are very great, so that you keep your sleigh about you as an indispensable companion, from twelve noon until after midnight. The coachman follows you round like a dog, merely going off to feed his horses some time in the afternoon. With all this it is strange that the Russians never drive themselves, and no matter how fine the horses of the gay youth of the city, and how elegant his equipage, the coachman always drives. Perhaps this is because horses are a necessity, not a luxury, and having to drive so much every day you do not care to do it yourself. I think I, myself, with all my fondness for horses, would soon be indisposed to drive in Russia.

The “swell” groom here has a chic quite his own, and totally different from the London “tiger,” which has spread over the rest of the continent and America. My “Tom,” with his neat tights and top boots, carefully trimmed whiskers and square shoulders is very different from your 121bearded Russian coachman, the stouter the better, with lozenged-shaped, pin-cushion like, velvet hat, long tunic with a gorgeous colored sash and big boots. They drive with both arms stretched out at full length, and have four reins for a single pair of horses.

Tuesday, p.m.: I will finish this off now and take it on with me to St. Petersburg, tomorrow, to mail it there, as we have decided to change our base, in fact, having slaughtered all the fair ones of Moscow, and having left a good impression, it is much better to make our bows and retire quickly.

I have been skating today and yesterday with a most bright and attractive young lady, the Princess G—— (Princess Julie Gagarine now for years Madame la Princesse Ourousoff, one of the same great family represented at the Races on the Newport beach in 1866.) a cousin of the beautiful Miss M——. Being in mourning we have not seen her in society. She goes to St. Petersburg in a few days where we shall meet her again.

We go to our last party tonight. Private theatricals and a ball afterwards. Last evening a soirée musicale at the Martinoffs, and a dance later at another house.

We go to St. Petersburg to be quiet(?) as you imagine, and we shall arrive just in time for the “Blessing of the Neva,” breakfast at the Winter Palace, Review of Troops, etc., etc., and from now until Lent we shall have all we want of gayety.

Adieu, oh Moscow! with thy Kremlin and gilded turrets, thy fair princesses, thy fast horses, thy caviar and thy mazourka. Fain would we linger here, but the hand of time points onward, and the vague sensation of joys now past, vibrates in the brain!

122I have some little packages for you and Hattie from Coz. Eliza, which will I hope reach you safely some day. I am off now to bid her good bye.

Your letter from St. Petersburg arrived by the same steamer that brought Mr. Burgess and little Billy’s blue suit, for both of which many thanks. I wish you could see the little man in the jacket and cap, he looks awful cunning, and the color just suits his complexion. They are just the right size, and all beholders say “How remarkable that a young man like Mr. Appleton should know just what to get for a baby like that!”

The worsted work for the old lady was also a great success. She thinks it the funniest thing she ever saw. And all this page and not a word yet about the picture!

... I took Elias (The old family servant.) into the secret, and he was so important, and so excited with it that I never expected he would get through waiting on table that dinner, without smashing something. You know we got it into the house very quietly, during church time, and hid it on the back piazza, and Elias got it up into the drawing-room while we were eating dinner, and coming down made such telegraphic signals that Erny (Ernest Longfellow) who was next me, said, “What has come over Elias? he is winking and making such faces at you. There’s some immense secret!”

123As I had not my “eyes” on it was unfortunately thrown away. When Mamma did get up and saw it, she was fairly terrified, apparently thinking you were there yourself in some incomprehensible way. I don’t know but she will pull down “Rosalie” to have a place to hang it. Brother Tom takes a great interest in it, and brings artists to see it, who mostly think it Staigg’s best work.... Dear me. I have not told you about the piano we are having constructed to match our book cases, and with Mr. Staigg’s first sketch of you inserted in a panel,—truly lovely!

Your brother Tom has just been in to read a letter from Charlie. He was quite excited in hearing about Russia, and really wished he was with you to enjoy something so new. He would have been a great addition, and talked French and made everything as jolly as possible. He hopes that you have made known that you were officers in the army and wounded men, and I trust it is understood that C. A. L. is son of the “great poet.”

Your letters stir us all up, and though this is not a regular writing day, I could not resist telling you how much we enjoy hearing from you.

The “presentation” must have been rather a trial, not speaking French fluently. How T. G. A. would have rattled it off! He rather wonders that he came home. Of course the yachting will take him out in the Spring. We have now fine sleighing, and he is every day on the Brighton road, but not a “fascinating hood” is to be seen; all the women with veils tied tight over their faces. T. G. A. drives his pair and has some damsels with him.

124Monday Eve: Little Billy (Curtis) came to see his Grandma this morning in full French costume; his pretty blue coat and hat, and Astrachan fur. It is lovely and very becoming to the little man.

All are so charmed with your picture. It gives life and light to the old house. I cannot bear to part with it, and I believe Staigg does not consider it finished.

I am glad you have nice quiet apartments, and are not at a hotel. Please be moderate, and do not dash about and make yourself conspicuous. It is foreign to the family name.

A visit to No. 39, a few days since, and the exhibition of your portrait by Staigg, spurred me up to an undertaking which I have long been proposing to myself, answering a letter which you wrote to me before your departure and after mine from San Francisco, and which was forwarded to me here.... I was much pleased with your picture, and thought it an excellent likeness for the number of sittings I was told you had.

Of course, as is the duty of a good artist, he exerts his best effort that your personal pulchritude may not suffer, and the war-horse, etc. is rather in the style of General Washington. You ought to have had your negro “Joe” brought into the picture holding the charger. The horse, as well as I could judge from a short inspection, is well done, and surprisingly so, if, as Mrs. Appleton told me, this is Staigg’s first horse. I speak so at length as I suppose the thing to have been completed since you left home.”

ROSALIE.

The picture of “Rosalie” by Washington Allston, mentioned in my sister’s letter as hanging in the drawing-room at 39 Beacon street, and to which the author addressed some exquisite verses, became mine after the death of my father, at whose request it was painted.

It was in 1835, that my half-sister, the wife of the poet Longfellow, then Miss Frances Elizabeth Appleton, made a copy, which I now have in her own handwriting, of the following verse which was added by Allston some time after the original three verses were composed:—

The original three verses are as follows:—

These three verses have the signature as given above, in the copy in my possession. To the peculiar circumstances under which the picture was painted, an allusion is made in a letter to my brother Tom in Paris, by Mr. Tom Kemper Davis in Boston, a member of the legal profession with a strong leaning toward literary pursuits.

“Sully, the artist,” he wrote, “is in town. I went with him yesterday and bowed at the shrine of the divine ‘Rosalie’. Sully’s first exclamation, after gazing some time at the picture, was,—

‘Raphael and Titian combined!’

Allston, by the way, has in conversation with me frequently alluded to your father’s purchase of this picture, and as I never heard him allude before to any like transaction. The manner in which the thing was done seems to have touched his heart.”

When they went to see it, the picture hung in the drawing-room of our old house, 39 Beacon street. That the artist Sully may have had a personal interest in the “Rosalie,” was suggested to me by a letter from the pen of a Washington correspondent of the New York Daily Graphic, signed “Mary E. Nealy,” which I chanced to see. I, being then in London, addressed a letter to this correspondent from 449 Strand, the Reading Room and Exchange 127of Robert Bowles, dated October 26, 1875, in the following words:—

“I noticed in a recent number of the Graphic, a letter of yours from Washington, in which you gave quite a long account of a collection of pictures painted by Sully. My attention was attracted to it by what you say of ‘Rosalie’, and the verses written by Allston, because I am the owner of the painting of ‘Rosalie’, which Washington Allston painted, and for which he wrote the verses.

This picture was painted for my late father and hung by the direction of Allston himself at our house, where it has remained many years, the admiration of all. Should you ever go to Boston, I think it will give you pleasure to see it.

I always supposed that the name was merely a fancy one, but what you say of Allston’s intimacy with Sully and his family, makes me believe that quite probably the name was taken from one of Sully’s daughters, and as such it may even be a sort of portrait of her.”

I closed by asking for further information in regard to the original of the picture, and received the following reply:—

618 Sixth Street, Washington City, D. C.

Nov. 18, 1875.

Your letter of enquiry in regard to the portrait of “Rosalie” by Allston was duly received. Colonel Wheeler does not know about it, and Mrs. Wheeler, formerly Ellen Sully, being married before her sister Rosalie was grown, does not know that the verses were inspired by her sister, but thinks it highly probable, as Mr. Allston admired her very much. She was very beautiful, as well as talented, but died at an early age. Mrs. Wheeler could tell you certainly about your picture if she could see a photograph of it.

128I will be happy to call and see the picture if I ever go to Boston, and thank you kindly for the privilege and the invitation. I have been intensely interested in his pictures, and think that few artists ever created more lovely female heads. I have an old annual called The Gift, published in Philadelphia, in 1842. On the title page is a lovely vignette head, which Col. Wheeler says is Rosalie Sully. If I could send it to you without spoiling my book I would do so. But the more simple way would be for you to photograph your painting.

P. S. This is a handsome and youthful brunette, with a spirited yet most lovely and womanly expression. Her hand supports her head, and the dark rich curls fall carelessly about her face. Sully painted his daughters in many positions and in various characters, and many female heads of his, supposed to be imaginary, are portraits of his own loved ones.

The Gift, edition of 1842, is in the Boston Athenæum Library. The second picture on the title page really does look like “Rosalie” but younger.

Allston died in Cambridge, Mass., July 9, 1843. Mrs. Jameson, the English author, in her Memoir of Washington Allston, January 1, 1844, gives the following description:—

“‘Rosalie Listening to Music.’ The figure of a young girl, life-size and three-quarters. She has been reading. The hand which holds the book has dropped: the other is pressed on her bosom. The head a little raised. Rapt, yet melancholy attention in the opening eyes and parted lips. The coloring deep, delicate, rich.

When I first saw this picture, in the drawing-room of Mr. Appleton of Boston, I had never seen Allston, did not even recollect his name. It at once so captivated my attention, that I could not take my eyes from it, even though one who might well have sat for a Rosalie was at my side. I thought I had never beheld such a countenance, except in some of the female heads of Titian or Palma. Yet the face was not what would be termed beautiful; and oh, how far from the sentimental, ringletted prettiness of our fashionable painters!

129When I afterwards asked Mr. Allston whether his poem of ‘Rosalie’ had suggested the picture, or the picture the stanzas, he replied, that, ‘as well as he could recollect, the conception of the poem and of the picture had been simultaneous in his mind.’ He received for this picture 1,200 dollars, about £250.”

The “Rosalie” was exhibited at the Philadelphia Centennial Exposition in 1876, and a lithograph was published by James R. Osgood & Co., Boston, in a collection entitled “Massachusetts Artists’ Centennial Album, 1876.” The description is as follows:—

“This picture was painted in 1835. It represents a beautiful girl seated, facing the spectator, with one hand upon her bosom, and the fingers of the other between the leaves of a red book which she holds upon one knee. A piece of dark-brown drapery thrown across the lap nearly hides the blue of the skirt. The waist of the dress is of gray, with white sleeves, and is bound to the form by a yellow girdle. The background is a dull red curtain with a gray column at the left. The picture is owned by Mr. Nathan Appleton. The illustration is a heliotype made from the original.”

I loaned it for some years to the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, and in 1893, it was exhibited at the World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago. I afterward sold it to my brother W. S. Appleton, and it is now at 462 Beacon Street, Boston.

I have been a week with Lady S. and her husband Mr. Smith Wright, not far from here. Lady S. is famous for her taste in flowers. Her conservatory 130is superb, and her white “yackas” unrivalled. She has a sister like “ma chere Mire” in Miss Bremer, with a wonderful face for energy. She is 87, but quick as a girl, a very clever botanist as well, and corresponding with all the best botanists in England. I drove and rode and walked over the country; magnetized a little, and drew a little, and so the hours flew. The Everetts were there a bit, and then flew to Scotland. To show how kind a man Mr. Smith Wright is,—he it was at Rome who got the Protestant burial ground enclosed, and did away with the burial by torchlight of old time. He is president of the Mechanics’ Institute at Nottingham. I shall hope to see these excellent friends again. I am the first American who ever visited them.

Yesterday Lady S. drove me to Sir George Beaumont’s, wishing herself to see Allston’s picture, I had so interested her in him. On the way there she told me how odd a person the present Sir George was,—the nephew of the famous art patron,—He received us at his superb porch in a blouse, with a funny white hat on, and was in great spirits to see us.... He took us over the fine house, a miracle of taste, as was everything of his uncle’s, and at length into a glass conservatory-like gallery he had built to hold the over abounding pictures. Here were all the first good things of Wilkie, Leslie, etc., which Sir George bought to encourage the young artists, but Sir G.’s own sketches were as interesting as any, and as good. The last one he was upon when he fell with apoplexy was peculiarly so. It represented boys playing over water upon a fallen tree, and every figure was in danger. Sir G. considered this very curious, so anticipating his own situation.

131I mentioned Allston. He jumped. “I’ll show you a picture of his,”—and he ran for the key. It is in a lovely gray stone church, close to the house, a sort of guardian angel to the place.

Allston’s picture is the only one in the church. It is the one he often spoke to me about. It is ill placed, and ill lit, but wonderfully fine. An angel in white with sky blue scarf fluttering, points, while standing on the steps, to the prison door with a radiant hand, while Peter lifts a majestic face, heavy with sleep, upon the Angelus from between his bent and drowsy guards.

There is a huge patine of moonlight breaking through the grates of the prison above.... The angel’s hair is nut brown and a little too pretty for so sacred a subject. It reminded me of “Rosalie’s” which is womanly, not angelic. The figures are life size and the picture one of Allston’s fine ones tho’ not equal to the “Jeremiah,” “Miriam” or “Balshazzar.”

We spent hours in wandering through the grounds....

Oh! the dairy, you should see that! An arched alcove, all tiles above and below, rows of huge cream bowls standing upon marble slabs, and a fountain coolly splashing from an antique mask at one end. This gem of a dairy was dead Lady Beaumont’s doing.

There were poems of Wordsworth cut in stone about the walks. He was a great friend of the former Sir George, and I saw a stone seat, the rock cut, in which he wrote many of his poems. When one thinks of this lovely place and the great men, Sir George, Allston, Wordsworth, and Beaumont and Fletcher,—this is one of the family,—perhaps Shakespeare, one must allow this to be almost unmatched as a country seat.

132On page 67, of brother Tom’s volume of poems entitled “Faded Leaves,” in one addressed to Allston after seeing his “Peter delivered from Prison” at Colcorton Hall, in Wordsworth’s winter garden, may be found the following stanzas:—

I do think you are having splendid times. The last princess seems to be the loveliest. And then the furs, and the slippers, and the table covers, and the malachite! Oh, what a boy!

Mr. Sayles (Henry Sayles) and Ned Brown (Edward Ingersol Brown) called to see me and were so much pleased with your picture. (Staigg portrait.)

They were told you really sent a telegram from St. Petersburg on Christmas Day, and thought it so like you to do it. W. S. A. is in pursuit of a second pair for his four-in-hand. I do not approve so much display.”

In another letter my mother observes parenthetically:—“You must remember I am an old lady and belong to the old school of manners and propriety, which has sadly changed since my day.”

THE BLESSING OF THE NEVA. ILL. LONDON NEWS.

CHAPTER SIXTH. ST. PETERSBURG. THE NEVA. NOVGOROD. POLAND. — The Blessing of The Neva. — Fox’s Mission to Russia. — The Ceremony of Blessing the Waters. — “ A Friend at Court. ” — A Cousinly View. From My Cousin at Moscow to My Mother. — Novgorod. To My Mother. — The Midnight Drive. — Isla. — My Circassian Uniform. — Letter to My Mother Continued. — The Costume Ball at Delmonico’s. — From Miss Stevens on Receipt of the Photograph, 1877. — The Loom of the East. — My Twenty-Fourth Birthday. From My Mother in Boston, Sunday, Feb. 3, 1867. — The Last Letter from Russia in ’67. — “ 20 and 30 Below. ” — Russian Footmen. — Lady Buchanan’s Ball. — Tsarskoë Selo. — A Drive with Reindeer. — Gas-Lighting in Moscow. From My Mother in Boston, Feb. 10, 1867. — Gifts to the South. — “ Poor Poland. ” — Letter to My Mother. — Parting Company.

Here we are back at the capital, where we were most enthusiastically received by our hostess Madame Octavie, who expressed great joy at seeing her “little Americans” safely returned, and installed us into our old apartments.

Your letters came the next day, with accounts of Christmas festivities at home, and the prospective party for New Year.

I am so glad that the portrait à la militaire has been accomplished enough to show what it is, and that the likeness is good, and the whole thing gives pleasure. I rather pride myself upon it, for the idea of the composition and pose was quite my own, and the secrecy with which it has all been done is commendable.

134Driving down the Nevski from the Moscow station St. Petersburg looked so funny, not in the least like a Russian city, but a great, sprawling capital, and they tell us it is not gay here at all, especially after Moscow. No balls at Court as yet, as the government is not very rich just now, and after the tremendous expenses of entertaining our fleet last summer, and later all the gorgeous display connected with the wedding of the Tsarevitch, they are really trying to economize a bit. This is good theoretically, but not for us individually, and I hope we shall see one big ball at the Winter Palace.

The morning after our return was the day of the ceremony of the baptism of the Neva, which the Emperor attends. We received invitations to the Palace to go with the Diplomatic Corps, and although we could not see much of the performance outside,—and how the poor fellows, Tsar, priests, and “strikers” have to suffer with uncovered heads in the bitter cold,—we got a very good idea of the male portion of the Russian court in the Palace, and afterwards enjoyed an excellent breakfast. It was quite striking to see us, the only two civilians in the big throng of officers, courtiers and diplomats, and it was a pleasant feeling that the grandeur of America does not go in for outside display.

We dined yesterday at the English Club with Curtin, the best one in the city, and English only in name, and later played Russian nine-pins with a party of officers.

I skated, also, on the Neva Club grounds, which have been carefully arranged during our absence, and it was very jolly there, with music and all the swells of the city. The costumes are very effective, and add much to the brilliancy of the scene, those 135of the gentlemen being quite as elaborate as of the ladies, velvet jackets and tight fitting tunics trimmed with fur and slashed à la Polenaise, with Knickerbockers and leggings. It is strange that if a gentleman with us should attempt to wear such a costume, elegant, comfortable, and appropriate for the ice, he would be set down as a snob. The democratic principle of every one always wearing the same style of raiment on all occasions may, perhaps, be good, but it certainly takes away much from the beauty of any assemblage of human beings.

The ladies were much as in New York or Jamaica Pond, with the addition of the omnipresent basilisk or hood, made of different colored cloth, and trimmed with gold or silver braid. We mean to bring several of them home, as there is nothing prettier or more genuinely Russian here to take away, and for a lady to wear sleigh-riding they are perfect. I hope to see some of my own on the Brighton road next winter.

Today was held the first race of the season on the river, but it was so very cold that it was not particularly amusing to witness. The horses look fine, parading about covered with Persian blankets. Monday morning. Very early! We start in a few minutes on an excursion of two or three days to Novgorod the Great, once the capital of Russia, and I have just time to seal this up without finishing it.

The reference in my letter to our fleet and its presence in Russia is to Fox’s mission. On the 16th of May, 1866, the President of the United 136States, Andrew Johnson, signed a joint resolution passed by Congress, congratulating the twenty million serfs upon the providential escape from assassination of the Emperor Alexander II., by the hand of an enemy of emancipation, and in order to give additional significance to the act, Congress selected the Hon. Gustavus Vasa Fox, assistant secretary of the navy during the entire period of the war for the Preservation of the Union, to perform the delicate mission of carrying this resolution to the Emperor of Russia. He was sent in the two turreted monitor Miantonomoh, a class of vessel which had never before crossed the Atlantic, and the Augusta and Ashuelot, two wooden men-of-war, accompanied the Miantonomoh.

August 6 (July 23) 1866, the fleet arrived in the harbor of Cronstadt, on the 17th the Tsar sent the address acknowledging the visit of Mr. Fox, and on Saturday, September 15 (3d) Mr. Fox left Saint Petersburg, after a farewell breakfast given on the Russian yacht Rurik at which Lieutenant General Greig said in a speech while presenting a medal struck in memory of the enfranchisement of the peasants:—

“He will see on it the likeness of our blessed sovereign, and the effigy of a nobleman and of a peasant.”

A narrative of this mission to Russia from the Journal and Notes of J. F. Loubat (Duc deLoubat) was published in 1873, and presented to me in New York, by the author, September 28th of the same year.

In some notes made in February, 1879, and printed in the Boston Advertiser under the title 137“Outre Mer,” I referred to the occasion of the annual benediction of the Neva, a rite of the Orthodox Church commemorative of the baptism of the Saviour, when the Tsar takes his position in an open chapel built out on the quay, and the ice below having been broken the Metropolitan blesses the waters and the cross is dipped therein three times:—

“It takes place just opposite the Winter Palace, and all the guests witness it comfortably from the windows of one of the large rooms of the palace, while the Tsar and the priests and those who actually participate in it have to go out with bare heads in the cold and take some of the water from the frozen Neva, which they can only get through a hole made in the ice. It is principally a religious service, with rites performed upon a handsome platform, with a canopy above, erected for it between the palace and the water. It does not last long, and in this instance the Emperor and his suite might well have been glad to get out of the intense cold when it was over.

We had some difficulty that day, my companion and myself, in getting up to the door of the Winter Palace. We had our cards of invitation all correct, indicating where we should go, and we supposed that our invostchik, or the driver of the sleigh we used every day, understood it perfectly. But it seems he did not, and we were stopped by a mounted soldier to whom we could not talk a word, while we brandished the card before him. But this did not work, and we had to turn back. We were at our wits’ ends, determined if possible not to miss the sight, and I suggested that we should drive at once to the United States Minister’s residence, General Clay, to see if we could not find his servant, 138or some one who would act as pilot. On the road we met our commissionaire whom we had dismissed at the hotel, thinking we should not need him, and took him in front with the driver.

As it was then rather late we drove up to the nearest door of the palace, but not the one designated for us to enter on the card. There we met one of the young officers of the imperial household whose acquaintance we had made at our regular presentation to the Tsar some weeks before, and, explaining to him our dilemma he said it was all right, and put us in charge of a chasseur, who was to conduct us to our proper places. He was a gorgeously dressed fellow, with a very tall plume in his hat, and slowly took us along through the endless salons of the building, which were filled with people,—ladies in the galleries,—and at length reached the room set apart for the Diplomatic Corps and distinguished strangers who happened to be in St. Petersburg, where we had a view of the ceremonies.”

About a month ago, as I was standing at the window, I saw two gentlemen stop at our door, with very English faces as I thought. I was surprised, for I expected no visitors from abroad, but how much greater was my surprise when the two gentlemen were introduced as Mr. Appleton and Mr. Longfellow.

139You may well imagine my joy at seeing some of my American relations at last. Their stay in Moscow was for me a perfect enjoyment. I had such pleasure in seeing them, and saw them as often as was possible, for they had so many invitations from all sides that they could hardly find time to answer them all: they went very much among the nobility.

Nathan admired the Russian ladies much and teased me all the time by saying he would marry a Russian Princess or a Polish countess. I said I would not acknowledge him after that, he must remain constant to the American beauties. He left Moscow, however, with the firm intention of falling desperately in love with the first fairy princess he met in St. Petersburg. I trust, however, that the 30 degrees of frost we have at the present moment will freeze his heart so as not to admit any warmer feeling into it, and prevent melting away those he brought with him from America.

You may well think, dear cousin, how much Nathan and Charles had to tell us about you all, and it seems as if since I know them the ocean has disappeared between us, and we are brought nearer to each other. How much I should like to see you and know you all, and always will regret not to have gone over to Boston during the three months I stayed in Ostend, some twelve years ago. I should have then seen our dear Grandmamma, let me call her thus, dear cousin, for she was to me more than ever an aunt could be.

How much I value the beautiful pin you sent me is needless to say. Receive my warmest and sincerest thanks for this kind attention, and believe me, dear cousin, that I shall always wear the pin, 140so dear to me, in remembrance of our dear Grandmamma and of yourself.

How do you like Nathan’s and Charles’s photograph in their furs? (See frontispiece.) We admire it much, and I claimed one for my album.

Kiss the dear baby for me. I sent him a pair of little red Russian boots, which I hope he will be able to wear by the time they reach him.

Good bye, dear cousin, write to me sometimes, and tell me something about our travellers that interest me much. My husband begs to be kindly remembered to you and your dear family.

Our little trip to Novgorod was most successful. We went down the railroad about 70 miles, to Tchudova, and there took the troikas and the funniest vehicle imaginable, in which you lie down on the hay and are covered up with felt and skins. We made our forty-five miles in a few hours, arriving at the town in time for supper and bed.

The next morning we set about seeing the sights of the place, which are very few, the old church of St. Sophia and the modern monument celebrating the 1000th anniversary of Russia.

What a quaint old place, with its Kremlin, and its white yellow churches, and everything so Russian!

THE MIDNIGHT DRIVE.

I found a fascinating antiquary, who would have driven Billy crazy, in his gown and skull cap. He had a book store in his house, with curiosities and minerals, and I bought a Russian missal of the 14th century (I afterwards gave it to the Boston Public Library.) and a few coins and odds and ends.

SKATING IN THE YOUSOUPOFF GARDEN.

We made the journey home by night, with the mercury near zero, and cold enough it was. I had two pairs of gloves on, and mittens over them, and was just comfortable. We rattled along over the snow, with a bright moon, and clear, cold stars, stopping now and then at wayside inns to drink tea and warm up.

Nothing have we done more Russ than our midnight drive from Novgorod.

Yesterday we dined with the Count Besborodko, the one who owns the “swell” palace I mentioned in a previous letter. The dinner was good, the company gay, the Countess charming, and never in my life was I so en train to speak French easily. I surprised myself. We came home early, changed our dress, and went for a little while to the fête of the Yacht Club Skating ground, which was brilliantly illuminated with lanterns, grottoes of ice with Bengal lights thrown upon them, stuffed bears, pretty toilettes, etc. etc.—music.

But even this was not enough for the evening, so off we go to Isla, a café, theatre, skating ground combined, a few miles into the country, where there are life size statues made of ice in the garden.

Shall we go to the bal masqué at the Opera House? 142No, it will hardly pay to put on our funereals twice the same evening, so go to bed quietly, and good night!

Since my last return here I have been making many purchases preparatory to leaving the place.

Your beautiful sables have been selected, paid for and packed up, and I hope they will come home in safety.

“‘Brave in battle,’ ‘eloquent in assembly,’ are great titles in Circassia. But he who is the ‘most hospitable’ wears the brightest crown of all.... A Circassian is always a Circassian.”

—Colonel Richard Henry Savage.

“A land of the sword and spear, of the chase and mighty woodcraft—Circassia.”

—R. H. S. 1876.

I have got Master Will a Circassian overcoat for winter, and myself a Circassian uniform, for fancy balls at home, very handsome and effective it is too. Charlie has had a Russian dress made for the same object. I have picked up in the Bazaar some nice things in the way of arms,—pistols, daggers and swords, and am looking for some chain armor. Today I bought all the malachite I want, a few pretty pieces only. My Russian harness has come, and very nice it is, so light and graceful. Look out for me on the avenue next summer crying “berages,” Russian for “Look out!” “Take care!”

I have bought you a lovely Persian table cloth and myself a cover for an easy chair for smoking.

CIRCASSIAN UNIFORM.

We went the other evening to see the Davenport Brothers, who are here now, and as luck would have 143it I was drawn by lot to tie one of them in the box. Funny that way out in Russia they should be tied up by a fellow countryman. There was quite a party of us Americans there, and we chatted with them after the performance. It was very good and just what I have often seen.

29th. Morning:—I have just received a big packet of letters; among them one from Georgie Shattuck. He gives me a very good idea of just what is going on in Boston.

Last eve we were again at the Opera, in the Pierces’ box. The Barber of Seville—I have often heard it—with an ugly prima-donna. Tonight we go first to a ballet, “Meteora,” and after to a ball at Lady Buchanan’s the English ambassadress, and, perhaps, at two o’clock, to a costume ball at one of the Clubs. Saturday next is my birthday, and I am to give a gentlemen’s dinner to Russians and Americans.

I have many things here which are not completed, and I want all my purchases well packed up and directed, before I leave the place, and, try as hard as you please, it is difficult to accomplish much each day.

We made the acquaintance a few days past of the Souworoff family, the descendants of the great old fighter whose sabre rang all over Europe. The young princess was very nice and jolly, and did not like it that her mother would not let her skate and flirt. The old party was eminently proper and conservative in all her ideas, and reminded me of several ladies in Boston I might perhaps mention.

We passed one evening last week quietly with Mr. Prince, as he was very desirous we should. What are you going to do this summer? Will quiet Lynn content you, or is it Niagara, Saratoga, 144or Newport? Go in for a house there, and I will come home by the first of August, in time for the season. I hear the Americans are cutting great rigs in Paris. Thank Mr. Burgess for me for the arrival of the package. Breakfast being ready, 12 m., I will say in the last words of many French comedies, “à table”.

From a journal of a visit to New York and Philadelphia, made in March and April, 1875, I extract the following written in my den, 788 Broadway, Room 16, New York, April 11th:—

“Since I left Boston, nearly three weeks ago, I have been through some such interesting experiences that I must certainly record them in my diary. But it is no easy thing to catch them as they go by, so rapid a life do we lead in the great cities and so full of movement is the time, still, I will try.”

The event of the season among the few hundred persons who make up the fashionables of New York society, was the Bal Costumé given at Delmonico’s by thirty gentlemen on Easter Monday, March 29, 1875.

I was invited to take part in the Oriental Quadrille gotten up by Miss Minnie Stevens (Daughter 145of Mr. and Mrs. Paran Stevens, and afterwards wife of Arthur Henry Fitzroy Paget.) as I had a fine Circassian officer’s dress, which I had had made years ago in Saint Petersburg, just for occasions of the kind.

The Sunday before the ball I dined at Mr. S. L. M. Barlow’s, No. 1 Madison Avenue, as my partner in the quadrille was to be Miss Barlow, and it was a kind attention on their part to invite me to dinner.

The other guests were Mr. Manton Marble and Mr. Hurlburt of the New York World, one of the organs of the Democratic party. These gentlemen, with Messrs. Barlow, Belmont and others, were very intimate, and all leading spirits of the Manhattan Club.

After dessert, I took occasion to say, in a conversation in which some of the leaders were being discussed, that the Democratic party to succeed must get rid of many of its old planks, which would not support any one today; that there were plenty of young fellows like myself and others, who had been in the war, and were now growing up to take part in public matters, who could not, and would not, place confidence in the men whose record had been such as that of the leaders of the Northern Democrats, the last fifteen years.

But how I have departed from the ball!

Instead of describing it particularly I insert here a drawing and notice of it from Frank Leslie’s paper, also the card of invitation, etc. (The illustration represented the ball room with the ball in progress, showing many of the finest costumes.)

The invitation was for a Bal Costumé—costume de rigueur,—signed by H. S. Fearing, secretary, and the time was nine o’clock. The reverse of the card bore the names of twenty-eight gentlemen; 146among them August Belmont, W. W. Astor, and A. Thorndike Rice.

The representative of Frank Leslie’s said in his report:—

“All that bright flowers, perfumed air, sweet music, flashing diamonds, manly beauty, female loveliness, elegant costumes, and grace and refinement could contribute to such a scene, were found there.... One of the features of the evening was an Eastern quadrille of which Miss Stevens of Fifth Avenue was queen. The costumes of the eight forming the set were superb!”

The note from Miss Minnie Stevens to me with regard to the ball, was as follows:—

“I write you some time ahead to know if it is possible for you to be in New York a week from Monday, that is to say, the Monday before the ball. We have arranged to dance the quadrille at our place on that evening, for you have no idea how little any one knows about dancing it, and, as the audience will be large, it would be very mortifying to make several mistakes. As there is to be a procession formed, we have also to know our partners and our places. I hope you will be able to get here for the rehearsal on Monday the 22d as I would like all the sixteen to come together. I am in despair about my dress, it is so difficult to get up. Hoping soon to have the pleasure of seeing you,

I am sincerely yours,

Minnie Stevens.”

This was the handsomest ball of the kind I ever saw, as nearly all the costumes were remarkable for richness, and few or none of them had a cheap or tawdry look. The march in of all of us who took part in the opening quadrille, was a brilliant sight.

Before going to it I went to show myself off in costume at the Appletons’, 3 Madison Avenue, and also at the Beckwiths’ on Fifth Avenue and 18th Street, whence I escorted Miss Helen Beckwith 147(Now Mrs. Dudley Leigh.) in the dress of a Circassian slave across the street to the Belmonts’, where there was a large reception, for those in costume particularly, for the benefit of the invalid daughter who could not go to the ball, but naturally wanted to see the people and the dresses. I was glad to have the chance of paying a call at the house. Mrs. Belmont looked remarkably well, and her other daughter (Now Mrs. Samuel S. Howland.) too, as pretty as possible in Pompadour costume.

At the ball I sat at a supper table with Mrs. Strong,—née Ruggles,—chatting and looking at the different persons as they passed by; also, with Mrs. General Barlow née Shaw. This was a quiet and comfortable way of enjoying the fête. Then I danced the “cotillon” with Mrs. Kemys—the cotillon which was led by Jimmy Otis with all the animation of twenty years before.

Strolling to my den through 14th street and Broadway, just as the day was dawning, I got into bed, well tired, a little before six o’clock.

“So many thanks for the charming photograph just received. It was very kind of you to have remembered me, and so justly divined my wish.

The ‘Circassian’ shall join its companions in the album of the oriental quadrille. We are going to England some time this spring, but I hope only to return for the summer at dear old Newport, which we all must acknowledge has no rivals.”

I wore my Circassian costume again at my brother’s house, 10 Commonwealth Avenue, Boston, 148at the meeting of the Bric-a-Brac Club, January 17th, 1877, when I read his paper on “The Loom of the East” (Fifth chapter of “Windfalls” by Thomas Gold Appleton, author of “A Sheaf of Papers,” “A Nile Journal,” “Syrian Sunshine” etc.) my brother suffering from a fall at the time.

“Your birthday (February 2d) was not forgotten, and as I sat at my lonely meal, I could only wish you, my boy, many years of happiness,—not the giddy enjoyment of the present hour, but solid days of reality, when the heart shall be satisfied, and all this fascination of travel and society shall have lost some of its freshness, and you will not care for a ‘spike’ team, or a ‘four-in-hand’.”

Yes, Mamma, it is here. We are off tomorrow for Warsaw. We leave this delightful place, with its cold climate and its warm hearts. Willingly would I linger here a week or two more, but Charles is resolute, and has been saying for the last few days that he will go tomorrow, and can’t be stopped.

Our boxes are packed, our bills paid, and as it would be quite impossible to find a time when we would not like to stay longer, perhaps it is as well to go now as ever.

It is mild today, but the four days before have been such cold as I never experienced; the mercury being all the time between twenty and thirty below the zero of Fahrenheit. In fact the people here say they have not had such a snap for years. We were fortunate not to get frozen, for our isvoschik was in a continued state of freeze,—which he did not seem to mind,—notwithstanding the neckkerchief and mittens we gave him.

The intense cold interferes little with your life, and wrapped up in our shubes we spend the day calling or shopping, or by night go from ballet to ball till late in the morning. They have huge fires built in front of the Opera House, and the Winter Palace, for the coachmen to keep warm.

The life of a footman here is odd enough. Their principal duty is to look after the cloaks and overshoes of their masters and mistresses, and they follow them about all day and night, sitting and sleeping in the entries of private houses during a visit and the duration of a ball, and in the foyer of the theatre for the entire performance of the opera or play.

The carriages, too, are always drawn up in line at the theatre or ball, and stay there all night instead of going home and returning at a certain hour. What would the tender coachmen and hackmen of Boston say to that, who do not like to wait half an hour?

This is strange, when it is so cold, especially for 150the horses, but they are never clipped, and the men are very thickly dressed.

At all the “swell” houses they have an impressive flunkey in the entry, with a huge knobbed stick like a drum major or beadle, dressed in gorgeous livery, a red sash a foot wide and covered with embroidered black, double-headed eagles. All he does is to open and shut the front door. In fact, at all houses, shops, and hotels, they have a porter, generally an old soldier covered with medals, to take off and put on overcoats and boots and goloshes.

Every house in Russia is double windowed and treble doored, and between the two panes of the windows there are artificial flowers.

The houses are too hot, and the air bad, so that they use incense everywhere in the country.

The ball at the British embassy was very good, and we were introduced to the prettiest girl in the city, the little Countess Apraxine. We met, also, a charming young lady, the Princess Ourousoff, a cousin of my friend at Newport last summer.

Today we have been lunching at the Prince Galitzine’s, with a crowd of jolly young dogs; among them the son of the celebrated Gortschakoff.

We passed one day last week at Tsarskoë Selo, visiting the palace, a summer residence of the Emperor; also, the arsenal with splendid armor, and the imperial dairy, where we ate cheese and drank imperial milk. We afterwards dined with Gen. Gogol, the commander of the department, who was very strong on the entente cordiale between us, with a most healthy detestation of England. He was another good specimen of that well-known type of humanity, the Russian general.

SLEDGE DRAWN BY REINDEER.

151The Palace was the best I ever saw, they being generally cold, cheerless, all alike, and a bore, but this looked like a habitable place, with a blue and silver boudoir, a room entirely made of Japan wood, with panels, pictures, furniture, all Japanese; one room papered with amber, and at last a Persian smoking room, small and cozy, filled with bits of armor and pipes, divans, and a tiny fountain sunk in the middle of the room.

I have been doing up sights rapidly, preparatory to leaving; for instance, the Admiralty, where an officer showed us all the models, interesting to Charles, especially the Yankee cutters; the Academy of Fine Arts from which, however, the best paintings have already been sent to Paris. (For the Exposition.) I wanted to get a fair idea of the Russian school, as it is now very little known out of the country, but headed by Zitchy, a genius. I have photographs which will give you an idea of his talent.

The Imperial Library one day I slaughtered, well repaying a visit, but finally, today, we gave a hurried half-hour to a last, lingering gaze at the treasures in the Hermitage.

Yesterday, in all the cold, we took a five minute drive in a sledge drawn by three reindeer on the Neva, just to say we had done it.

Midnight and after:—I take up my festive quill 152for the last time in Petersburg, to finish a family epistle.

We have been to see our last ballet tonight, and then out to Tivoli, a restaurant in the suburbs of the city, with a “swell” skating pond under glass. We have been meaning to see the place for a long while, but have not accomplished it before our last eve.

We have our government permission to leave the country, and nothing now remains for us to do but gracefully take off our hats and give a parting kiss to Russia.

Please see that all my military traps are safely returned from the studio of Staigg,—sword, bridle, jacket, belt, etc. Ask T. G. A. to write me his opinion of the picture.

“Did you witness the lighting of Moscow with gas? It must have been a great occasion from the newspaper accounts. It seems strange it should not have been done before this.

Mr. George Peabody has made a munificent gift to the country of $1,500,000 for educational purposes in the South, so that I am sure the North may feel relieved of all responsibility.

I read in this evening’s Transcript, that the largest room in the world is in St. Petersburg, did you see it? Twenty thousand wax tapers are required to light it properly.

DROSKY.

It is simply ridiculous the way people are to be 153off, there will be eight or nine vacant houses at Nahant.”

Later, in a letter dated March 31, 1867, my mother mentioned the gift of 100,000 volumes of school books, which the New York Appleton firm had added to the educational gift of Mr. Peabody.

From Saint Petersburg to here, a long pull, is it not? and what a change in temperature from the icy zero of the Neva to that which seems almost like summer! We saw the snow disappear on our way, and wheels gradually take the place of runners, and now that I am far away, and in a city, which like most European ones, is an attempted copy of Paris, how brilliantly indeed do the peculiarities of Russia stand forth.

We left St. P. one morning and the evening of the next day were in Warsaw. Returning to our hotel late from a ball, we were accosted and stopped by a policeman of whom I asked the way, and he very politely took us all (Mr. W. F. Nisbet, an American gentleman who came with us from Russia, C. A. L. and myself.) to the station house. It seems no one in Warsaw is allowed to be out after midnight without a “pass,” and we had neglected to get them.

154We coolly entered and sat down and burst out laughing, and at length I explained in my bad German, to an official who talked an equally bad lingo, our situation, impressing him with the fact of the greatness of the Amerikanski alliance, and we were soon escorted home.

The next day we rambled about the town, saw the palaces and the pretty ladies, and were attended to by some young Russian swells to whom we had letters from St. Petersburg. In the theatre we saw the Mazourka most gorgeously danced in true Polish national costume, which was not allowed here a few years ago.

Poor old Poland! What is left of her former greatness? Alas, nothing but the mazourka. As can be aptly said, how like to Byron’s Greece:—

Better this than nothing, as it helps keep up still the nationality of the people.

The next morning Charles and I were off to Cracow, the old capital of Poland, and one of the most interesting and quaint old towns I had ever seen, with its Square and Schloss, and the church where all the kings of Poland have been crowned and buried, and we mysteriously descended the vault, and saw the tombs of Jagellon, Paniatowski, and our good friend Kosciusko.

This is an Austrian territory, where the rule is much less rigid, and we saw many old Poles in faded frogged coats and square caps, and the antique equipages and livery of families once the greatest in Europe.

I was never so impressed before with the hard 155fate of Poland, a great nation actually annihilated, and I got up my sympathy more on my journey by reading a most interesting history of Poland by Mickiewicz.

There happens to be a big salt mine near Cracow, and as we had never seen anything of the sort before, we descended with Bengal lights and what not, and did the whole thing: illuminated chambers, ferried across the Styx, crystal dance halls, and all, hundreds of feet below ground.

The next morning we were up early for the train, and Charles and I, after two and more most agreeable months together, parted company; he for Dresden and then Paris, and I for Vienna.

CHAPTER SEVENTH. CHARLES APPLETON LONGFELLOW. — In Virginia. Three Years Previous. The Pain of Battle. — From the History of the Fifth Mass. Battery, Light Artillery. Letter of Lieut. Appleton p. 747. The Crossing of the Rapidan. New Hope Church.

It was the movement of General George G. Meade called the Mine Run Expedition, Nov. 26, 1863. On the morning of the 27th the First Mass. Cavalry under command of General John I. Gregg, marched to Parker’s Store on the Orange Plank Road, where it met a column of Meade’s infantry, the Fifth Corps, under command of General George Sykes, passed them, and marched ahead of them on the Gordonsville road, leading the column through the Wilderness. At New Hope Church they met the enemy’s cavalry pickets, but the country was so densely wooded they could only fight dismounted.

Brevet Col. B. W. Crowninshield in his History of the First Mass. Cavalry, says:—“As the force advanced, the ground became rougher and well wooded at times, with occasional openings. Charges were made, and prisoners were taken from what proved to be Walker’s North Carolina Brigade of Infantry.

CHARLES APPLETON LONGFELLOW.

157Lieutenant C. A. Longfellow of Company A, was badly wounded, at first supposed mortally....

When the 5th Corps infantry came up and relieved the cavalry the enemy had been pushed back nearly to his works on Mine Run.... In the fight the 1st Mass. Cavalry lost one officer and four men killed, and two officers and eleven men wounded.”

“On the 27th (Nov. 1863.) off at daybreak, struck a dirt road, which soon led to another plank road parallel to the first, and also in the direction of Orange Court House. On, on, we trudged, and soon we heard heavy cannonading, which every minute grew nearer, mixed now and then with the sharp cracks of the carbine. We soon came to the little village of New Hope Church, where the Corps rushed on at ‘double quick’ to relieve the shattered squadrons of Gregg, and a splendid sight it was. The cavalry formed in squares by the road side, right glad to be relieved by the ‘Doughboys’ and our artillery rushing on to the front. Captain Martin (Capt. A. P. Martin commanding the Artillery Brigade) soon got the batteries in posish, 158and in fact the only fighting our Corps did was done by the artillery. I soon heard that Charlie Longfellow had been wounded, and stole the first minute I could get to run off to the hospital, New Hope Church, where I saw the dear boy, lying on the pulpit, and surrounded by the officers of the regiment. (First Mass. Cavalry.) He looked and talked well, but I did not have but a minute to stay with him, as my biz. then was on the field.... I went again to the hospital in the evening, but Charlie had gone, as they had taken off all except the worst cases. I assure you it was not a pleasant sight. Charlie and Bowditch (Captain Henry Pickering Bowditch shot in the right forearm) went off together. Charlie was wounded by a ball just under the shoulder blade, injuring the spine, but missing the vital parts.”

Previous to his connection with the First Mass. Cavalry he joined the First Mass. Battery, Light Artillery, at the front, as a private, but was not mustered in, and at the age of 19 was commissioned in the Cavalry. His record in the Adjutant General’s office of the State of Massachusetts, is as follows:—

“Charles A. Longfellow, of Cambridge, was commissioned 2nd Lieut., Co. G., 1st Regt. Mass. Vol. Cavalry, March 27, 1863; mustered March 27, 1863, for 3 years. Commissioned 1st Lieut. to date January 24, 1864, not mustered; discharged February 15, 1864, as 2nd Lieutenant.

Charles A. Longfellow, of Cambridge, was commissioned 1st Lieut. in Co. G, 5th Regt. Mass. Vol. Cavalry, January 7, 1864. He declined the commission.”

The Fifth Cavalry was a Regiment composed of men of African descent.

159In August, 1863, he was Acting Adjutant.

The wound affected him all his life, he was never in condition to rejoin the army, and it prevented him from going on the ill fated expedition of Captain George Washington De Long in the Jeanette, to the North Pole. He had begged his great friend James Gordon Bennett to go as a volunteer on the expedition, but the surgeon who examined all those who were to take part in it, did not consider him fit to stand the probable exposure, and so would not pass him, greatly to his own disappointment but to the relief of his family and friends. As he would doubtless have been in the boat with Captain De Long he was saved the suffering and terrible death of those brave men.

After much travelling and residence in many lands, shortly after his return from a trip to Tahiti with his friend T. Watson Merrill, in the spring of 1892, he had a sudden stroke of paralysis, from which he never recovered.

Passing the summer with his sister Miss Alice Longfellow, at the old Nahant Cottage, he returned with her in the autumn to the historic home at Cambridge, formerly Washington’s headquarters, and after living all the winter and appearing somewhat better, he died April 13, 1893, at the age of forty-nine. He was born June 9, 1844.

CHAPTER EIGHTH. FRANCE. LAST DAYS OF THE EMPIRE. TO RUSSIA WITH GENERAL BANKS. — The Guests of France. — The Review. — Paris in 1869. — Burlingame and China. — The Union Pacific Railroad. — The Curtin-Drexel Dinner. — At Stockholm. — General Banks, Denmark and Sweden. — A Review of the Army. — Raasloff, Banks and the Islands. — To St. Petersburg. — The Presentations. — The Review. — Agricultural Exhibition. — The Review of the Troops. — General Hiram Berdan. — The Lost Sword. — Individual Enterprise. — On the Way to Suez. — Constantinople. — Arrival at Port Said. — Return to Paris.

I wrote home June 5th, 1867, the year of the Great Exposition:—“It does not pay just now to be away from Paris, for it is in a most exceptional state, filled with Europeans—Kings, Princes, and all kinds of celebrities. All other places are deserted and quieter than usual, and moreover they will all keep for the future, but probably not for years will Paris see such another sight.

HON. NATHANIEL P. BANKS.

REPRESENTATIVE FROM MASSACHUSETTS.

161The last few steamers have brought over crowds of ‘Yanks’; others have come up from Italy and Germany, and I find that since the short time ago that I left here for England, my many friends have turned up and prices, too, have run up very fast.

The race for the Grand Prix on last Sunday, was probably the most brilliant assemblage of the sort the world has ever seen, and the road home from the tribune itself to the Place de la Concorde, was a solid mass of vehicles five or six rows in breadth, and all going in the same direction.

My friend the Tsar Alexander II. was there, and I recognized other Russian friends, but I shall let you get the accounts from the papers, and not from me, of all the grand doings of the season. There is to be held at the race course at Long Champs a huge review of military.

Thursday. Midnight: I must finish this for you tonight to dispatch it by tomorrow morning.

The Review (Longchamps June 6, 1867, Review of the French Army.) was superb. It was, perhaps, the proudest day of Napoleon Third’s career, having on one side of him, as he reviewed the troops, the King of Prussia, and on the other the Emperor of Russia.

I was late in driving up, but afterwards had a fine view of it all at the apartments of Paul Forbes and his family of New York, on the avenue.

162Returning to Paris after the Review, the carriage in which the Tsar was seated passed me somewhere in the Bois de Boulogne, as I too, was returning from the pageant. I was so full of the delightful time I had had in Russia, a few months before, that I took off my hat as we passed and gave him a bow. My salutation was so very marked that he looked at me intently, as if trying to make out just who I was, but I do not suppose he could bring me back to his recollection, though of course he returned the salutation.

The weather is delightful now, and the days so long that it is not dark at nine o’clock, and Paris is one prolonged fête, each day and night more astonishing than the last.

There is a vague rumor floating about that some crazy Pole attempted to assassinate the Tsar at the Review.

June 12, 1867: This marvellous life of Paris runs along, getting more extraordinary every day!

How well Napoleon III. has succeeded in his undertaking. He invites rulers of all descriptions to come and visit him in his home, to see the Paris of ’67.

They accept, and he quietly sits twirling his moustache, surrounded by Tsars, Popes, Queens, Sultans, Kings, Grand Dukes and Princes! What a shrewd and wonderful stroke of diplomacy it all is, thus showing to the world the marvels of his great capital! Balls, fêtes, races, reviews, come and go, but how it will all end one cannot say, for I think the French people will be tired of the tremendous expense before the summer is over.

Yesterday I went with a party to Fontainebleau, but it so happened the Imperialist party were all there the same morning, and the Palace was closed 163for visitors. We breakfasted, and drove through the forest, expecting to see a chasse, but, shortly after reaching the “Rendezvous” we found it was abandoned on account of the heat, and dogs and huntsmen all marched home.

It is almost too warm for theatres now, but tonight I have been to see a piece called La Dame aux Camélias, which was a great success in Paris ten or fifteen years ago. (Vaudeville Theatre, Paris, February 2, 1852, Madame Eugénie Doche was the first Marguerite Gautier.)

July 4. 1867:—Here we have the great day of American independence, but, owing to the death of Maximilian, all festivities, both for the Sultan, and even our own “Fourth of July” celebration, are postponed. I must say this seems rather unnecessary, but I am inclined to think that yesterday morning Napoleon III did not have a very good appetite for breakfast. (The Emperor Maximilian was executed in Mexico, where he bravely insisted upon remaining to meet his fate when the army of Napoleon III had been withdrawn.)

Paris is one of those places into which you tumble very easily, and then find it almost impossible to get out of it. People are packing up now, however, and the fashionable resort this summer, for Bostonians especially, seems to be the baths about Salzburg in the Tyrol.

Funny thing life is here in Paris. You wake up in the morning without any idea what you will do during the day. Invitations come, one thing succeeds another, and the hours slip along.

July 10, 1867: The death of Maximilian has caused a very deep feeling in Europe, and most of the festivities arranged for the Sultan have been 164countermanded. This makes it rather quieter in Paris now than was expected.

I went out yesterday to Saint Cloud, and saw some rowing regattas between boats of various nationalities, but there were few persons present, and not much excitement.”

The year of the great Exposition of 1867, may be regarded as the apogee of the Second Empire, and soon after it ominous rumblings were heard in the political clouds. The disastrous and humiliating expedition to Mexico doubtless contributed to the beginning of the downfall, and even the sight of Napoleon at the Longchamps Review in 1867, with the Emperor of Russia and the King of Prussia on either side, could not bolster up popular opinion as to the prestige of French military glory.

I never considered that the people of France endorsed the expedition to Mexico, or believed in it. No, it was part of the personal ambition of Napoleon to take advantage of our troubles, and try to foist an empire upon one of the nations of the Western hemisphere, where it was not wanted, would have been out of place, and could not last long. It was a miserable business from beginning to end, and did much to weaken the ties of friendship between France and the United States, as was shown many years later by the opposition of our government and people to the peaceful work of Mr. de Lesseps in his herculean efforts in behalf of the Panama Canal.

Napoleon was at the height of his tinsel glory in 1867, but the triumph of the Empress Eugénie was reached in 1869, at the fêtes in Egypt attending the opening of the Suez Canal, certainly in her case a well-merited one, her efforts as a relative of de 165Lesseps having contributed so much to the success of that great enterprise. One would hardly have imagined then, while looking upon her in all her grace and loveliness, in every way the queen of the festivities, that the over-throwing of the Empire was so soon to follow.

The celebration of our “Fourth of July” at the Pré Catalan in the Bois de Boulogne was omitted in 1867, as noted, and I have heard that this was done at the especial request of the French government, and I suppose it was made in such a way that it would not have been easy or in good taste to refuse. All the same I could not understand what our celebration had to do with the death of Maximilian, and I regretted extremely that our representative succumbed to the pressure brought to bear. I never learned whether it was the result of orders from Washington, or if our Minister took the responsibility, for such an act does not seem to harmonize with the character of General John A. Dix, though he was the most courteous of gentlemen.

On the 21st of May, 1869, I wrote my sister—“Paris is now filled with American diplomats, Washburn, Jay, Burlingame, Marsh, etc., most of whom I have seen. Burlingame dined with me ten days ago, and expatiated on the charms of everything in California.”

Among my guests at my apartment just off the Boulevard, were members of congress, prominent men of business and science, diplomatic representatives, and others, meeting there as they turned up in Paris on their European trips for relaxation. They were generally Americans, as my ambitions 166were all identified with my native country, but I would often have a sprinkling of Frenchmen or English to give variety and there, in the neutral territory of my smoking-room, all restraint thrown aside, men who at home belonged to political parties sometimes in bitter opposition, would meet and express their opinions in a way that would have been impossible in New York or Washington. Sparks of wit would fly off from the fast working grindstone of this unpretentious salon, and there was plenty of valuable information to be picked up by any one who would take the trouble to go there with his eyes and ears open.

At a farewell banquet given to Major General John A. Dix, U. S. Minister to France, at the Grand Hotel, June 1st, 1869, by the American residents at Paris, the Hon. Anson Burlingame was present and was introduced by the presiding officer Hon. Elliot C. Cowdin, as one who “pleaded for the rights of four millions of slaves until their last fetter fell. He now in loftier tones pleads before the nations the cause of four hundred millions of men.”

In 1867, Prince Kung, regent of the Empire of China, offered to appoint Burlingame, who was United States Minister to China appointed by President Lincoln, special envoy to the United States and the great European powers, for the purpose of framing treaties of amity with these nations, an honor never before conferred upon a foreigner.

He resigned as U. S. Minister to accept this mission around the world, and arrived at the United States the head of a numerous party, in March, 1868.

167In the course of his remarks the following year at the banquet to General Dix, he said:—

“While we do not interfere in other people’s affairs, nor permit them to interfere in ours, we cannot forget that we are a great nation, that we cannot abdicate our responsibilities, that we must take our part in the peaceful police of the sea and the land, and in the maintenance of those principles of international law, which recognize the equality of nations as we recognize the equality of men. That, as it is the highest duty of every society to protect the weak from the strong, so the weak nations and struggling peoples should find ample protection in that sense of justice of the strong nations which they cannot lose and prosper.”

Mr. Burlingame visited St. Petersburg the last of the European capitals, and died there at forty-eight years of age, on Washington’s birthday, 1870, about a year after the original departure from China. I first met him when he had the Chinese Embassy in London, then frequently in Paris, and the last time in Stockholm before we left.

In the speech of Ex-Governor Alexander H. Bullock at this banquet, he said with reference to the mission of Burlingame, and the Union Pacific Railroad just completed:—

“The great work is done, and hereafter the states are a unit in commerce as in government. Before my friend Mr. Burlingame has half completed his cosmopolitan mission, the freight trains have been made up at San Francisco, laden with the product of China, and by the time he shall have unpacked his trunks at Berlin, he may drink at the breakfast 168table his favorite tea, which, thanks to the irrepressible and irresistible Yankees, has been brought round to him the other way.”

My first thought of seeing Le Canal de Suez, of going to the opening ceremonies which took place on the 17th November, 1869, was the result of a dinner given at the rooms of Bowles Brothers & Co. early in July of that year.

The dinner was given in honor of Governor Andrew G. Curtin of Pennsylvania, who had been appointed U. S. Minister to the Russian court at St. Petersburg, and was then en route to his post, and to Mr. Anthony J. Drexel of Philadelphia, who was making his first visit to Paris after the establishment there of the branch house of Drexel, Harjes & Co.

Among the guests present I can now recall the Hon. Elihu B. Washburn U. S. Minister at Paris, Hon. Anson Burlingame at the head of the Chinese Embassy, Major General the Hon. Nathaniel P. Banks M. C., Hon. Zachariah Chandler U. S. Senator, Hon. Fernando Wood M. C., Mr. John C. Lee, of Lee, Higginson & Co., and Mr. S. Endicott Peabody afterwards a partner in the house of J. S. Morgan & Co.

Charles Bowles then and there suggested that General Banks and I go to the opening of the Suez Canal. I talked with the General about it and we agreed to meet in Paris the middle of September, and start on the trip.

We went first to Hamburg, then to Copenhagen, where we arrived about the 20th of September, and met General Waldemar Rudolph Raasloff, Chargé 169d’Affaires from Denmark to the United States, 1858 to 1862, Envoy Extraordinary and Minister Plenipotentiary 1864 to 1866, and then on to Stockholm, where we saw a great deal of Mr. Burlingame, who had just arrived with the Chinese Embassy.

From a letter written to my sister from Stockholm I take what follows under date of October 4, 1869:—“You will be, doubtless, somewhat surprised at seeing from the heading of this, how far I have managed to get from my beloved Paris without any previous warning. With General N. P. Banks M. C. from Massachusetts, I set out on the trip which he was very desirous of accomplishing, first through the north countries of Europe, and then through Russia to Constantinople and the opening of the Suez Canal.

There is not a man in the United States just now who is a more valuable companion for such a trip.

We have been passing several days here very pleasantly though quietly, and tonight after dining with the U. S. Minister, General C. C. Andrews, we take the steamer direct for Saint Petersburg, where I shall have an opportunity of revisiting and seeing in a more summer like garb the scenes of my former triumphs.

Mr. Burlingame happens to be here with all the Chinese, and they cause an immense sensation in the city. The square in front of our hotel is continually crowded with groups of curious ones, trying to catch a glimpse of the Celestials, as they sit complacently at their windows and gaze and smile benignly on the people below.

Mr. Burlingame, General Banks and I have long 170talks, lasting late into the night, about everything, which generally end in glorifying the grandeur of the great Republic.”

There is to be held this year (1904) a Shakesperian celebration marking the 300th anniversary of the first printed edition of the tragedy of Hamlet, and a portrait statue of Shakespere is to be erected on the road to Kronborg Castle, the foundations of which are now said to be insecure through the undermining of the tides. I remember well after our visit to Hamlet’s castle at Elsinore, and promenade on the terrace, when we returned to the hotel, and had dined, and were in adjoining rooms, before retiring, the General was full of the inspiration of the scene, and repeated to me many of the lines of Hamlet appropriate to the place and occasion. It seemed to me as if he knew the whole play by heart.

At Stockholm the house he especially wanted to see was that of Swedenborg,—founder of the Swedenborg religion,—and we went there one day. It was a simple dwelling as I now recall it after these many years. We made an excursion, also, to the town of Upsala, famous for its university.

The American Minister Gen. Christopher Columbus Andrews, of Minnesota, who had but recently been appointed, gave us a dinner, and all in his power to make our sojourn agreeable and instructive.

We saw a review of the army by King Oscar, and were told afterwards how much he regretted he had 171not known we were there, so that he could have invited us to join his staff, and take part in it.

In Copenhagen at the Raasloff lunch of perhaps 20, after he was elected deputy, General Banks made at table one of his effective impromptu short speeches. General Raasloff was the only candidate, and thus his election was not difficult, but he never recovered from the disappointment of our government not taking the island of St. Thomas, when he supposed it was all settled between the United States and Denmark. Banks was elected member of congress from Massachusetts in 1853, and 1855, Governor of the state from 1858 to 1861, elected member of congress again, with the exception of the election of 1872, from 1865 to 1877. In 1888, he was again elected, and served until 1890. He was chairman of the committee on foreign affairs of the U. S. House of Representatives in 1865 and later, including the years General Raasloff was minister from Denmark to the United States. I had heard him often speak of the purchase of Saint Thomas, and the disappointment of his friend General Raasloff at its nonaccomplishment.

In his judgment we ought to own or control all the islands of the West Indies, showing the danger to us, as proved by the action of England during our civil war, of their being in the possession of governments that might be hostile. The blockade runners were almost entirely English ships, making money out of our troubles by supplying the Confederates with articles they needed, and receiving principally cotton in return, which was then selling at a tremendous price.

172If the advice of Banks had been followed, the War with Spain in 1898, which began by the desire to assist Cuba in gaining its independence, could not have occurred. He was one of the strongest advocates of the purchase of Alaska.

During my travels with General Banks, then 53 years of age, from the middle of September, 1869, to the early part of December, I always found him a very abstemious man. I do not remember that he ever took a glass of spirits; I mean by this what are called hard liquors. At dinner he would take a little wine, and when I asked him what he preferred he would say, “Well, you know, I consider champagne the most agreeable,” and so once or twice a week we would have a bottle. Occasionally, at night, he would indulge in a glass of beer.

Nor did he smoke at all. He would say to me, “I cannot smoke.” This reminds me that he never clipped expressions of the kind, i. e. he always said “I do not,” “I will not,” “I shall not,” instead of “I can’t,” “I don’t,” etc. It was a good lesson for me which I have tried to follow, for the abbreviations always seem to me cheap and undignified, especially when used in a speech or in writing. Of course in ordinary conversation it may be to a certain extent different, but, all the same, I prefer the two words to the shortening them into one.

Crossing the Gulf of Finland, we stopped at several small towns on the way to St. Petersburg, where our new minister, Ex-Governor Curtin and the Secretary of Legation Mr. Titian J. Coffey of Pennsylvania, both of whom had been but a short time in the country, treated us most hospitably.

Writing from St. Petersburg on this date I said: “The 27th of October will be remembered by Americans as a day of great interest.”

Today at 2 o’clock at the Winter Palace, our new minister Ex-Governor A. G. Curtin presented his credentials and was formally received by the Emperor Alexander II.

Our minister’s speech and the reply by the Tsar, were short but to the point, and replete with sentiments of increasing friendship between the two great continental nations of the world, and the happy remarks about President Grant and the Emperor Alexander will be appreciated by the people of both countries. The secretary Mr. Titian J. Coffey, was presented at the same time, and the United States legation at Russia can well be proud of its representatives.

Another event of the day was the review of military forces stationed in and about the city, to the number of thirty-five thousand, which took place on the Champ de Mars. Two great reviews are held yearly in Saint Petersburg, one in the early spring and the other in January. The review of today was especially ordered by the Emperor, out of regular course, and whether or not it has any political significance was subject of speculation.

The display was, as such things always are here, very fine, the beauty and strength of the Russian horses being especially observed.

Besides General Banks there was present General Hiram Berdan, who has been for some time in 174Russia, and we understand that he has large contracts from the Russian government for supplying them with his improved musket and cartridges.

In this month (October) there has been a very interesting exhibition of the different herds of cattle raised in the Russian Empire. This is the first exhibition of the kind ever held in the city, and it has been an object of great interest. The prizes were awarded yesterday by the Grand Duke Nicholas, and today the Emperor visited it in person. The ladies of the Court have been much interested in its success, and many of the farms in the neighborhood of the city where the finest stock is raised, are owned by members of the Imperial family. Its object is to improve the breed of all kinds of stock, and to assist as much as possible the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, especially in everything that relates to preparing animal food for the market.

I went to the Review with General Banks as if attached to his staff. We were both in uniform, he as a major general of United States Volunteers, and I as a captain of Light Artillery, in accordance with an Act of Congress which allows all honorably discharged officers of the Union army to appear in their highest brevet rank on any and all occasions during life when a uniform is the appropriate dress.

As a general rule the other armies of Europe follow the customs of the great nations, and when the head of the government ordinarily wears a uniform of course the officers follow the example, making it their habitual dress. The Russian 175government dresses its men in the best of all colors, gray, and besides the trimness and inconspicuousness of the uniform itself they have many simple appliances, as for instance, the hood or basilisk, for the comfort of the soldier, for adopting which the rigorous climate of the country has doubtless contributed a great deal. The result is, that for thorough winter work I doubt if there is any soldier in Europe as well prepared as the Russians.

Horses were there ready for us, and we rode along the lines and between the squares, on the staff of the Emperor himself. It was a fine sight and I was specially struck with the enthusiasm of the troops for their chief the Tsar. In no country is this carried to such a pitch as in Russia. The shouts of the men as he approaches are astonishing in their half-barbaric ecstasy, platoon after platoon taking up the cry in turn. The shouts of these strange looking Russians I thought at the time implied a power and assurance of fighting well for their country and the Tsar, whenever the time should come, different from the élan of the French, the dogged determinedness of the English, or the severe discipline of the Prussians. Subsequent events proved that I was not wrong in my deductions.

The army was under the command of the Tsar’s brother, the Grand Duke Nicholas, who turned it over to its real head as he came down at the last moment in his open drosky, and mounted his horse which was in readiness for him there.

In connection with this review I recollect an amusing incident. It was in the month of October, and the weather was consequently becoming rather cold, and so a day or two before a general order was issued for the troops to appear in their overcoats. 176This made it a matter of etiquette for us, also, to wear some kind of overcoat, and as we neither of us had one of a military style, we went with our good-natured consul George Pomutz to a tailor, where we each ordered a little dark blue cape which must be made in a day’s time, and we thought would serve our purpose. They did do very well, and I have often used mine since in the militia, and once lent it to a lady to wear going to a dinner party, fastened with a bright brass button.

General Berdan, of rifle renown, happened then to be in St. Petersburg with one of his famous guns he was offering for the consideration of the Russian government, and he, too, was at the Review.

Fortunately I did not have with me my precious army sword, but one I had bought at Paris just before starting, an historic sword as the proprietor of the little shop in the Rue St. Honoré,—on the right from the Rue Castiglione, as you go towards the Rue Royale,—where I got it, told me that it had belonged to one of the suite of Napoleon at St. Helena, and that one of the family had brought it back.

Just before General Banks and I left Saint Petersburg for Moscow, we heard that the railroad bridge over one of the great rivers had been burned. This was indeed the case as we found on arriving there shortly after dark, and we had to pass the night on the train where we were, and traverse the stream the next day in boats, rafts, or any way we could.

177As we had reached the southern side, and were stepping on to the bank from the boat, the sword slipped out of my bundle of rugs, and fell into the river, where I have no doubt it has remained to the present time. Morijiks tried to find it for me, but the water was very deep, the current swift, and it could not be recovered. I doubt if it was ever known how, or by whom and for just what purpose the bridge was fired, for it was generally believed to have been the work of an incendiary.

A short time before, the railroad had been sold by the Winans people of Baltimore, who had built and largely owned it, for 7,000,000 roubles cash to the Court clique, headed by Count Strogonoff, who, by the way, came down on the same train with us to see what was the matter.

All the old employés were discharged for some reason or other, and their places filled by Poles taken from the St. Petersburg and Warsaw railroad, and so very likely one, or several, of the men turned off, devised and carried out this plan of revenge.

I remember that Governor Curtin and the Secretary Mr. Coffey, whom we had often seen during our stay in St. Petersburg, came to see us off at the station. We experienced great difficulty in getting any kind of information as to the situation, but we were determined to start and run the chance, as we had but little time to catch our boat at Odessa. As it was, we lost about twenty-four hours, reaching Moscow just one day later than we should.

It was during our sojourn at St. Petersburg that I received, thanks to Mr. Charles Bowles then in America, an invitation from the Board of Trade of my native city of Boston, of which the Hon. Alexander H. Rice was then president, to be its 178delegate for the opening ceremonies of the Suez Canal, and to write a report thereon. I consider this as the beginning of my service in the interest of a canal across the American Isthmus, for instead of going to Egypt merely as a tourist and spectator, I had some work to do by which my attention was specially called to the subject of ship canals. Certain it is that since that time with many other occupations it has constantly been before my mind and is so now.

To beguile the time on board ship I jotted down the following notes, Odessa, Nov. 7, 1869:—

“The idea strikes me forcibly here—that of individual enterprise, or rather great results accomplished by individuals—because the prosperity of this city is mainly due to the unaided efforts of two persons. First the Duke de Richelieu, a French nobleman who may be regarded as its founder, and, secondly, Prince Woronzoff, for many years the Russian governor of the province.

How much any one man can accomplish if he will devote himself entirely to the attempt, and what a field there is today for such ambition in the United States of America! We must have the Darien Canal cut, we must have our commerce stimulated by a changed tariff; we must have cheaper internal transportation for our products, and then there will be little talk about the national debt. The Secretary of the Treasury will not have to sell gold in Wall street.”

Passing in our journey from the cold autumn weather of Russia, partly by rail and partly by boat and across the Mediterranean, we reached the glorious sun of Constantinople and the tropical warmth of Egypt.

FERDINAND DE LESSEPS, 1869.

179At Odessa we joined an excursion party in one of the boats of the Russian Navigation Company the “General Kotzebue,” to Constantinople, Rhodes, Port Said, Ismailia, Suez, passing through the canal, Cairo by rail, Alexandria, and then by Brindisi and the Mount Cenis Tunnel back to Paris in December.

General Banks ought to have been invited to represent the government of the nation, he was then member of congress and chairman of the committee on foreign affairs in the house of representatives, but he was not appointed.

It was on this occasion that I made the acquaintance of Count Ferdinand de Lesseps, the hero of the canal, and my journey with General Banks deserves more than a passing notice, for his varied experience of the past, and his penetrating observation of the present, had given him facilities for seeing and judging things in a manner which could not fail to be instructive. The strong American stamp of his character, while exciting my youthful enthusiasm did not bias him in his judgment of European or Oriental customs or forms of government. From his mind wonderful photographs were taken as we travelled together from the North to the South, and his quiet and dignified encouragement of my aspirations so naturally given in the offhand intimacy of a journey, with the mixture of petty pleasures and annoyances, were a stimulus which came very opportune to me and which I was not likely to forget.

Accidentally, too, at different stages of our 180wanderings, we were thrown in with several other marked and representative types of Americans; among them at Stockholm the noble Burlingame since then taken away in the midst of his grand work of Chinese regeneration; Governor Curtin the war governor of Pennsylvania, the genial, kindly, bright, wiry type of American politician, and the well-known American dentist of Paris, Dr. Thomas W. Evans, whose intimacy with the French Emperor Napoleon III, and knowledge of the inner history of the past twenty years in Paris, made him an agreeable and valued companion.

With the healthy glow of travel, at the most delightful season of the year, and the excitement of military reviews and gala fêtes at the different capitals visited, all ending with the gorgeous Aladdin-like enchantments of the week in Egypt, when Europe, Asia, Africa, aye and America, came at the invitation of the Khedive, and led by the graceful Empress Eugénie, offered their congratulations at the completion of that international work of peace, the Suez Canal,—and the opportunity of seeing these sights in the presence of many of the most distinguished personages alive, and of discussing them with advanced minds amid the surroundings of attractive places,—what than this could be a better phase of education?

On arriving at Constantinople the captain of the steamer gave all the passengers a couple of days to spend in seeing the wonders of this extraordinary city before continuing our journey.

We went to the best hotel, and, after breakfasting, whom should we meet in the hall but my old 181Harvard classmate Jeremiah Curtin vice consul at St. Petersburg. Curtin is the translator of “Quo Vadis” by the Polish author Henryk Sienkiewicz, published by Little, Brown & Co. of Boston,—John Murray Brown our classmate being a member of the firm,—and dedicated to another member of our class Auguste Comte of San Francisco.

I had seen Curtin in Moscow, when I was there in January, 1867. General Banks had known him in Washington, Curtin’s headquarters when not on his journeys of investigation, and he was very glad to meet us both. What he was doing in Turkey we could not quite make out, but I think in the interest of Russia he was quietly watching the movements of the Slavonic elements there, and through the Danubian principalities. Besides this he was writing letters for one of the great New York papers. Mr. Curtin told us that for the morning he met us he was to have by appointment an interview with the Patriarch of Constantinople the head of the Greek Church there, and invited us to accompany him, and we were only too glad to thus have an opportunity for seeing this distinguished personage.

The Metropolitan of Moscow and the Patriarch of Constantinople are two of the heads of the Greek Church. We went to see the Patriarch simply as the head of the Turkish branch of the Church.

We started from the hotel on horseback, and, winding down some narrow streets to the water, crossed it at the Golden Horn, and were soon in the old part of the city on the other side, threading our way to where the Patriarch lived, amidst the ancient houses and quaint shops which were swarming with inhabitants, until we arrived at the door.

182We were taken up into quite a large room with divans all around it, and ushered into the presence of the Patriarch, who sat tranquilly in one corner.

He was an aged, fine looking gentleman, with long, flowing locks and beard, and received us most graciously.

We talked, through an interpreter, on various matters, and, after partaking of sweetmeats and coffee, retired very much gratified with the interview.

His dress, as also that of the interpreter, was curious; being a combination of Oriental robes and church trappings like all the religious officers of the Greek Church. It is striking and effective.

It was on November 15th a little before sundown that our vessel the “General Kotzebue” entered the harbor of Port Said, with a very agreeable company of Russians, and came to anchor in its proper place about seven o’clock.

We took our position on the right in entering. The Emperor of Austria had entered just before us. Salutes were fired.

We went on shore to see the U. S. Consul, but he was not at home. Left cards on Mr. de Lesseps and strolled about the town. Left cards on the Vice Roi in his yacht, and saw Nuba Pacha. Met Dr. Evans and Dr. Edward A. Crane,—a well known member of the American colony in Paris and for many years editor of The American Register of that city owned by Dr. Evans,—on the street at Port Said. Later we go to the reception in the yacht of the Vice Roi or Khedive, a splendid boat, and I was there presented to the enterprising ruler 183of Egypt, and first met Mr. de Lesseps himself, who from that time has been one of my favorite heroes, and who I am free to admit I consider the most remarkable man of our day.

As I now look back through many years to that week of fêtes in the land of the Pharaohs, I have a kaleidoscopic vision of enchantment worthy of the Arabian Nights, and perceive through the charm and mystery of the Orient, a work of practical modern progress which it softens and adorns.

I was with General Banks in Paris after our return from Egypt about ten days in December, 1869, when he and I, with Paul Forbes, Anthoine de Gogorza, Alexandre Boyer, two Erlangers, Emile and Louis Count Excelmans, Dr. Evans, General Charles B. Norton, and others, were organizing the Darien Canal Company. Then he went to Washington for the session of congress, and I remained in Paris.

CHAPTER NINTH. ALEXANDER II. AND EMANCIPATION. — The Territory of Russia. — The System of Government. — The Serfs. — Emancipation of the Serfs. — After Emancipation. — The Rural Communes. — Death of Alexander II. — Monument at Moscow. — Medals Made Hereditary.

ALEXANDER II., 1866

Forty-two years have passed since in Novgorod, the oldest town, Russia celebrated the one thousandth anniversary of its birth, and erected a monument consisting of an enormous globe, in the midst of emblematic and historical figures. The original Russia was a republic. It occupied a small district near the sources of the Dneiper and Western Dvina, and the site of the future city of Novgorod. Its name was derived from Rūs the patronymic of three brothers of a Variag tribe belonging to the settlement. The oldest brother was called Rurik.

More than six hundred years had passed, when in the South, Ivan III. united the independent principalities of Moscow, and, in 1505, cast off the Tartar yoke from these states, whose rulers proclaimed themselves Tsars, and which were accidentally discovered in 1553, on the White Sea, by an English navigator seeking for a short route to China and India. A commercial acquaintance was formed which has been intermittently sustained ever since with England.

In 1570, was inaugurated the Russian principle of expansion, by conquering the republic of the North and annexing it to Moscow. In this process 186it is said 60,000 human beings were sacrificed. In a circular recently issued by the Ministry of Public Instruction through the curators of the several educational districts, instructing the directors of secondary schools to instil into the minds of their pupils a correct theory of the war of the present year (1904) emphasis is given to the method of treatment of the Russian colonies compared with that received by those pertaining to other countries.

It says:—“The western European states draw from their colonies an immense income, they live on them. Russia expends on her periphery a very considerable sum annually, and receives nothing from them in return. The Russian periphery flourishes at the expense of the centre.”

This periphery embraces the colonies of Finland, the Caucasus, the Central Asiatic possessions and Manchuria.

During the reign of Alexander I. the Grand Duchy of Finland, which stretches from the Gulf of Finland to the Polar Sea, by the peace of Friederichshamm was ceded to Russia by Sweden in 1809, and Poland was acquired in 1814. In 1867, Russia possessed about 106,951 Russian square miles in Europe and the Caucasus, 248,470 in Asia, and 24,210 square miles which were ceded to the United States in that year. Now behold a great empire with a territory stretching from the Baltic to the Northern Pacific, and from the Polar Sea to the frontiers of Turkey, Persia, Afghanistan and China, crossed by systematically extended lines of railway, and divided as in the United States of America, into two portions, whose sources of development, difference in soil, character of colonization and products, call for constant reference to the 187distinctive titles of “the North” and “the South.” Moscow, the commercial and industrial capital of the empire, which has remained the home of passive conservatism and an asylum for the discontented, preserves the tombs of the Grand Princes, and the palace in which the Tsars of Muscovy lived and other monuments made sacred by tradition, six centuries of historical associations surrounding the Kremlin.

St. Petersburg, a cosmopolitan city was built on a European design especially favoring French models, with the purpose frankly avowed by Peter the Great of having “a window by which the Russians might look into civilized Europe.” Like Odessa it has more of a foreign than a Russian character, but not more than one tenth of the population are dwellers in the city, while the agricultural element is ever expanding.

The historical development of Russia has been peculiar, and her social and political organization differs radically from that of the countries of western Europe. Its autocracy is founded on the unbounded hereditary devotion of the people,—peasantry and nobles alike. The entire government of the vast empire is administered from St. Petersburg, on the principle that the people are incapable of understanding the methods of governing their local affairs, and from that or from other reasons, are not to be trusted with them, so that the local self government is anomalous. Created by autocratic power through a commission appointed for the purpose of “conferring more unity and independence on the local economic administration,” 188it has not grown into an institution from popular wants publicly declared, petitioned for and advocated, but derives its main motive power and maintenance from the Central Government which controls it. Peter the Great (1682–1725) introduced uniformity and symmetry into the administration of public affairs. After the death of Patriarch Adrian of the Greek Church, and an interregnum of twenty years, Peter supplied his place by an ecclesiastical council a synod which still remains the highest ecclesiastical authority, in which as a contemporary observed “the mainspring was Peter’s power, and the pendulum his understanding.”

The members of the Synod are appointed by the Tsar who is accountable to no one. Next to him in temporal power come the Council of State, the Committee of Ministers, and the Senate, which is the sole Court of Revision for the Justice of Peace Courts and for the Regular Tribunals, and is the regulator of the whole judicial system of the empire. Below these are ten ministries, viz., the Ministries of the Interior, Public Works, State Demesnes, Finance, Justice, Public Instruction, War, Navy, Foreign Affairs, and the Imperial Court.

The territorial administration is divided into provinces, and each province into districts, all varying greatly in size. Over each province is a governor, vice-governor, and council. The governor is the local representative of the Ministry of the Interior and each of the other ministries have their bureaus and representatives in the provinces drawn chiefly from the nobility and the clergy. Every province and each of the ten districts into which it is divided, has an assembly of deputies 189and an executive bureau elected by the assembly from among its members, but the president of the assembly is a Marshal of the Noblesse, and a limit is placed to the taxation of trade and industry. The deputies are elected by the landed proprietors of the rural communes, composed of peasants, and the municipal corporations. The members of the Assembly for the provinces are elected by the District Assemblies. The system of government for the towns differs essentially from that of the country, the towns receiving the advantage of the development of trade and industry, the establishment of schools, etc. They are of three kinds, “Government towns,” “District towns,” and supernumerary, each divided into merchants, nondescript, and artisans, the artisans being partly made up from the population of the agricultural districts. The towns have a mayor and council.

Moscow has been described as the centre from which serfage radiated, decreasing toward the north, east, and south.

According to the documents of the several periods and the statements of travellers, the rural population of Russia was composed originally of three classes, viz., slaves who were made so by various causes—some prisoners of war, others freemen who had sold themselves as slaves, others insolvent debtors and convicts. One grade higher were the free farm hands who wandered from place to place, wherever they could find work, and then the peasants or small farmers, a distinct class by themselves, who were highest in the social scale, and who were possessors of land and of their personal 190liberty. But in the eighteenth century these distinctions gradually became obliterated on account of the disproportion between the small number of laborers and the large amount of irreclaimable land, systematized immigration being impossible, and all the classes were rolled into one under the name of “serfs,” who were owned by the great landed proprietors or by the state, and being held as property were bought and sold in families and singly, and were deprived of legal protection by the Government according to the ukazes of October 13, 1675, and June 25, 1682, which sanctioned the practice of selling peasants and the exaction of the payment to the Government of dues on the sales of slaves. Free peasants were often kidnapped from weaker by more powerful proprietors and made serfs, while the same class although nominally free were so valuable to those who possessed their services that they were not allowed to leave their borders, so by this means, and often by reason of debts contracted to the proprietor a large number became practically serfs before serfage was established by law, i.e. before the Tsars discharged their obligations to the nobles by bestowing upon them a certain amount of land with a certain number of laborers attached, thus legalizing serfage and the return of fugitive slaves. A small proportion of the nobles who lived on their estates held the peasants as slaves.

Under Peter the Great (1682–1725) and his immediate successor every man was compelled to serve the state, and every proprietor paid the poll tax of his serfs, who were thus reckoned as taxable property, and every unattached laborer was arrested as a vagrant. In 1766, by imperial ukaze, the proprietors or masters had a right to 191transport unruly serfs to Siberia for life without trial. In 1767 and 1781, it was ordered that those who entered complaints against their masters, should be punished with the knout or sent to the mines, or, what they feared most, made to join the Army as recruits. In extreme cases of the cruelty of proprietors, the authorities interfered by direction of the Tsar, who happened to be informed of it. In 1792, the serfs were bought and sold, and given away as part of the masters’ working capital, in large and small numbers, with and without the land, but they were not allowed to be sold by auction, nor to be offered for sale at the time of the conscriptions. From 1792 to 1861, the estimate of a noble’s fortune was based on the number of serfs he owned.

The Emperor Paul toward the close of the 18th century (1796–1801) desiring to limit the authority of the proprietors, issued an ukaze that the serfs should not be forced to work for their masters more than three days in the week, but many paid no attention to it, and the serfs still had no legal standing in court in order to make a complaint. There were indeed enlightened, humane proprietors who protected those for whom they were responsible from outside interference, and under whose management the life of the serf was much easier than that of agricultural laborers in some countries who are free, but serfage generally, was the reverse of this type. The worst suffering was from the hands of speculators who bought up the land in order to make money in the shortest possible time, and parted with the land and the families on it indiscriminately.

Even among uncivilized tribes the Russian peasant is good natured, easily conciliated, and patient 192under extreme hardship. He readily adapts himself to circumstances.

In the ordinary relations which existed between the serf and the proprietor the manor land and the communal land were kept separate. From the laborers on the rural commune land or village system,—the rural commune contains five-sixths of the population,—where a share of land was distributed to each serf, labor dues, a certain number of days’ labor per week, were exacted, also, dues consisting of the products of the farm and the spinning wheel, in the case of the absence of the serfs who were at work in the cities or larger towns but retaining, whether they desired it or not, their membership in the commune. A large proportion of the serfs could read and write and were enterprising, self-reliant, and independent.

The Russian proverb, “A story is soon told but a thing is not soon done,” may be consistently applied to their great reform, one of the most interesting events of modern history,—the Emancipation of the Serfs. An effort was made for freedom in 1762, by an insurrection led by a Cossack with a scheme for creating a peasant empire, but he soon met with defeat and his plan failed.

In 1801, Alexander I. attempted to ameliorate the condition of the serfs, and entertained several projects for a general emancipation, and Nicholas encouraged the consideration of the question by permitting six committees to be formed for the purpose. The result was that some thousands of serfs were emancipated, the custom of giving grants of land with peasants was abolished, 193a number of the worst masters were removed from their estates, and some, convicted of murder, were sent to Siberia. Yet, when a general emancipation was really inaugurated, the leading organs of the press acknowledged indebtedness to the Crimean War for opening the eyes of the country to the dark side of their political and social organization. It produced an intellectual movement and a moral revival which led to gigantic results. Their foes in the Crimea, said a Russian writer of the time, whose manuscript was widely circulated but never printed, were “British statesmen,” “the crowned conspirator of France,” “treacherous Austria,” and “Western Europe generally.” Militia regiments were everywhere raised throughout the country, and many landed proprietors spent large sums in equipping volunteer corps, but unscrupulous members of the commissary department enriched themselves at the expense of these patriotic efforts, and the deficiency of the country in regard to the resources necessary for a prolonged conflict, were soon manifest. “Another year of war,” wrote an eye witness in 1855, “and the whole of Southern Russia will be ruined.”

In this conflict it was the aim of the Tsar Nicholas to realize the grand idea of Catherine II., consort of Peter III. who succeeded to his throne, of driving the Turks out of Europe, but the Allies were victorious, and even the despised Turks made a successful stand on the line of the Danube, and when he, the “Iron Tsar,” the sworn enemy of liberalism, died in a soldier’s humble quarters in the Crimea, the system he created,—which through the sacrifice of the intelligence of the people to the increase of military power proved the chief cause it was claimed of the national disasters,—died 194with him, and as soon as peace had been concluded Alexander II. accepting the responsibility of the dying words of Nicholas, “my successor may do as he pleases, but I cannot change,” began a reign by which the public administration of affairs was to be improved, in the words of his manifesto “by the combined efforts of the Government and the people,” not secretly by the Administration as had been the custom in making slight changes.

In March, 1856, soon after the close of the Crimean War Alexander II. addressed to the Marshals of the Noblesse of Moscow the following words:—

“For the removal of certain unfounded reports I consider it necessary to declare to you that I have not at present the intention of annihilating serfage, but, certainly, as you yourselves know, the existing manner of possessing serfs cannot remain unchanged. It is better to abolish serfage from above, than to await the time when it will begin to abolish itself from below. I request you, gentlemen, to consider how this can be put into execution, and to submit my words to the noblesse for their consideration.”

These enunciations were received with indifference, and further action was indefinitely postponed, to the great disappointment of the Tsar, who at once instituted a committee called “Chief Committee of Peasant Affairs,” composed of high officers of the state, and great land owners, among them the Grand Duke Constantine, who should privately work for these ends, and who would make a study of the subject for six months, and on the assumption that the Lithuanian provinces where the serfs were in a miserable condition 195desired it, “The Rescript of Nazimof” was prepared, empowering the proprietors to form committees for the study of this project with a view to definite results in effecting the gradual abolition of serfage, and four days later a circular was sent by direction of the Tsar, to the Governors and Marshals of Noblesse all over Russia, informing them of the action relative to the Lithuanian Provinces, and a copy of the rescript was furnished them in case they were disposed to follow suit. This circular produced an immense sensation. Its meaning was unmistakable, and convincing to loyal subjects of the Tsar, for a few weeks later he made public announcement of his wish that, with the help of God, and the co-operation of the Noblesse, the great work would be accomplished. The public press most enthusiastically sustained this liberal movement for the amelioration of the condition of so large a proportion of the population and welcomed the dawn of a glorious epoch for the nation in which this obstacle to moral progress, a relic of barbarism, should be removed, and Russia be placed on equality with the nations of the West, and with these advocates were joined a majority of the noblesse, among whom were numerous educated young enthusiasts, while some still clung to serfage as an indispensable source of revenue not to be obtained except under the rigid rule of the master, and a part of the land was to be let go to the peasants. These considerations formed an adverse current which was felt throughout the country, but no open opposition to the will of the Tsar was allowed to manifest itself, because of its utter futility. Still, when in 1857, it became evident that the emancipation of the serfs was really at hand the prospect raised 196terrible forebodings in the minds of masters, stewards, and employers of serfs. By law, it appeared that the peasants would receive the land which they occupied on sufferance, comprising half of the entire arable land of some estates, but no pasturage, and it was feared that the emancipated peasants would be content to live by the cultivation of their own land, and would not consent on any terms to work for their former masters.

During the year 1858, committees were formed for the purposes of emancipation in every province where serfage existed, the projects which they proposed being always subject to revision and approval or rejection by the Government. The fundamental principles of the movement were intended to accomplish the work of emancipation by allowing the serfs to remain for a time on the land subject to the authority of the proprietors, and during this time they should become possessors, by many payments or by labor, of their houses and gardens, and have the temporary use of a certain quantity of land sufficient for their own support, and their taxes to the proprietors and the State. The limit of this transition period does not seem to have been prescribed. The next move was the appointment of an “Elaboration Commission,” composed of officials and landed proprietors named by the Tsar, which formulated a new plan, approved by the Tsar, in which the idea of gradual emancipation was eliminated, and its place was supplied by a general law for the complete abolition of the authority of the proprietor over the serf. Thus the serfs were to be transformed into small proprietors of a commune or village, possessing a house and garden and a section of communal land. The serf was to be declared personally free, and 197a price was to be fixed by Government for the rent of the land. As to the amount, that was limited to the land actually enjoyed by the peasants. Before the project became a law, deputies from the Provincial Committees were summoned to St. Petersburg for consultation in matters of detail before the commission, but this was a mere formality and added nothing to the influence of the Provincial Committees, or to future results. The autocratic power remained supreme. In the opinion of the Tsar, “The autocratic power created serfage, and the autocratic power ought to abolish it.”

In 1861, as the time drew nearer there was great excitement all over Russia. An actor in one of the St. Petersburg theatres shouted from the stage,—“Let us proclaim throughout all Russia that the time has come for tearing up evil by the roots!” And the audience responded with frantic demonstrations of enthusiasm. Speech was free, open, and unrestrained by police or press censors, and public attention was absorbed by the great practical issues of the day. The Crimean war had shown the necessity of constructing railroads, improving roads, and steamboat communication on the rivers, of developing the natural resources, and had taught them the lesson that even an efficient army could not be produced from an ignorant population. Accordingly in current speech and in the public press different methods of education were discussed, and reforms in all the branches of the civil service, and as a result of all this they expected an increase of military power and the consequent respect of Western nations.

For the furtherance of these reforming projects, for the reason that twenty millions of the people, 198one third of the population, were in a state of bondage, precedence was given to the question of the condition of the serfs. There were 100,247 landed proprietors, and of these more than 41,000 were possessors of less than twenty-one male serfs. A proprietor who was owner of 500 serfs was not considered very rich, and there were only 3,803 of these. There were a few whose possessions were enormous. One of the nobles possessed more than 150,000 male serfs, more than 300,000 souls; the latter estimate naturally including females, though the Russians have a popular saying that “Women have no souls at all, but only a vapor.” Another noble owned more than half a million of acres of land, another extensive mines, but there were few very rich families. By far the greater part of the territory belonged to the state, and one-half of the rural population were state peasants whose condition differed from the other serfs in that they had more land and more liberty, and their position was not so precarious.

Agriculture and the industries languished for the lack of free labor, and upon the nation’s honor was the stigma of slavery.

The emancipation law which was signed February 19, 1861, Old Style, or March 3d as we reckon time, liberated twenty millions of serfs. The manifesto with which the peasantry is said to have been disappointed, was read in all the churches and contained these fundamental principles, to wit:—

“1. That the serfs should at once receive the civil rights of the free rural classes, and that the authority of the proprietors should be replaced by communal self-government.

2. That the rural communes should as far as possible retain the land they actually held, and 199should in return pay to the proprietor certain yearly dues in money or labor.

3. That the Government should by means of credit, assist the communes to redeem these dues, or, in other words, to purchase the lands ceded to them in usufruct.”

The domestic serfs should continue to serve their masters two years, and thereafter they should be completely free, but would have no claim on the land. The disappointment in the minds of the peasants was in the disposition of the land. Many desired that all the land should be given to the Communes, making the emancipation in accordance with traditional right and their material advantage, instead of which they were still to pay dues on land they believed to be their own by right. The Noblesse were well pleased with the manifesto.

After a delay of three months, “Arbiters of the Peace” were appointed, to regulate the future relations between the proprietors and peasantry and in the interval cases of insubordination were frequent, and even riots, when order was preserved by the calling out of the troops. The “Arbiters of the Peace” when organized restored order and regulated the land question, issued charters, etc. between the proprietors and serfs, legalizing the new agreements, with or without their consent. In this reconstruction many differences were to be reconciled owing to the distrust of the freed serfs, but gradually they came to know the situation better and to help in the progress of the work, which has advanced slowly but surely, notwithstanding the complaints in some instances of the Noblesse, through the wonderful tact of the conscientious “Arbiters of the Peace.”

The law relating to the dues was as follows:—The 200dues were capitalised at six per cent and the Government paid at once to the proprietors four-fifths of the whole sum. The peasants were to pay to the proprietor the remaining fifth, either at once or in installments, and to the Government six per cent, for forty-nine years, on the sum advanced. This arrangement was willingly acceded to by the proprietors but the peasants were so backward in their payments, that in most cases their fifth had to be remitted.

Of this gigantic, though gradual, reform the Tsar Alexander II. is acknowledged by all to be the chief and most energetic and judicious promoter. He was ably assisted by his brother the Grand Duke Constantine and the Grand Duchess Helena, a German Princess, aided by the Noblesse and the landed proprietors, who when assured that emancipation was inevitable joined enthusiastically in its execution, and also by the peasantry of the better sort as soon as they comprehended the advantages of the law which gave them back their original status in the social scale, and made them once more personally free.

It was so-called freedom in 1861, but they had to serve as they had done for two years longer, for the law had a provision enjoining them to obey and work as hard as of old until some new arrangement should be made. On appealing to the authorities the field work was executed, after a fashion, but the harvest suffered for a few years, until the peasants began to realize the burden of the taxes they were obliged to pay on the land, as well as support themselves, and consented to work in the fields of 201their former owners for a moderate compensation, taking advantage of the scarcity of labor, and taking their leave on a word or two too much from their employers, who are dependent upon them. Previous to emancipation it was said that the Russians had little or no practical acquaintance with pauperism, but now some became fugitives, and made it a permanent condition of life, wandering through the cities and villages as professing pilgrims or beggars, and were supported by the alms giving of the merchants, the public generally and the monasteries.

The government of the Rural Commune or Mir, as established by the Act of Emancipation, is by a Village Assembly and a Village Elder, but the Elder’s authority is limited by the heads of households, all having a common responsibility and paying a fixed sum into the common treasury; even the time of planting, mowing and harvesting, being regulated by the Assembly, and all the households are equally responsible for the taxes and dues. The consent of the Assembly must be obtained if a peasant desires to work in the larger towns, for his liabilities must be made secure.

Every year the Village has to pay a certain sum into the Imperial Treasury, according to the number of male peasants; each Village distributing the land, according to its own judgment, with taxes and dues in proportion to the land, sometimes according to the working power of the families, which may change every few years, males and females alike working on the land.

In the meetings of the assemblies the majority 202rules, and is decided by a Court of the members, composed of heads of households of both sexes, standing in groups out of doors.

The office of Village Elder is sometimes elective, at others he is appointed by the landed proprietor. The office is not sought for, the duties being troublesome and annoying, and the pay small. In the allotment of the land the number of shares of which may or may not be of advantage, according to the peculiar circumstances of each, the decision of the Commune is accepted without demur. Some of these divisions take place annually, others at irregular intervals. The system compels the peasant to possess land whether he or she desires it or not. Every peasant, by the simple fact of his birth, possesses an inalienable right to a share of the land.

All that is necessary for their existence, their houses, land, agricultural implements etc., are exempt from sequestration, and cannot be taken for debt. The peasants on the land belonging to the state, have no masters, but are not allowed to change their official domicile. They pay taxes and dues. Many of them have left the villages and have amassed fortunes in the cities, still retaining their hold on the land by paying the taxes. The remaining land belongs to rich nobles, who rarely visit their estates, and the condition of the peasants is much the same as that of the state peasants, while others live on their estates.

Now, forty-three of the forty-nine years have passed, and in January, 1904, the Tsar Nicholas II. grandson of Alexander II., in response to calls for legislation relative to a new draft of the present code, with complaints of arbitrary conduct by the administrative machinery from the highest assemblies to the local committees, stipulates that changes 203on three points shall be reserved from discussion, namely, that the peasant class must remain entirely separate, legally, from the other classes; that the Commune is to remain untouched by legislation, and that the peasant lands are to remain inalienable. The autocratic power still remains supreme. March 3, 1904, for the first time since the Emancipation of the serfs the anniversary was officially observed throughout the empire as a general holiday and with special services in the churches. Thousands stood in the open air, uncovered, in the great central market of St. Petersburg chanting a Te Deum.

I was returning to my room in Paris, late one Sunday night in March, 1881, having passed an agreeable evening, first dining at my old classmate’s, E. D. Boit’s, then listening to some music and meeting some pleasant people at the house of another artist Mr. G. P. A. Healy, and last calling with Wad Longfellow upon the Kings, when I heard a newsman on the boulevard crying out something exciting though I could not catch what it was. I bought his extra, “le Soir,” took it to my room, and found that the news was nothing less than this time the successful assassination on the 13th of the Emperor of Russia.

It made quite an impression upon me as I thought it over, not only because I had met the Tsar two or three times, but also from the interest I felt he had taken in the cause of the Union during our civil war; that he among the crowned heads of the world had been, if not our only, at least our out-spoken friend and sympathizer.

204How much in common there was both in the life and death of Alexander II. and Abraham Lincoln! Each of these men in his own land had been the originator and bold champion of a plan of emancipation, and each of them had at length fallen by the hand of an assassin!

Prince Kropotkin in 1899, gave to the Atlantic Monthly the following account of the death of the Tsar:—

“A bomb was thrown under the Tsar’s iron-clad carriage. Several Circassians of the escort were wounded. Rysakoff, who flung the bomb, was arrested on the spot. Then, although the coachman of the Tsar earnestly advised him not to get out, saying that he could drive him still in the slightly damaged carriage, he stepped out. He felt that his military dignity required him to see the wounded Circassians, to condole with them, as he had done with the wounded during the Turkish war, when a mad storming of Plevna, doomed to end in terrible disaster, was made on the day of his fête.

He approached Rysakoff and asked him something, and as he passed close by another young man, Grinevetsky, the latter threw his bomb at their feet, between himself and Alexander II., so that both of them should be killed by the terrible engine. They lived but a few hours.

There Alexander II. lay upon the snow, profusely bleeding, abandoned by every one of his followers! All had disappeared. It was cadets, returning from the parade, who lifted the bleeding Tsar from the snow, and put him in a sledge, covering his shivering body with a cadet mantle, and his bare head with a cadet cap. And it was one of the Terrorists, Emelianoff, with a bomb wrapped in a 205paper under his arm, who, at the risk of being arrested on the spot and hanged, rushed with the cadets to help the wounded man! Human nature is full of these contrasts.”

It was at the canal bridge near the Nevski Prospect that the bomb which shattered the body of the Tsar below the waist was thrown, and he died within an hour at his rooms in the Winter Palace. It is said that these rooms and their contents have never been disturbed in the least since the murdered Tsar left them for his drive. The hands of the clock on the mantel still point to 33 minutes past 3, the moment the Tsar expired.

August 28, 1898, a monument to Tsar Alexander II. was unveiled at Moscow. His grandson, the present Tsar, Nicholas II. issued a ukase referring to the event and eulogizing the deeds of the deceased, notably the liberation of the peasants from bondage, which earned him the title of “The Deliverer,” in the mouth of a grateful people. The closing words were as follows:—

“Wishing to seal more firmly the memory of this historical deed, we have resolved to make hereditary the wearing and possession of the medals he conferred upon his co-operators, as a sign of his gracious acknowledgment of their labors.”

The Tsar also sent to M. Constantin Pobiedonostseff, Procurator General of the Holy Synod, the decoration of the Order of St. Andrew, together with an imperial rescript reminding him that he, of 206all the close co-operators with the deceased monarch, alone remained in possession of the chiefship of the administrative department then intrusted to him.

The monument was unveiled by Emperor Nicholas II. at 3 o’clock in the afternoon, in the presence of the Czarina, the Queen of the Hellenes, the Cabinet, the German and Austrian Ambassadors, deputations from all the land and naval forces of Russia and the Austrian Uhlans Regiment.

The entire audience knelt while the clergy recited a prayer in memory of the deceased.

At the moment of the unveiling the troops presented arms, and a salute of 320 guns was fired. Then the troops, with the Emperor at the head, marched past the monument amid the enthusiastic cheers of the people.

ODESSA, 1899.

CHAPTER TENTH. EUROPE AND AMERICA IN 1870. DEMETRIUS GOUBAREFF. RUSSIA AND THE UNITED STATES. — In London, Paris and Nice. Introductory Remarks. — “ Europe and America in 1870. ” — England and France. — Prussia. — Austria. — Spain. — Italy. — Denmark, Norway and Sweden. — Russia. — The Equipoise of Power. — Looking into the Future. — The Possession of Constantinople. — The Country of the Pharaohs. — The Non-intervention of the United States. — The Path of Peace. — From a Letter to My Sister at Manchester. — Goubareff the Russian. — Russia and the United States. Written in Boston in 1873. — The Double Event of Emancipation. — The Russo-American Fever.

The ideas I give of Europe contained in the following sketch written in London in April, 1870, came to me from a residence of two years there, during which time I had been constantly watching events, and had been thrown with many of the leading statesmen and financiers of the United States.

What I pretended to know of the Eastern question, I learned from the journey I made the previous autumn through Russia, Turkey and Egypt, with General Banks. It then struck me that it would be well to open the eyes of the American people to what was passing there as impartially as possible, as thus far the English accounts had been one-sided. I may appear to favor Russia too strongly, but the boat in which we made the journey 208from Odessa to Egypt, and then through the Suez Canal, was filled with Russian representatives, persons representing almost all the Russian interests, and they spoke to us, being Americans, most freely on these subjects, and in such a way that we were much impressed with the high ambitions of that empire. It would have been difficult to have made the journey under more favorable auspices.

The picture I drew of the future of the United States was very strong, but the more one lives away from America, the more he appreciates her greatness, and the position she must surely hold among the nations of the world, and I thought it good to put the plain facts and statistics before Europeans as well as Americans.

This paper, which I offered to the press, did not appear originally in the form of a contribution, as the war suddenly broke out between France and Prussia before this was accomplished, but I had copies of it printed in a pamphlet for private circulation, and in that way it was quite generally read and discussed.

I was of the opinion that neither Americans nor Europeans were sufficiently alive to the position which the United States was destined soon to hold among the nations of the world, and that they ought to be diligently preparing themselves for it.

Having faith that the Great Republic will not only remain undivided, but increase in territory, population and strength, it logically follows that she must later be the controlling power. In her, humanity, commingled together and then reorganized, will practically carry out the idea of self-government, and such a government, if successful, will be irresistible.

“Wars and rumors of wars must be, it would seem, for many years to come the staple of talk in Europe. Nor is this remarkable, so many different nationalities and languages, so much intelligence and energy, and so many shades of ambition being concentrated in a small space of territory. Thus far in the history of the Old World those in power have generally sought by arms or state craft to strengthen the country in whose destiny they were interested. Constant wars have been the result.

The principles of international interest, of working in harmony to develop the resources of the globe, of which perhaps the best exponent is trade and the necessary concomitant peace, have been unfortunately considered beneath the dignity of those who by birth, by fortune, or by talent, have been able to hold leading positions. Happily this is being changed. The great discoveries of the last fifty years have given the world such an impulse as it never received before. The comparative ease of making money and of possessing it in safety, has caused persons to look after their own interest more than that of those who chanced to be their rulers. But the process of change is slow, and emperors and kings are still able to make wars even in opposition to the will of their subjects. Wars are still not only a possibility, but a probability, and every one is on the lookout for them. When there is lack of other business, the cabinets of Europe will turn their attention to the always vexed question of the balance of power.

When newspaper editors are in want of interesting matter to fill their sheets, they can ever bring out a glowing statement of the Eastern question, or dilate upon the relations existing between France and Prussia.

The map of Europe never ceases to be an entertaining study, and so a slight review of the present state of affairs there, as seen and judged by the disinterested traveller, may perhaps offer some points of interest to those who are unable to make the journey themselves.

No one nation in Europe, today, seems to have a preponderating influence over the others.

England and France for a long time the most powerful have not, during the last ten years, been making any international 210progress, and if they have not by this been actually losing their influence, they have remained in a state of inaction, while others have made great advances to equal or eclipse them. Nor is there to be seen in them any prospect of changing their policy.

England is so much occupied with domestic questions, especially those relating to Ireland, that she can give little time or thought to anything else, unless of very great import.

In France the holding the various discordant elements in check, and forming out of them a strong and popular government, is absorbing all the talent of her statesmen. The aggressive enterprises that the existing government, or rather that its head, has lately undertaken, have been so fruitless and so doubtfully indorsed by the people, that it is not probable anything of the kind will again be tried unless upon an almost certainty of success.

Prussia may with a certain show of reason consider herself the leader, but her, so to speak, inland position, and the consequent difficulty of her having great naval or commercial power, prevent her from taking that place to which her arms and politics might entitle her. Besides this her relations with both Northern and Southern Germany are in a preparatory state, and the uncertainty of her future movements, and of how they will be accepted, is a present point of weakness. She is recognized to be the strongest German nation, but the smaller independencies, certain though they may be of becoming eventually absorbed, are tenacious of preserving their individuality as long as possible. They hesitate about siding with or against Prussia, and as she cannot well now press the question, matters are more or less at a standstill.

Austria cannot, since the Peace of Prague, be regarded as a first-class power of Europe; she must regain her lost strength first, and for some time to come she will best attempt this by solidifying her relations with Hungary, and by infusing more advanced principles of government into the authorities at Vienna.

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In Spain, affairs are still holding their uneasy course, and the world looks on astonished at the way the country is taking care of itself; so many forms of government proposed by so many different candidates that, in reality, there is next to none whatever, but, to balance this, a fair amount of contentment among the people. Not knowing what they wish, the Spaniards drift on very well with what they have.

In Italy, economy is so necessary to preserve the country, that no thought can be given to any foreign ventures, while at Rome all other questions are dropped, so long as the Ecumenical Council is sitting there in state.

Denmark, Norway and Sweden, are engaged in discussing topics of much local interest, and which may perhaps, result in the unity of the three nations, but they will have little influence upon the general march of events in Europe.

Russia remains, as the last great nation to be discussed, and here, on the stepping stone between Eastern and Western ideas and civilizations, can be found the germs of those movements which if not immediately forthcoming, will, when they burst forth, startle the world with their grandeur, and essentially change the features of the map of Europe.

The Russian Empire as it exists today,—the Russia of Alexander II. and Gortschakoff,—the country which has emancipated twenty million serfs and offered an equal trial by jury to all its citizens, this nation, which, day by day is increasing its territory and influence at home, and which during a civil war in the other hemisphere extended a kindly though many will say a not disinterested hand to the party which represented progressive principles, the Russian Empire, the friend of the American Republic, has many qualities which might justly entitle it to leadership, but the strange mixture of European and Asiatic elements 212in that country, so great in extent and so ambitious of progress, as interpreted by it, is the cause of a confusion of ideas, and prevents that unanimity of action which is necessary to insure the respect and obedience of others.

Moreover, although the spirit of the people is extremely democratic, the policy of the government is autocratic, and in the latter part of this century it is impossible for any but a government founded on popular principles and supported by the people themselves, to command the esteem and the envy of the masses in other portions of the civilized world, and thus to give them laws. The seeds of dominion are there, but it will take time for them to ripen and bear their fruit.

From this slight review of the position of the European nations in 1870, one cannot help being impressed with the equipoise of power, and concluding that this itself is a strong guarantee of peace, but, in reality the peace is not well founded, and cannot be abiding. It is an armed peace, and as such, may cause the people deep anxiety. Several millions of men in Europe, today, are wearing the dress and drawing the pay of soldiers, and all for nothing. Disarming is continually talked of, but is not being begun, nor will it be, as long as the nations are mutually afraid of each other. The pursuits of industry and commerce, which would develop with increasing force if peace were secure for ten or twenty years, are now, to a great extent, held in check. Capitalists are afraid of embarking in great enterprises, as they know not what may take place before they will be completed. Thousands of laborers, able-bodied and intelligent, through fear of being drawn into military service are leaving the lands of their birth and emigrating to distant shores, there to seek their fortunes: a great gain to the countries which receive them, but a more than proportionate loss to those they leave, as their places cannot be filled.

One should not seriously wish for war, except in the most extreme cases, and where the prospect of the good to follow seems more than to compensate for the immediate evil.

Without admitting this to be the case now, but believing that the present peace cannot, from the press of circumstances 213last many years, let us look a little into the future, and try to divine where it will be first broken, and what will be the results. It is to the East of Europe we must turn our thoughts, and here it seems as if great events would soon be in motion. The problem to be solved is the dismemberment of the Ottoman Empire, and the consequent independence of one nation, and the increase in power of several others.

The actors in the drama will be Turkey, Russia, Egypt, Greece, and perhaps the Slavonic portions of Austria, the theatre will be parts of Europe, Asia, and Africa, and the most interested spectators will be France, England, and the United States.

It must be well borne in mind that the integrity of Turkey has been guaranteed for many years, if not actually preserved, by the cabinets of France and England. So many pamphlets and articles have been written by those representing the interests of those governments on one side, and so little has been said on the opposite side, that it has almost become an acknowledged fact that the carrying out of this idea is necessary for the peace of Europe and of the world. Their arguments are strong, but will not influence him who visits Constantinople with an unprejudiced mind. The key to the riddle is the possession of that city. England and France know that they themselves cannot obtain it, and this being the case, they are determined to do all in their power to prevent any other nation from doing so. It is almost impossible for one who has not been there himself, to form a fair opinion of what should be the future of that beautiful city of the East, but once there, the decision is soon reached that it should no longer belong to the Turks, but to some people, whoever they may be, who will do justice to the advantages Nature has given it.

Constantinople is so placed that it is one of the keys of the waters of the world, and as such it ought to be a great commercial centre. The city, as it now is, renders this impossible, and the Turks, judging from their antecedents and their present manner of existence, are incapable of change.

A distinguished statesman of the United States (Gen. N. P. Banks) one day asked the Turkish minister at Washington, 214if in his country there were many persons celebrated for their success in finance or business.

The Minister slowly opened his dark mysterious eyes, and with a half-amused, half-pitying gaze, replied:—

‘Sir, my countrymen know nothing of affairs, the Turks are warriors.’

In the quiet answer of that Turk, a man who held not only a high position in his own country, but had also seen the active life in America, there is a meaning which one cannot well appreciate who has not been among the people of whom he spoke. They seem to belong to a different age and world from ours. They know almost nothing of the wonderful things every day done in this nineteenth century, and, if they are told, they take but little interest, and are incapable of comprehending them.

As already stated the city of Constantinople, until radically changed, does not admit of greatness. Some of the civilizing appliances of this century judiciously put in movement, would soon change the mysterious city of the Orient, replete with the souvenirs of Constantine and Mohammed, into a great commercial mart. The past would be sacrificed for the future, but the sacrifice would be justifiable. Useless Romance would drop her fascinating garment, and stand arrayed as the goddess of Practical Progress.

The question then is, who will begin the work?

The Turks will certainly not; indeed, their opposition to it will be so strong that it cannot well be undertaken until they see that their empire is broken, and that their natural refuge is over the water into Asia, where they belong.

The mover of all this will be a nation which has the most to gain from the results,—Russia, and fortunately a nation fired with the ambitions of progress, and with sufficient power to be able to carry them out. The intelligent men of Russia know that it is needful to the dignity of the nation, as a sentiment, to its safety militarily, and to its commercial prosperity, to have all the water rights and privileges in the Black Sea, and in the straits which connect it with those waters which are acknowledged to be the common property of mankind. Until this is brought about their machinery is clogged, and for this the possession of Constantinople is so important as almost to be a necessity.

The Russians are already at the work, and the faster it 215advances the better. Slowly and steadily since the peace was signed at the end of the Crimean War, the government at St. Petersburg, deeply humbled then, is preparing for the struggle which will restore her lost rights, and give her many additional ones. Day by day, she is spreading out her net-work of railroads, steamboats, telegraphs, and post-roads; imperceptibly she is increasing her territory, and this on principles so judiciously arranged for the conquered, that each fresh Asiatic horde absorbed, soon becomes as proud of the grandeur of Russia as if it had always been a part of the empire. Vessels for the navy and commerce are being built on her northern and southern seas, and her large inland rivers; her grain-trade is rapidly increasing, and her rich mines and other resources are being developed. Besides all this, she has a strong point of safety in the intense feeling of nationality, daily swelling, which pervades all the Muscovites. In sentiment the army is a unit, and the entire population of the vast empire shout wildly on every occasion for the health and prosperity of the Tsar.

There may be something barbaric in all this, but it is the stuff out of which national greatness can be made, and it may cause anxiety to those countries where such a feeling does not exist.

The nation most interested after Russia, in the division of Turkey, perhaps as much or even more interested, because her own independence is the prize she can win, is Egypt, that historic land, which, once the mistress of the world, but today a vassal, has in the future as fine a destiny as could be desired. The canal lately opened through the Isthmus of Suez, has done more for Egypt than fifty ordinary years might have accomplished.

It has turned the thoughts of civilized Europe for more than ten years upon that country; it has kept their attention interested, and the result has been more than satisfactory.

Europe has not, in modern days, expected to find much good in the country of the Pharaohs, but it has found that although matters there are not what the sanguine might wish, they are still unquestionably in every point where comparison is possible, very far in advance of Turkey.

216The infusion of Western ideas into the inhabitants of a land who have been brought up for centuries to despise them, is no easy task, but this the Vice Roi of Egypt has been attempting, and with fair success. He appreciates the age in which he lives as any one who has visited Cairo can plainly see, and he feels his superiority over the Sultan so strongly, that he is merely waiting for the time to be ripe, to openly disobey the orders from Constantinople, and assert his independence. Many thought, and with reason, that at the opening of the Suez Canal the time for this action had come, but nothing was then done, perhaps because the armed force of the Khedive was insufficient for the attempt, or that having accomplished a great commercial success, he hesitated risking a military failure, or, more probably still, because the diplomatic complications were such that he could not make an advantageous alliance.

For what is to be done Egypt should go hand-in-hand with Russia, but at the present time this is a difficult combination to form.

In constructing the Suez Canal, France has done everything for Egypt, and the presence of the Empress Eugénie at the opening ceremonies was the natural culmination of the work.

An alliance between France and Egypt, strong enough to give France a foothold in the East, and thereby to checkmate the power of England, but not binding her to make a rupture with the rulers at Constantinople on the question of Egyptian independence, would be a fine thing for Napoleon, but would do Ismail little good. A rational alliance between Russia and Egypt, each country working for itself and the other, would be desirable enough, but for this it would be necessary to give France the cold shoulder, and in return receive her resentment.

Russia, France, and Egypt, cannot now combine together. The results of the Crimean war are not forgotten at St. Petersburg, and, besides this, the existing relations between Russia and Prussia on other European questions are such that the former cannot yet offer France a friendly hand.

The ambition of Napoleon is boundless, but he knows that the prestige he would acquire in working out the independence of Egypt, would be overbalanced by what would fall to the share of the Emperor of Russia.

England, too, could not keep out of the dispute, and 217although lately she has been very silent on the Eastern question, at the moment of action, regardless of what she has done in the past, and of her half-promises for the future, she would bring great force to bear, and in such a way as to derive advantage for herself alone.

The Austro-Hungarian Empire and Greece have both something to gain from the dismemberment of the Ottoman Empire, but, in their present condition, they must move in the wake of others, they cannot lead the operations. A masterly brain and arm might unite the different Slavonic elements on the banks of the Danube, part of which now belong to Turkey, and amalgamate them into the Austrian Empire, but it is doubtful if this would be a desirable move, for, while it would give strength in territory and population to Austria, it would tend to weaken the German element of the country, and this would be fatal if she wishes to be regarded as the great South-German nation.

The title of Kaiser of Germans, always has and could still give prestige, but the same title held by one whose empire was in reality composed of Slavs, would not, but on the contrary aid the government of Prussia in its plans of German unity, and unity on a more democratic basis. Austria’s best course, therefore, would be to take no active part, but to await the results and turn them as best she could to her advantage.

The Greeks and Turks have never loved each other, and while Greece is too weak for definite action at first, she could later lend a helping hand in the movements which would result in restoring to her the provinces of Thessaly and Epirus, which though under the dominion of Turkey are Greek in everything but the name. Greece thus regenerated, might again become quite an important country, and with the commerce which the Suez Canal opens to her with the Indies, take her place as a growing maritime nation.

There are no other important moves now apparent in the horizon of European politics. As mentioned above, the great powers are too much interested in domestic affairs to be able to give much thought to what their neighbors are doing.

It has been expected by many that the continued growling heard both from France and Prussia, would sooner or later end in open rupture and war, (The Franco-Prussian war broke out three months later, July 19, 1870.) 218but one who watches the course of events closely can see that while they both say they are ready, neither of them desires to break the peace. Neither will be the first to sound the alarm, for they both know they have almost nothing to gain from the result, for, should the war come, it would accomplish little but the destruction of the lives of many thousand soldiers. Whichever side was victorious, the boundary line between the two nations would be but slightly changed. The existing line is the natural one, for it is the line of language and race, and, although war could move it on one side or the other, for a time, it would soon fall back again to the plane from which it started. The strength of the two nations is so nearly equal that neither can absorb portions of the other. The Rhine is a German river, and neither diplomacy nor war can make it French.

And now, in conclusion, what position should the Government, or rather the people of the United States, take in relation to the march of events in Europe? Are we to hold forever to our established principle of non-intervention, when we conscientiously believe that judicious intervention would often advance the cause of progress?

Better at least keep the right of speaking and acting as we please, but use it sparingly, and never hesitate to give sympathy and moral aid,—sometimes more helpful than actual assistance,—to the parties in any struggle which we believe to have justice on their side.

But when we look into the future, and a no very distant future at that, and consider that at the end of this century we shall be a nation of one hundred millions, thinking persons can easily see that the preponderance of strength in our favor will be so overwhelming, that non-intervention will be a practical impossibility. The weak of the earth will come to us for protection, and we shall not wish to throw them off.

What a country it will be in 1900!

One hundred million people, all with a strong sense of liberty, but not of license; all educated, or desirous and able to become so; all ambitious, because the highest prizes are within their reach; nearly all speaking one language: with private fortunes greater than the world has ever seen, and with the natural resources of the country then in their flower.

219One cannot dwell upon this prospect without swelling with pride, and at the same time almost trembling at its very grandeur.

The mighty Republic of the United States, which sprang into existence less than a century ago, will be the acknowledged law-giver and arbiter of the entire world.

Perhaps at no time has the temptation for us to mix in the affairs of Europe been so strong as today, because, selfishly speaking, we have everything to gain and nothing to lose. (It must be remembered that every word of this article was written in 1870.) A mere spark which could any moment be struck at Washington would in three months’ time set Europe in flames.

An excuse like the Cuban difficulty (The independence of Cuba, achieved at the close of the century by the assistance of the United States in its war with Spain), the long pending question of the Alabama Claims, (Claims of the United States upon Great Britain for damages by the Alabama and other Confederate cruisers, settled in 1872, at Geneva, by a court of arbitration.) the relations between the Sultan and the Khedive, or the foolishness now between France and the United States about the postal treaty or the Atlantic cable. Any of these would be sufficient to do the work, and what would be the result? (The postal union was formed by a congress of delegates representing the principal governments of Europe and the United States, assembled at Berne, Switzerland, in September, 1874. A treaty was concluded establishing a uniform rate of postage for letters of 5 cents per half ounce.)

Thousands and thousands of able-bodied men, with no taste for war, and especially war for the gratification of crowned heads, would seize every opportunity of leaving their native lands and hastening to America. It would be impossible to prevent them.

Millions and millions of treasure seeking safe investment, would find its way to the United States, and all that is wanted to develop the country, is hands to work the natural resources and money to pay for it.

America would become what England has been for many years, the strong box of the world. England can be so no more.

Telegraph communication and steam have put her so near the continent of Europe, that she can no longer be regarded as a sure land of refuge for men or money. Nay, it is doubtful if she could actually keep out of the 220conflict. The safe must be separated from the combatants by a broader piece of water than the Straits of Dover. Three thousand miles are not too much for perfect security. The action of the United States could bring on any war it wished, but the country itself would have nothing to fear. Its strength is so great that it could meet fairly in the field any possible combination of the nations of Europe. The feeling of animosity between the northern and southern states, which has existed during the civil war, but which is happily now almost over, would end in fraternal enthusiasm if the country should engage in a popular war against any other nation. But the carnage once begun in Europe could not be carried over the Atlantic, as there would be enough to keep it there. The United States would be in any case the attacked and not the attacking party, and modern warfare has arrived at the point that, other things being equal, the party which attacks a distant land is almost sure to be worsted.

What would fall to the lot of the United States would be the business of the world. The carrying trade of the nations would be done by her, and the problem of the revival of her shipping be by the action of others solved. All the merchant vessels which plough the Atlantic and Pacific oceans, would claim the protection of the Stars and Stripes, and this means limitless sums of money poured into her treasury, wealth to the country, and wealth to private individuals. The prestige of her flag would be such as none ever had before.

Such is the prospect which opens before the vision of the people of the United States today. Deeply conscious of our great power, let us be equally conscious of our responsibility in best employing that power for the benefit of mankind. Let us remember that our path is the path of peace, and not that of war, let us endeavor not to be turned from it by the constant temptations of false glory, for, if we are, we shall ourselves suffer for it later, and cause others to suffer.

It is for its to show to Europe, not what advantages can be derived from war and diplomacy, which are the weapons of the past, but what greater advantages can be derived from the weapons of the present and the future,—the weapons of our own peculiar fabrication,—such as the 221nobility of labor and universal education and freedom. Only by acting thus shall we be able to prove to the nations who are even now ‘hanging breathless on our fate,’ that we truly carry with us a grander civilization than has ever yet been seen.”

“Club House, Newport, August 7, 1870: I was in Boston yesterday, and had just about ten minutes at 39 Beacon street, where I found your nice letter. I am very comfortably established here, in a little apartment with my friend Bob. Winthrop of New York, and here I mean to have my headquarters, running off occasionally to New York or Boston and I hope before long to turn up at ‘Sharksmouth.’ I have been really very much occupied the last month, what with my own affairs, la haute finance at Washington and New York, with the thermometer at 90°, and with occasional visits to my friends, and have been very happy with all the work. I have my old horse ‘Trumps’ from South Carolina, and he is in as fine a condition as when I left him, more than two years ago. He reposes in solitary dignity in the stable.

Poor Europe in 1870, is terribly changed!

I am going to print my little article in a pamphlet by itself, with an introduction suited to the times, and will send you a copy when it appears. I came to the conclusion that to alter it to suit the ever changing news from Europe would be impossible, and would really spoil it, and so I will let it remain as it is as one of my first literary attempts.

I have been to Long Branch, and it is the most extraordinary American political rendezvous I ever saw.

222The war in Europe sickens me, so many thousand poor fellows to be murdered and maimed for wicked personal ambition. The whole business of the world is thrown into our hands,—I mean the United States of America,—if we only take it.”

Demetrius Goubareff was a very intelligent Russian, to whom I was first introduced in 1871 or 1872. As a young man he had liberated his serfs before the emancipation action of Alexander II. and had been a progressive man in every way. He wrote a book entitled “Philosophie—Religion.” He had, I believe, taken part in the Crimean war, and then again in 1879, entered the service of his country at the time of the later attempt to obtain possession of Constantinople, which I have been informed was balked only by the interposition of Bismarck. The matter I thought ought to have been settled then and there.

Mr. Goubareff lived much at Nice and Paris, and often visited London. He kept up an extensive correspondence with many interesting persons.

He passed Sunday with me at Vevey, Switzerland, in March, 1876, and we had an excellent chance to talk there quietly and at our leisure. I found that he was much interested in the “Association for the Codification and Reform of the Law of Nations,” of which, on my proposing him, he became a member. I was very glad of this because he proposed to make a good deal of occupation for himself out of it, getting acquainted, and opening correspondence with many of the distinguished persons who were on the list of its members, and would prove a very valuable addition to the organization.

223The following month in Paris Mr. Goubareff introduced me to the Golovine family, and we dined with them and strolled together in the beautiful gardens of St. Germain.

“A good deal has been said and written the last ten years, about the strong friendship existing between Russia and the United States, the coquetting, as it has been called, of these two nations with each other.

That such an entente cordiale has existed is beyond all dispute, but the causes of it open a wide field for discussion.

The nations of Europe who have watched its progress with some evident alarm for themselves, have come forward with many unasked-for explanations, to clearly prove that such a thing is out of all reason, that it should not be, that it is all nonsense, thereby admitting all the more plainly the ugly fact. Particularly kind and disinterested have they been in their advice to the youthful United States, warning her to be careful, lest she be outwitted by the shrewd diplomacy of the Muscovite Cabinet, telling her that it was all a smart trick on the part of the Russian government, from which they only wanted to carry out their own ambitious ends, and this done, they would be ready at any moment to give the innocent and confiding Americans the slip.

It is pleasant, as a citizen of the United States to feel what good friends we have on the other side of the Atlantic,—real friends, too,—who are ready to come forward, now that we are out of the woods, to save us from the terrible fate of being killed by too much kindness.

Like the almost historic personage who was talked to death, perhaps there is danger in store for the American Republic of being advised to death by her older brothers and sisters.

It does not take an over-intelligent person to see that between a military autocracy, under the sway of an almost absolute ruler, and a government of the people, intrusting the management of its affairs temporarily to its chosen representatives, there cannot be, theoretically, certainly, much genuine and heartfelt sympathy. This is superficially 224the view which any one would take. But deeper reflection on the traits, or, better still, living among the people of whom such a comparison is made, will show that this curious sympathy is not by any means a matter of government alone,—important as that is to aid it,—but lies hidden in the life of the people themselves, only to be brought out by a curious combination of circumstances.

At times the spark will be struck, and blaze forth into a great conflagration. Such a time was the late civil war in North America, which was the cause of the emancipation of the slaves in the Southern states, when, to correspond with it, at about the same epoch, but from entirely different causes, came the liberation of the serfs all through Russia.

Alexander II. and Abraham Lincoln then found a bond of fellowship existing between them, which nothing could break, and the masses in Russia and in the United States, were only too ready to take up the double event and magnify it in their feeling to an unlimited extent. Then many other points of similarity were discovered; the great extent of territory of both nations, giving each a future in the development of the resources placed there by nature, whether on the surface of the earth or under it, which restricted limits had denied to the other nations of the continent. This same vastness of land, educating many to be merchants, and farmers, and miners, and railroad owners on a grand scale, caused a corresponding freedom of thought and independence of action,—in other words democratized the people who had come under its influence,—in a way which cannot well be appreciated by those whose life is passed in crowded cities alone, where the prestige of courts and the presence of cliques make individuality much less marked.

The two nations, the republic and the empire, owned a wide frontage on the Pacific ocean, which they came in imagination to regard as a huge lake, and this their common property. Other events, too, at this time were used with great effect; such as the arrival of the Russian squadron in America (The Russian fleet in New York, Boston, and San Francisco in 1863.), the visit of Assistant Secretary of the Navy Fox in 1866, and that of Admiral Farragut in 1867, (Admiral Farragut was in Russia the 225greater part of August in that year, and it was said the friendship and courtesy of both government and people were especially marked.) the purchase of Alaska (In 1867, organized July 27, 1868.) and the return call of the Grand Duke Alexis to the United States. (The third son of the Emperor Alexander II. of Russia visited this country in December 1871, and at a banquet Oliver Wendell Holmes welcomed him with the following words:—

‘Bleak are our shores with the blasts of December,

Fettered and chill is the rivulet’s flow,

But throbbing and warm are the hearts that remember

Who was our friend when the world was our foe.’

There was a gift to the poor of New York when the Russian squadron took leave of New York in 1863, a voluntary subscription of $4,760 from the officers, and during the famine in Russia in 1891, our government sent over five large steamers loaded with grain collected from almost every state in the Union.)

But, supposing there were no characteristics in common, it will not soon be forgotten in America that, during the long years of the terrible war, while many of the nations of Europe were clinging to the policy of keeping an uncompromising but none the less watchful armed neutrality, rulers and aristocracies in their hearts against the cause of the North, while the lower classes everywhere went with it, Russia, of all the great nations, alone came forward, and gave openly its sympathy to the side which represented a more advanced civilization, and which as such, in spite of its many disheartening defeats, was bound to triumph in the end. A person who is hard pressed in life, when a friend comes up to give him encouragement, does not stop to reflect why it is given, and try to put a selfish construction on the offer, he accepts it on the spot, and is not apt to forget the donor in a hurry. So Americans are not to be easily persuaded that Russia’s assistance to them at that critical period in their country’s history, was a mere diplomatic sham and meaningless parade. They are willing to be ignorant still, if this is so, and need more powerful arguments to disprove them than have yet been raised by their officious counsellors.”

In the year of my first journey to Russia, 1866, the Russo-American fever was at its height, and 226it was a very pleasant thing for those who caught it when travelling in the other country. They were fêted and hugged, and wined, and tossed, according to the customs of the people, and their nationality alone was a sufficient passport to pass them along the lines of sight-seeing and pleasure, passing unchallenged,—nay, rather invited in. The entire nation was in the attitude of “present arms” to him from the other country who desired to pass through on a tour of inspection.

PORT SAID. OPENING OF THE SUEZ CANAL.

INDEX TO PERSONS, PLACES, AND SUBJECTS

• Academy of Fine Arts, St. Petersburg, 151.
• Academy of Music, Brooklyn, N. Y., 90.
• Academy of Music, Newport, R. I., 32.
• Admiralty, St. Petersburg, 151.
• After Emancipation, 58, 200.
• Agricultural Exhibition, 174.
• Alabama Claims, 219.
• Alaska, 172, 186, 225.
• Albania, 108.
• Alexander I., 186, 192.
• Alexander II., 77, 81, 92, 94–96, 106, 134, 136–138, 161, 162, 164, 173–175, 184, 194–197, 200, 211, 216, 222, 224, 225.
• Alexander II., Death of, 203–205.
• Alexander II., Monument, 205.
• Alexandria, 179.
• Alice, yacht, 17–19, 23, 25, 27, 117.
• Allston, Washington, 125–132.
• Andrews, Christopher Columbus, 169, 170.
• Appleton, D. & Co., 146, 153.
• Appleton, Thomas Gold, 17–20, 23, 25, 42, 117, 123, 126, 129–132, 148.
• Appomattox Court House, Va., 62, 64.
• Army of the Potomac, 21, 22, 156, 158.
• Artillery Brigade, 157.
• Artists’ Club, St. Petersburg, 99.
• Ashuelot, man-of-war, 136.
• Asniéres, 24.
• Astor, W. W., 146.
• Augusta, man-of-war, 136.
• Avenue de l’Opera, Paris, 35.
• Ball, Thomas, 66.
• Baltic Sea, 24, 73, 186.
• Baltimore, Md., 44, 55, 99.
• Banks, Nathaniel P., 160, 168–174, 176, 179, 181, 183, 207, 213.
• Barlow, S. L. M., 145.
• Bartlett, Joseph J., 30.
• Battle of Antietam, 52.
• Beaumont, Sir George, 130, 131.
• Behring Straits, 103.
• Behring, Vitus, discoverer, 103.
• Bellevue Avenue, Newport, R. I., 29.
• Belmont, August, 33, 145–147.
• Bennett, James Gordon, 27, 28.
• Bennett, James Gordon, Jr., 27–29, 34, 36, 159.
• Berdan, Hiram, 173, 176.
• Berlin, 24, 26, 39, 68–74, 167.
• Besborodko, Koucheleff, Count, 93, 141.
• Bicknell, Albion H., 64.
• Bismarck-Schonhausen, Otto Edward Leopold, Prince von, Chancellor of the Empire, 222.
• Black Sea, 214.
• Bois de Boulogne, 20, 23, 38–40, 111, 162, 165.
• Boit, Edward D., 203.
• Boston, 9, 19, 66, 103, 116, 119, 127, 128, 221, 224.
• Boston Athenæum, 128.
• Boston Board of Trade, 177.
• Boston Museum of Fine Arts, 129.
• Boston Public Library, 141.
• Boulevard des Italiens, Paris, 36.
• Bowditch, Henry P., 158.
• Bowles Brothers & Co., Bankers, 168.
• Bowles, Charles, 34, 168, 177.
• Bowles, Drevet & Cie, Paris, 17.
• Bowles, Robert, 127.
• Boyer, Alexandre, 183.
• Brest, 9, 11, 14, 16, 24.
• Brevoort House, New York, 90.
• Brevoort Place, New York, 89.
• Bric-a-Brac Club, Boston, 148.
• Brighton Road, Brighton District, Boston, 87, 123, 135.
• Brindisi, 179.
• Brown, Edward Ingersol, 132.
• Brown, John Murray, 181.
• 228Brussels, 24, 26, 39, 68.
• Bullock, Alexander H., 167.
• Burgess, Frank, 9, 16, 23, 39, 84, 122, 144.
• Burlingame, Anson, 165–169, 180.
• Burlington Arcade, London, 85.
• Café Napolitaine, Paris, 26, 27.
• Cairo, Egypt, 179, 216.
• Cambridge, Mass., 159.
• Cameron, Simon, 50.
• Camp Douglas, 21.
• Carnatz Connection, 106.
• Carolina Filly, 30.
• Caspian Sea, 108.
• Catherine II., 193.
• Caucasus, 186.
• Centennial Exposition, Philadelphia, 129.
• Cercle des Capucines, 38.
• Cercle Franco-Américain, 37, 38.
• Champ de Mars, St. Petersburg, 173.
• Chandler, Zachariah, 168.
• Charing Cross Hotel, London, 20.
• Chase, Salmon P., 55, 64.
• Chicago, 10.
• Chicago Exposition, 66, 129.
• China, steamship, 18.
• Chinese Embassy, 167–169.
• Christmas Day, 81, 92, 98, 103, 113, 114, 122, 132, 133.
• Church of Saint Sophia, 140.
• Church of Sault Isaac, 86, 87.
• Circassia, 83, 85, 92, 108, 142, 145, 147, 204.
• Clark, Arthur H., 17, 18.
• Clay, Cassius M., 82, 94–96, 98, 137.
• Clyde Park, 30.
• Coaching Club, 28.
• Coffey, Titian J., 172, 173, 177.
• Colfax, Schuyler, 65.
• Cologne, 69.
• Commune, France, 36, 37.
• Commune, or Mir, Russia, 201–203.
• Compiègne, 20.
• Comte, Auguste, 181.
• Constantinople, 39, 76, 102, 169, 179, 180, 213–216, 222.
• Copenhagen, 168, 171.
• Corbin, Austin, 29.
• Costume Ball, 144–147.
• Cotton Exposition, New Orleans, 21.
• Country Club, Brookline, Mass., 30, 32, 33.
• Cowdin, Elliot C., 166.
• Cowes, 18, 19.
• Cowes Roads, 18.
• Cracow, 154, 155.
• Crane, Edward A., 182.
• Crimea, 23, 193, 194.
• Crimean War, 193, 194, 197, 215, 216, 222.
• Cronstadt, 97, 136.
• Crowninshield, B. W., 156.
• Cuba, 26, 172.
• Curtin, Andrew G., 168, 172, 173, 177, 180.
• Curtin, Jeremiah, 81, 103, 118, 134, 181.
• Curtis, T. B., 25, 39.
• Danube River, 181, 217.
• Dauntless, yacht, 29.
• Davis, Tom Kemper, 126.
• De Gogorza, Anthoine, 183.
• De Lesseps, Ferdinand, Count, 164, 165, 179, 182, 183.
• Delmonico’s, New York, 144.
• De Long, George W., 159.
• Demidoff Mines, 87.
• De Richelieu, Armand Emanuel du Plessis, Duke, 178.
• De Trobriand, Philippe Regis, 20, 21, 24, 91.
• Dieppe, 24.
• District of Columbia, 45, 49.
• Dix, John A., 165–167.
• Dneiper River, 185.
• D’Osuna et de l’Ynfantado, Duke, Spanish Ambassador, 82, 93, 98.
• Dresden, 25, 106, 155.
• Drexel, A. J., 34, 35, 168.
• Drexel, Harjes & Co., 34, 168.
• Dumaresq, Armand, 37.
• Dvina River, 185.
• Easton’s Beach, Newport, R. I., 31.
• Elsinore, 170, 184.
• Emancipation, Compensated, 48–50, 60, 196, 197, 199.
• Emancipation, Double Event of, 224.
• Emancipation, Gradual, 48–50, 196, 197.
• Emancipation Law of Russia, Manifesto, 198, 199, 200.
• Emancipation, Proclamation in the United States, 52–54.
• Emancipation, Result of War, 50, 193.
• Emperor of Austria, Franz Joseph I., 182.
• English Channel, 18, 117.
• English Club, St. Petersburg, 134.
• Erlanger, Emile, 183.
• Erlanger, Louis, Count Excelmans, 183.
• Europe and America in 1870, 207, 209–222.
• 229Evans, Thomas W., 35, 180, 182, 183.
• Executive Mansion or White House, 48, 51, 62.
• Faneuil Hall, Boston, 41.
• Farragut, David Glasgow, Admiral, 224.
• Fearing, H. S., 145.
• Fetridge, William Pembroke, 34, 36, 38.
• Fifth Avenue, New York, 29.
• Fifth Corps, Army of the Potomac, Union Forces, War of 1861-’65, 156, 157, 158.
• Fifth Mass. Battery, Light Artillery, 63, 116, 157.
• Fifteenth Amendment, 57, 58, 60.
• Fifty-fifth N. Y. Regt. Inf., 21.
• Finland, 186.
• Finland, Grand Duchy of, 186.
• Finland, Gulf of, 97, 172, 186.
• First Mass. Battery, Light Artillery, 158.
• First Mass. Cavalry, 16, 156–158.
• Fish, Hamilton, 22.
• Fleetwing, yacht, 27.
• Fogg Museum, Harvard College, 71.
• Folies Dramatiques, Paris, 10.
• Fontainebleau, 162.
• Forbes, Paul, 161, 183.
• Ford’s Theatre, Washington, D. C., 61, 66.
• Forest of Fontainebleau, 42.
• Four-in-Hand Club, 28.
• Fourteenth Amendment, 56, 57, 59.
• Fox, Gustavus Vasa, 36, 135, 136, 185, 224.
• Fox’s Mission, 135, 136.
• Fremont, John C., 47, 48, 50.
• Friederichshamm, Peace of, 186.
• Frog Pond, Boston Common, 85.
• Fugitive Slave Law, repeal of, 55.
• Gagarine, Julie, Princess, 121.
• Galitzine, Prince, 150.
• Garcia, John, 36.
• Gare de l’ Ouest, Paris, 15.
• Garrison, William Lloyd, 44.
• Gautier, Théophile, 40.
• General Kotzebue, steamship, 179, 182.
• German Club, Moscow, 115.
• Gettysburg, Penn., 64.
• Gillig, Henry F., 26.
• Goddard, Ely, 33.
• Golden Horn, 181.
• Gortschakoff, Alexander Michailowitsch, Prince, 95, 96, 150, 211.
• Gostinny Dvor, Moscow, 108.
• Gott, Daniel, 45.
• Goubareff, Demetrius, 222, 223.
• Grand Duchess Helena, 200.
• Grand Duke Alexis, 225.
• Grand Duke Constantine, 194, 200.
• Grand Duke Nicholas, 174.
• Grand Hotel, Paris, 15, 16, 24, 35, 166.
• Grand Opera, Moscow, 115.
• Grand Opera, Paris, 24.
• Grand Opera, St. Petersburg, 84, 88, 141, 143, 149.
• Grand Prix, Paris, 161.
• Grand Theatre, Moscow, 105.
• Grant, Ulysses S., 65, 66, 173.
• Gray Collection of Engravings, 70, 71.
• Gray, Francis Colley, 70.
• Gray, George Griswold, 28, 33.
• Great Eastern, steamship, 18.
• Greek Church, 181, 182, 188.
• Green, J. Orne, 72.
• Gregg, John I., 156, 157.
• Hamburg, 168.
• Harvard College, 22, 70, 89.
• Havana, Cuba, 26.
• Hayti, 44, 51.
• Healy, G. P. A., 203.
• Henrietta, yacht, 27, 28.
• Hereditary Medals, 205.
• Hermitage, 84, 151.
• Higginson, Frank L., 17.
• Holland, J. G., 44.
• Holy Synod, 188, 205, 206.
• Hooker, Joseph, 62.
• Hotel de la Paix, 9.
• Hotel Dusaux, Moscow, 103.
• Hudson River, 28.
• Hunnewell, Hollis, 17.
• Hunt, William Morris, 40–42.
• Hunter, David A., 50.
• Hurlburt, William Henry, 145.
• Hyde Park, London, 111.
• Imperial Library, St. Petersburg, 151.
• Invitation, Note of, 94.
• Isla, 141.
• Ismail Pasha, Khedive of Egypt, 216.
• Ismailia, 179.
• Ivan III., 185.
• Jackson, Charles C., 17, 25.
• Jagellon, Duke of Lithuania, 154.
• Jamaica Pond, Roxbury, Mass., 135.
• Jay, William, 28.
• Jeannette, steamship, 159.
• Jerome, Lawrence, 29.
• Jerome, Leonard W., 27.
• 230Jockeys’ Ball, 32.
• Johnson, Andrew, 117, 136.
• Johnson, “Ned”, 27.
• Jonesville, East Tennessee, 44.
• Khedive, 180, 182, 216, 219.
• Kimball, Moses, 66.
• King of Prussia, William I., 161, 164.
• Knapp, A. W., 29.
• Königsberg, 24, 70, 73.
• Kosciusko, Thaddeus, 153, 154.
• Kremlin, Moscow, 103, 105, 107, 108, 114, 116, 121, 187.
• Kremlin, Novgorod, 140.
• Kronborg Castle, 170.
• Kropotkin, Prince, 204.
• Kung, Prince, 166.
• Lafayette, Gilbert Motier de, 37, 44.
• Lamson, Daniel S., 89, 90.
• Lane, David, 89.
• Lee, John C., 168.
• Lee, Robert E., 21, 52, 62.
• Le Ray, Maurice, 16.
• Lincoln, Abraham, 41–67, 166, 204, 224.
• Lincoln, Abraham, Death of, 61–63.
• Lincoln, Abraham, Statues of, 64, 66.
• Lithuanian Provinces, 74, 194.
• Lockwood, Alfred, 36.
• London, Eng., 17, 23, 39, 120, 207, 222.
• Long Branch, New Jersey, 221.
• Longchamps, 25, 161.
• Longfellow, Charles A., 16–19, 23–25, 26, 38, 39, 69, 70, 72, 82, 84, 94, 97, 98, 105, 114, 118, 119, 123, 138–140, 142, 148, 151, 153–159.
• Longfellow, Ernest, 23, 122.
• Longfellow, Henry W., 16, 38, 70, 88, 125.
• Lorillard, George, 36.
• Lorillard, Louis, 36.
• Loubat, J. F., Duc de, 35, 36, 136.
• Louvre, Paris, 23.
• Lundy, Benjamin, 43.
• Lyrique, Paris, 23.
• Manchuria, 186.
• Manhattan Club, New York, 145.
• Manifesto of Emancipation, Russia, 198.
• Marble, Manton, 145.
• Martin, Augustus P., 157.
• Maximilian, Ferdinand Joseph, Emperor of Mexico, 163.
• Mazourka, 115, 121, 154.
• McClellan, George B., 52.
• McVickar, William H., 28.
• Meade, George G., 156.
• Mediterranean Sea, 179.
• Merrill, T. Watson, 159.
• Mesnil, Baron de, 31.
• Metropolitan, Moscow, 181.
• Metropolitan, St. Petersburg, 137.
• Miantonomoh, monitor, 136.
• Mickiewicz, Adam, 155.
• Mill Dam Road, Boston, 83.
• Mine Run, 156, 157.
• Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Russia, 96, 188.
• Ministry of Public Instruction, Russia, 186, 188.
• Mississippi River, 47.
• Morley, Henry, 19.
• Moscow, 24, 38, 39, 76, 81, 86, 98–103, 105, 114, 116–118, 121, 134, 139, 176, 177, 181, 185, 187, 189, 194, 205.
• Moscow, gas-lighting of, 152.
• Mount Cenis Tunnel, 179.
• Mount Pleasant, Ohio, 44.
• Muscovy, 187.
• Nahant, Mass., 18, 153, 159.
• Napoleon Bonaparte, 73, 102, 176.
• Napoleon III., 25, 161–164, 180, 216, 217.
• Narragansett Avenue, Newport, R. I., 32.
• National Museum, Washington, D. C., 67.
• Navy and Army Club, Cronstadt, 97.
• Neva Club, 134.
• Neva River, 39, 84, 85, 108, 137, 151, 153, 184, 185.
• Neva Skating Club, 84, 85, 93.
• Nevski Prospect, St. Petersburg, 83, 87, 111, 134, 205.
• Newfoundland, 18.
• New or Mount Hope Church, Va., 16, 156–158.
• New London, Conn., 29.
• New Orleans, La., 21.
• Newport, N. H., 29.
• Newport, R. I., 16, 28–33, 147, 150, 221.
• Newport, R. I., Beach, 30–33, 121.
• Newport, R. I., Jockey Club, 31.
• New York City, 9, 10, 14, 21, 28, 29, 36, 60, 63, 77, 89, 90, 120, 135, 136, 166, 221, 224, 225.
• New York Club, 90, 91.
• New York Yacht Club, 27, 28.
• Nice, 207, 222.
• Nicholas I., 95, 192, 193, 194.
• Nicholas II., 202, 203, 205, 206.
• Nisbet, W. F., 153.
• 231Nobility Club, 115.
• Non-Intervention of the United States, 218–220.
• Norton, Charles B., 183.
• Nottaway Court House, Va., 62.
• Novgorod, 135, 140, 141, 185.
• Nuba Pasha, 182.
• Odessa, 24, 98, 177–179, 187, 208.
• Oglesby, R. J., 65.
• Oldroyd Lincoln Memorial Collection, 67.
• Opera House, Berlin, 72.
• Oriental Quadrille, 144, 146, 147.
• Oscar, King of Sweden and Norway, 170.
• Otis, James, 147.
• Otis, William C., 28.
• Ourousoff, Prince, 31, 121, 150.
• Ourousoff, Princess, 150.
• Palais Royal, Paris, 10.
• Panama Canal, 29, 37, 164, 178, 183.
• Paris, 9–11, 14–17, 20, 22, 24, 25, 27, 34–40, 68, 69, 73, 83, 85, 86, 88, 103, 115, 117, 126, 153, 155, 161–169, 176, 179, 183, 203, 207, 222, 223.
• Paris Exposition of 1867, 39, 41, 151, 160, 164.
• Passage, St. Petersburg, 85.
• Passage des Panoramas, Paris, 85.
• Patriarch Adrian, 188.
• Patriarch of Constantinople, 181, 182.
• Patriarchal Cathedral, 114.
• Patti, Adelina, 26, 27.
• Paul, Emperor, 191.
• Peabody, George, 152, 153.
• Peabody, S. Endicott, 168.
• Perkins, C. C., 26.
• Peter the Great, 85, 98, 187, 188, 190.
• Peter III., 193.
• Philippe’s, Paris, 39.
• Phœnix, Lloyd, 36.
• Picpus Cemetery, Paris, 37.
• Pierce, Josiah, Jr., 88.
• Place de la Concorde, Paris, 161.
• Place de l’Opera, Paris, 35.
• Place du Nouvel Opera, Paris, 9.
• Plevna, 204.
• Poland, 75, 80, 153–155, 186, 195.
• Polar Sea, 186.
• Pompeiian Villa, 24.
• Pomutz, George, 176.
• Port Said, 179, 182, 226.
• Post, Albert Kintzing, 21.
• Postal Union, 219.
• Post, Waldron Kintzing, 22.
• Prague, Peace of, 210.
• Pratt, Thomas, 36.
• Pré Catalan, 165.
• Presentation, 92, 173.
• Proclamation of Emancipation, 52–54.
• Raasloff, Waldemar Rudolph, 168, 171.
• Rappahannock River, Va., 63.
• Rescript of Nazimof, 195.
• Review of Troops in France, 161, 162.
• Review of Troops in Russia, 121, 173–176.
• Review of Troops in Sweden, 170.
• Rhodes, 179.
• Rice, Alexander H., 177.
• Rice, A. Thorndike, 146.
• Riggs, Elisha, 36.
• Ristori, Adelaide, 25, 26.
• River Rhine, 218.
• Riverside Park, Cambridgeport, Mass., 115.
• Roberts, Benjamin Stone, 97.
• Rome, 39, 87, 93, 130, 211.
• Rosalie, 123, 125–129, 131.
• Rue Auber, Paris, 36.
• Rue Castiglione, Paris, 176.
• Rue de là Paix, Paris, 9, 17, 24, 35.
• Rue Royale, Paris, 176.
• Rue St. Honoré, Paris, 176.
• Rurik, yacht, 136, original settler, 185.
• Russell, Harry, 32.
• Russia and the United States, 186, 223–225.
• Russian Beggar, 75, 201.
• Russian Horse, 77, 78, 81, 97, 98, 105, 106, 108–113, 115, 120, 121, 150.
• Russian Navigation Company, 179.
• Russian Sleigh, 77, 78, 81, 83, 87, 94, 105, 120, 149.
• Russian Yacht Club, 84.
• Saint Cloud, 164.
• Saint Gaudens, Augustus, 66.
• Saint Germain, 223.
• Saint Louis, Mo., 47.
• Saint Michel Theatre, St. Petersburg, 88.
• Saint Petersburg, 17, 19, 24, 38, 39, 72, 74, 78, 81, 82, 91, 92, 96, 98, 102, 103, 108, 116–118, 121, 122, 132–134, 136, 138, 139, 143, 145, 152–154, 167–169, 172, 173, 176, 177, 181, 187, 197, 203, 215, 216.
• Saint Petersburg and Moscow Railroad, 99, 101, 177.
• Saint Petersburgh and Warsaw Railroad, 80, 177.
• 232Saint Thomas, island, 171.
• Samanos, Augustus, 36.
• San Francisco, 10, 91, 124, 167, 181, 224.
• Sargent, Harry, 17.
• Sayles, Henry, 132.
• Scilly Islands, 9.
• Secession of Southern States, 46.
• Serfs, 189–191.
• Serfs, Emancipation of, 192–203.
• Seward, William H., 51, 54, 55, 64.
• Shattuck, George B., 70, 124, 143.
• Sherman, William T., 65.
• Siberia, 191, 193.
• Simpson, Matthew, 62.
• Sixteenth Mass. Infantry, 90.
• Smith, Charles K., 86, 89–91.
• Snead, Thomas L., 48.
• Soldiers’ Home, Washington, D. C., 43.
• Somerset Club, Boston, 22.
• Southwell, Viscount, 32, 33.
• Souworoff, or Suwarrow, Alexander Vasilievitch, Count Rymnikski, 143.
• Spanish Ambassador, St. Petersburg, 93, 98, 99.
• Spencer, Lorillard, 35.
• Springfield, Ill., 62.
• Staigg Portrait, 117, 122, 124, 132, 133.
• Staigg, Richard M., 123, 124, 152.
• Stanfield, Harry, 17–19, 23, 24, 29.
• Stevenson, Robert H., 25, 27.
• Stockholm, Sweden, 167, 169, 170, 180.
• Straits of Dover, 220.
• Strogonoff, Count, 177.
• Suez Canal, 35, 164, 168, 169, 178–180, 208, 215–217, 226.
• Sully, Thomas, 126–128.
• Sultan of Turkey, Abdul-Aziz, 162, 163, 216, 219.
• Sykes, George, 156.
• Synod, Holy, 188, 205, 206.
• System of Government in Russia, 187–189.
• Talleyrand-Perigord, Charles Maurice, Prince of Benevento, 13.
• Tchudova, 140.
• Thies, Louis, 70.
• Thirteenth U. S. Infantry, 21.
• Thirty-first U. S. Infantry, 20, 21.
• Tilsit, Peace of, 73.
• Tivoli, 152.
• Trumbull, Lyman, 46.
• Tsarskoë Selo, 150.
• Union Club, San Francisco, 91.
• Union Pacific Railroad, 167.
• United States Treasury, 62, 117, 178.
• Upsala, 170.
• Ural Mountains, 108.
• Venice, 102.
• Versailles, 23, 36, 98.
• Vesta, yacht, 27.
• Vevey, Switzerland, 222.
• Vice Roi of Egypt, 182, 216.
• Victoria Theatre, Berlin, 70.
• Vienna, 25, 39, 102, 153, 155.
• Ville de Paris, steamship, 9, 14.
• Virginia, 156.
• Voisin, Armand, 36.
• Volga River, 108.
• Wainwright, Charles S., 62.
• War Department, Washington, D. C., 67.
• Warsaw, 24, 148, 153.
• War with Spain, 172, 219.
• Washburn, Elihu B., 165, 168.
• Washington Club, Paris, 22, 29, 34–38.
• Washington, D. C., 11, 16, 43, 61, 127, 165, 166, 181, 183, 213, 219.
• Washington Heights, 27, 28.
• Waterloo, 26, 39, 68.
• Wayman, Bishop, 65.
• Wheeling, West Virginia, 43.
• Whistler, George W., 98, 99.
• Whistler, James A. McN., 98.
• White Sea, 185.
• Willett, “Bronnie,” 34.
• Wilna, 24, 70, 73, 74, 79.
• Wilson, Henry, 65.
• Winans, Ross, 88, 98, 99, 177.
• Winans, Thomas de Kay, 99.
• Winans, William Louis, 99.
• Winter Palace, St. Petersburg, 95, 121, 134, 137, 149, 173, 205.
• Winthrop, Eugene, 35.
• Winthrop, Robert, 221.
• Wood, Fernando, 168.
• Wordsworth, William, 131, 132.
• Woronzoff, Prince, 178.
• Wright, Frances, 44.
• Wright, Joseph A., 72.
• Wright, Smith, 129, 130.
• Yacht Club Pond, 84.
• Yacht Club Skating Ground, 141.
• Young, Samuel P., 105.