extremely metaphorical; but the metaphors are seldom appropriate or consistent. Thus we read of soft example' whispering things that twine around the observation;' and of a' pillar' that lifts its witness to warm the bosom of posterity. But let the following passage suffice instar omnium. • Still as amid the flowery scene they range To quench the dewy rapture of their eye, Yet oft they prove, to silent passion wrought, A gradual calm o'er every fibre glides, Emotion sleeps, and almost hope subsides. p. 34. But it is quite time to draw to a close. We do not mean to assert that the poem is entirely destitute of merit. There are occasional glimpses of imagination, and some not unhappily laboured combinations of language. There are a few good lines, though perhaps there is not a single unexceptionable passage. The prevailing character of the performance, however, is turgid obscurity; and the author has yet to learn that the great excellence and indispensable requisite of good writing is, to express with perspicuity what is conceived with precision. Art. XI. Travels in various Countries of Europe, Asia, and Africa. By Edward Daniel Clarke, LL.D. Part the First. Russia, Tartary, and Turkey. (Continued from p. 689.) BY favour of a Russian prince, who had married an English lady, Dr. C. and his friend obtained admittance to the ball of the nobles, notwithstanding the regulation by which all persons, not of noble birth, whether natives or foreigners, are excluded. This assembly, consisting of two thousand persons, in the most sumptuous and elegant dresses, and in one of the finest rooms in the world, decorated and lighted with matchless elegance and splendor,' greatly surpassed any thing of the kind ever seen by our author in any other country. He re presents the Russian ladies as possessing a more finished taste in dress than those of London and Paris, as well as putting them out of comparison in point of costliness. The most extravagant sums are lavished on a single dress; and effects of no small importance must be calculated to result from the arts of personal display, to make the deception of those arts worth maintaining at the expence of several kinds-reported in the following anecdote. It is related very generally in the higher circles of the city, that a princess of Moscow, who had purchased a wig to imitate the colour of her own hair, confined her hair-dresser in a closet, fed him always her. self, and allowed him only to come out during her toilette, in order that her false tresses might not be detected.' p. 65. Dr. C. makes an ample representation of the character and manners of the nobility. It exhibits them as generally stran gers to domestic and any other kind of morality, and not entertaining the slightest concern or shame for the deficiency. Indeed, after the account given of the religion of the country, it were absurd to expect any discriminating or powerful sense of right or wrong. Nor do the nobility possess any of that sentiment of dignity, through which the more refined immorality of pride might operate to preclude the reputed baser immorality of gross vice. Neither, again, does the state of their intellectual cultivation and of their attainments in general knowledge, create, in any considerable number of them, that taste which might, on the mere ground of pleasure, prefer literary and philosophical pursuits to the labours and amusements of profligacy. Our author's account of the usual quality of their libraries promises no amendment from that quarter. Books of real literary reputation are not to be obtained either in Petersburg or Moscow. Productions of other days, which from their importance in science have beconie rare, are never to be found. Costly and frivolous volumes, sumptuously bound, and most gorgeously decorated, constitute the precious part of a library in Russian estimation. Gaudy French editions of Fontenelle, of Marmontel, of Italian sonneteers, with English folios of butterflies, shells, and flowers; editions by Baskerville, Bensley, and Bulmer, with hot-pressed and wire-wove paper; in short, the toys rather than the instruments of science, attract the notice of all the Russian amateurs. A magnificent library in Russia, on which immense sums have been expended, will be found to contain very little *of useful literature. In vain, among their stately collections, smelling like a tannery of the leather which bears them, may we seek for classic authors, historians, lawgivers and poets. A copy of the Encyclopædia, placed more for ostentation than for use, may perhaps in a solitary instance or two greet the eye, as the only estimable work throughout their gilded shelves.' p. 72. In their deportment to superiors and dependants, they are described as somewhat exceeding what may have commonly been considered as the extremes of the servility and tyranny, naturally meeting in those who are at once despots and slaves. 'Potemkin, one of the meanest and most profligate of men, frequently chastised with his own hand a prince or nobleman with whom he chanced to be offended ; and the emperor Paul exercised his cane upon the nobles who were his officers.' If this be pretty much according to the natural order of things in such a political frame of society, these nobles may, however, boast of some distinctions more peculiarly national; as, for instance, their custom of keeping every thing about them in a continual state of traffic. A Russian nobleman will sell any thing he possesses, from his wife to his lap-dog; from the decorations of his palace, to the ornaments of his person; any thing to obtain money; any thing to squander it away. Visiting a trading mineralogist, I was surprised to see glass cases filled with court dresses; and still more in being told they were dresses of the nobility, sent to be exposed for sale as often as they wanted money. Their plan is, to order whatever they can procure credit for, to pay for nothing, and to sell what they have ordered as soon as they receive it. We should call such conduct, in England, swindling; in Moscow it bears another name, it is called Russian magnificence.' p. 81. Acquaintance with Camporesi, the architect, procured me admission to the house of prince Trubetzkoi, a dealer in minerals, pictures, hosiery, hats, cutlery, antiquities, in short, all the furniture of shops and museums. Having squandered away his fortune, he picked up a livelihood by selling, for himself and others, whatever came in his way. His house, like a pawnbroker's shop, exhibited one general magazine, occupying several rooms. A prince presiding over it, and practising all the artifices of the meanest tradesman, was a spectacle perfectly novel. Any thing might be bought of his highness, from a pair of bellows, to a picture of Claude Lorraine. In the same room might be seen handkerchiefs, stockings, artificial flowers, fans, Cologne water, soap, pomatum, prints, books, guns, pistols, minerals, jewellery, harness, saddles, bridles, pipes, secondhand clothes, swords, stuffed birds, bronzes, buckles, buttons, snuffboxes, wigs, watches, boots, and shoes.' P. 86. 'As the nobles have rarely any money at command, their traffic in the fine arts, as in other things, is carried on by exchange. This sort of barter is of all things that in which they take the greatest delight. They purchase a picture for a carriage, or an embroidered suit of clothes, just as they pay their physician with a snuff-box. In every thing the same infantine disposition is displayed; and, like children, they are tired of their toys almost in the moment they have acquired them. The method of paying their physicians by trinkets, might seem an inconvenience to the faculty; but it is not so. Dr. Rogerson at Petersburg, as I am informed, regularly received his snuff-box, and as regularly carried it to a jeweller for sale. The jeweller sold it again to the first nobleman who wanted a fee for his physician, so that the doctor obtained his box again; and at last the matter became so well understood between the jeweller and the physician, that it was considered by both parties as a sort of bank note, and no words were necessary in transacting the sale of it.' p. 87. As, however, the first venders, whether importers or manufacturers, of all those articles which form the subjects of so active and capricious a traffic among the nobility, must at all events be, on the whole, paid, and in some instances enriched; and as also the dealers, who in most cases will come between the first venders and the nobility, are not wise in their generation if they do not try the utmost of their faculties against the latter, it might well be inquired where are the sources of the revenue that can long save such an aristocracy from beggary. Many of its members may indeed be on the borders of that condition ;-as to the rest, the inquiry must be answered by those millions of wretched peasants, whose toils are supporting the boundless profligacy and folly of their lords, by a produce of which themselves partake but just enough to keep them alive. A part of the magnificent burden under which these labourers are crushed, is the prodigious establishment of domestics, kept by the nobleman or prince. In the house of the young count Orlof alone, are no less than five hundred servants; many of them sumptuously clothed, and many others in rags.' The wages, however, of these immense tribes of menials, he says, 'if wages they may be called, scarcely exceed an English halfpenny a day to each.' And small as this nominal allowance is, it might have been omitted, for it is never paid. There are few of the nobles who think it any disgrace to owe their servants so trivial a debt. There is in fact no degree of meanness to which a Russian nobleman will not condescend. To enumerate the things of which we were eye-witnesses, would only weary and disgust the reader. I will end with one.' And here he relates the clearly proved fact of a young nobleman stealing the hat of one of our travellers from their apartments. Whatever becomes of wages, debts, peasants, or moral respectability, it is indispensable to a man of high rank to have about him a swarm of slaves, attendants, hirelings, and dependant sycophants.' The nobles consider the honour of their families so materially impli cated in maintaining a numerous table, that should any of the satellites which usually surround them forsake his post at dinner, and swell the train of any other person, the offence is rarely forgiven: they will af terwards persecute the deserter by every means of revenge in their power; and, not being burdened by scruples of conscience, they generally find means of indulging their vengeance. I have seen persons who were victims of their good nature, in having accepted invitations which de coyed them from the table of their lord. Similar motives gave rise to the prodigious hospitality which has been described by travellers. Be fore the reign of Faul, a stranger no sooner arrived at Moscow than the most earnest solicitations were made for his regular attendance at the table of this or that nobleman. If his visits were indiscriminate, jealousy and quarrels were the inevitable consequence. The curious spectacle presented at their dinners has no parallel in the rest of Europe. The dishes and the wines correspond in gradation with the rank and con dition of the guests. Those who sit near the master of the house are suffered to have no connexion with the fare or the tenants of the lower end of the table; and nothing would so much distress a Russian prince as sending for a portion of the soup or the viands which are there placed. That which he intends for the gratification of the favoured few around him, is generally carried to them; nor is it usual to ask for any thing.' p. 161. The philosophers and moralists who shall hereafter expatiate elegantly on the vanity of titles, rank, and opulence, in the way of insisting that they are compatible with many degrading things, may envy us the courage that dares to quote some parts of the following paragraphs, (in transcribing which, however, even we are compelled to make a slight omission,) to shew how they look as the gilding of dirt and barbarism. . Some of the nobles are much richer than the richest of our English peers; and a vast number, as may be supposed, are very poor. To this poverty, and to these riches, are equally joined the most abject meanness, and the most detestable profligacy. In sensuality they are without limits of law, conscience, or honour. In their amusement, always children; in their resentment, women. The toys of infants, the baubles of French fops, constitute the highest object of their wishes. Novelty delights the human race; but no part of it seek for novelty so eagerly as the Russian nobles. Novelty in their debaucheries, novelty in gluttony, novelty in cruelty, novelty in whatever they pursue. This is not the case with the lower class, who preserve their habits unaltered from one generation to another. But there are characteristics in which the Russian prince and peasant are the same. They are all equally barbarous. Visit a Russian, of whatever rank, at his country seat, and you will find him lounging about, uncombed, unwashed, unshaven, half naked, eating raw turnips, and drinking quass. The raw turnip is handed about in slices, in the first houses upon a silver salver, with brandy, as a whet before dinner. Their hair is universally in a state not to be described, and their bodies are only divested of vermin when they frequent the bath. Upon those occasions, their shirts and pelisses are held over a hot stove, and the heat occasions the vermin to fall off. It is a fact too notorious to admit dispute, that from the emperor to the meanest slave throughout the vast empire of all the Russias, including all its princes, nobles, priests and peasants, there exists not a single individual in a thousand whose body is destitute of vermin. An English gentleman of Moscow, residing as a banker in the city, assured me that, passing on horseback through the streets, he had often seen women of the highest quality, sitting in the windows of their palaces, divesting each other of vermin;-another trait, in addition to what I have said before, of their resemblance to the Neapolitans.' • A stranger, dining with their most refined and most accomplished princes, may in vain expect to see his knife and fork changed. If he sends them away, they are returned without even being wiped. If he looks behind him he will see a servant spit in the plate he is to receive, and wipe it with a dirty napkin, to remove the dust. If he ventures (which he should avoid, if he is hungry,) to inspect the soup in his plate with too inquisitive an eye, he will doubtless discover living victims |