up by the opposite wall. Heedless of any injury he may have sustained by the shock, he rapidly pursues the weight of his head, by the assistance of his treacherous heels, howling discordant sounds from some incoherent Russian song; a religious fit will frequently interrupt his harmony, when crossing himself several times, and as often muttering his gospodi pomilui, "Lord have mercy upon us!" he reels forward: whether these devout ejaculations may arise from a presentiment of his fate, or some faint glimpse of the danger of his situation, I cannot pretend to say: but so it is, for a few moments, at different intervals; and then he tears the air again with his loud and national ditties: staggering and stumbling till his foot slips, and that earth receives him, whence a thousand chances are, that he will never again arise. He lies just as he fell; and sings himself gradually to that sleep from which he awakes no more. Thus, like the heroes on Hohenlinden, the snow becomes his windingsheet; and the bitter blast alone now fills the air, no longer agitated by the abrupt murmurs of his fading voice.

During one severe winter, that so terrible to Europe, in the year 1789, terrible to you and me, like any other tale of other times, only by tradition; it spent its rage in the careless days of our infancy; but, alas, how many storms of the elements and of the world have beat upon us since!-But to return. During that winter the cold was so inveterate in Russia, that on the road between St. Petersburgh and Mosco, not less than fourteen thousand persons perished from its fury. You may imagine how certain is death to the individual who falls asleep in an open atmosphere of twenty-five degrees of frost, when I tell you that the birds often drop dead and stiff from the trees; and water reaches the ground in a congealed state when thrown at this season from any height.

As I have not been neglectful of the defence of my person against this allpenetrating enemy; and as my preservatives are synonymous with those in general use, I will give you an idea of the comfort and graces of my figure when winterly accoutred. On the head is worn a turban-formed cap of sable; a large cloak, called a shoub, with arms, lined throughout with bear, Siberian fox, racoon, or other skins, covers the body, reaching to the

ancies: it wraps well round the wearer, being well caped and cuffed with the fur. A sort of shoes called kangees, of elk or calfskin, rough both within and without, fence the feet. Those who do not use these, wear large leather or velvet boots, flannelled or furred, which are drawn over the ordinary appendages to the legs. Thus habited it is scarcely possible to recognise your friends, or even to trace out a single lineament of a human creature. For sooner on the first glance of so strange a figure, would you mistake it for some fierce nondescript monster, than suppose it possible to be an intellectual being. How often, when I have seen one of these rugged forms, ready appointed for the sledge, conversing with some lovely female, have I thought of the pretty fairy tale of Beauty and the Beast! And that the idea is a tolerable picture of our appearance when so habited, you will see, vide my drawing. My present reference to the story which has so often charmed our infancy; and my frequent appeals to the accompanying sketches, must remind you of the little gilded books we used to turn over together in that blissful morning of our lives; when, as we read a hurried description of some wonderful animal, a unicorn for instance, we would be delightfully cut short with a See here it is! written over a form as much like the truth as a trumpet. Indeed, were you not to yield as large a proportion of faith to me, as we formerly did to our unknown authors, you would hardly believe, were I even to write under my drawing this is a man, that it were not rather a Russian bear, or as I said before, a hairy monster without a name.

Any of the extremities being more than usually exposed to the air, are apt to be frozen; and if proper precautions be not taken in gradually thawing them, the suffering party may pass the remainder of his days, deprived perhaps of his nasal promontory; or be subject to the illiberality of public conjecture of how he might have lost his ears. Besides, there are the inconveniencies of curtailed feet or hands; and the pain of a tender visage, from the scarifying of the skin. It is scarcely possible to convey to you an idea of the sensation produced by a bleak wind blowing in your face in an atmosphere of seventeen degrees of cold. Suppose it already stripped of the cutaN

neous covering, and scraped rapidly all over with the fragment of a rusty iron hoop, or an old piece of pumice stone:-this, believe me, my good friend, is but a faint attempt to impress you with the torment of such Borean kisses. Few of the higher orders submit their persons to these rough salutations, always moving about in carriages when they are not shut up in close rooms. I believe the reason why the English, who have been long dwellers in Russia, yet retain their fresh, British complexion, is because, notwithstanding the extreme cold, they continue their daily bodily exercise in the open air.

The winter habiliments of the ladies are much more graceful than those of the men, being warm without many extraordinary enfoldings. Not exposing themselves, as our sex are often obliged to do, to the outward atmosphere, they do not require such a labyrinth of fur to exclude the cold. Their attire differs little from that worn in England; and makes no sensible variation to the eye, except a little more en bon point in the appearance, as the dresses are wadded throughout; a practice that is indispensable; for a cold caught in this climate almost immediately engenders the most dangerous fevers; and life is too often the forfeit for an hour's indiscretion.

The fair of this metropolis are not in general very formidable rivals to those of other capitals which I have visited. There are some very fine women, but the majority have small claims to the title of beautiful. Their features are rather of the kalmuc cast; and from the sedentary habits they acquire, nature soon allows the rose of their charms to blow into too full luxuriance. Like exotics in a hothouse, the artificial heat brings them to untimely maturity; and they fade away, even at the moment when we expect to find them at their highest bloom. But it is only their exterior which thus changes. At the age of thirty, or thirty-five, the face may be withered, the figure overgrown; but still youth is in the mind and the heart: and conversing with these charming women, you soon forget that she who discourses with the wit of Thalia or the grace of Erato, does not also possess the beauty of Venus as well as her tenderness. You must recollect that this is only the general description of the ladies in this city. There are many exquisite exceptions:

and when we consider their mode of life, we can only wonder that there are any. Stoved rooms, fresh air excluded, no exercise, hot suppers; all tend to demolish the shape, destroy the complexion, and impair the health.

My observations on the Russian fair have hitherto been confined to St. Petersburgh, and I am desired not to be too hasty in forming my judgment. When I penetrate further into the interior, I shall then see the true Muscovite character; and be better able to inform you whether the blood of Circassia, mingling with the Russ, has been more propitious to the formation of beauty than the wide intermixture of marriages on the banks of the Neva.

There are several very lovely Polish women here at present: and also a few from our little island. Their gentle countenances, affable manners, and affectionate hearts, are sweet remembrancers of home; and draw my thoughts so entirely thitherward, that I can add no more, but that I am ever, at all distances, and in every climate, dearest friend, yours most faithfully.

LETTER XII.

St. Petersburgh, vember, 1805.

TO strangers, accustomed to the various changes produced in men and things by the influence of intense frost, nothing appears more wonderful or note-worthy than that part of the city dedicated to the sale of frozen provisions. Your astonished sight is there arrested by a vast open square, containing the bodies of many thousand animals piled in pyramidical heaps on all sides. Cows, sheep, hogs, fowls, butter, eggs, fish, all are stiffened into granite.

The fish are attractively beautiful; possessing the vividness of their living colours, with the transparent clearness of wax imitations. The beasts present a far less pleasing spectacle. Most of the largest sort being skinned, and classed according to their species; groups of many hundreds are seen piled up on their hind legs against one another, as if each were making an effort to climb over the back of its neighbour. The motionless apparent animation of their seemingly struggling attitudes (as if suddenly seized in moving, and petrified by frost), gives a horrid life to this dead scene. Had an enchanter's wand been instantaneously waved over this sea of animals during their different actions, they could not have been fixed more decidedly. Their hardness, too, is so extreme, that the natives chop them up for the purchaser, like wood; and the chips of their carcasses fly off in the same way as splinters do from masses of timber or coal.

A hatchet, the favourite instrument of the country, is used in the operation; as indeed it is generally applied to every other act of ingenuity or strength. Sometimes to things so nicely delicate, that if the boors were taught to write, I have little doubt but their pens would be made and repaired with it.

But to return to the market. The provisions collected here are the product of countries many thousand versts beyond Mosco. Siberia, Archangel, and still remoter provinces, furnish the merchandize, which during the frost's severity is