The Russian women swim like geese; they bathe every Saturday, and on the eve of every holiday.

Sleep being reluctant to displace from my eyes the images of these water-nymphs, I am too wide awake to go to bed; and having kept you so long in the company of one set of belles, I shall introduce you to another of a somewhat different appearance. I mean those that adorn the churches; not the belles of the cloister, but the bells of the steeple. Every religious building is provided with eight or nine at least. But the most celebrated in all Mosco are those of St. Ivan in the Kremlin, whose size and weight are equal to the biggest tom that ever a bellfoundry produced. There is one, now deeply sunk in the ground, of an enormous bulk. Mr. R- gave me the following estimate of its dimensions. Its weight is 432,000 pounds; its circumference at the base, twenty yards; and the thickness of its metal twenty-three inches,

or perhaps two feet.

Its height, to the place where the clapper is suspended, is nineteen feet. The tongue lies not far from the spot in which this mass of metal is sunk it is of iron, and seventeen feet in length. The bell is encircled with many rims of embossed work; and was intended, when finished, to be a present from the Empress Ann to the great church. I am told that it was never elevated from this spot, in which it was cast, but in cooling cracked, and so became useless. Others say, that it was raised to a very great height, but that the beam to which it was suspended taking fire, it again fell into its original bed, and sustained the present fracture in its fall. The chasm made in its side by the accident, is about the size of an ordinary door; into which the curious may enter if they have any wish to penetrate into this huge pyramid of metal. The bell cannot be seen but by a special order; the place being boarded over, you make your entrance through a trap

door. This mutilated work has a sister of a greater size in China, which, I understand, is the largest in the known world.

Having now given you a peal, or rather cheated you of one, as I have introduced you to none but silent bells, I will bid you good night, well aware that you have had lullaby enough in this letter. To-morrow I will speak to you further of the churches.

I have not time to resume my subject; but before I close my letter I must inform you of an event that I have just been told: the widow of the great Suwarroff died this day at eleven o'clock! She was of the illustrious Prosorowski family; and bore to her renowned husband two children; Natolia who married Count Nicolas Zouboff; and Arcadius, a brave young man, emulous of his father's glory.

So pass away the great and the interesting of this earth! While the widow, or the children of a venerated character remain, we do not seem to have lost all of the person we lament: they are living monuments to his memory. His image revives whenever we look on objects that were so dear to him, and which, in a manner, once formed a part of himself. But when they are gone; when the race soon follows its founder to the grave, time rapidly draws its dimming flood over the past; and seeing the hero's actions as in a darkened mirror, remembrance involves him with the cloud of departed greatness; and making one with the groupe of Thermopyla, Cressy and Blenheim, he loses that pre-eminence in our regrets which the memorials of his person, while living, ever re

newed. Thus have many of our own brave men, within a few years, passed into the world of spirits; and are now named by Britons with as much indifference as they would speak of Talbot, of Hotspur, or of any other of our departed worthies.

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The observation you yourself made on seeing Mr. West's design of the death of Lord Nelson, not a little influenced me in these reflections. You tell me that "the picture of the death of General Wolf stood by "that of Nelson. Hardly a single person looked on the first; all eyes were turned to the last: not a tear was spared for the gallant Wolf; "not a sigh; not a word of encomium on his merits; not a regret for "his untimely fall! I thought it strangely unthinking: for the very "sensibility I felt on looking at Nelson, turned my eyes to Wolf, and "divided my sorrow."

It is true, my friend; you felt so because you always think when you feel. But the feelings of many are merely the effect of infection; or are awakened by a narrow concern for themselves at being deprived of some recent good. Thoughtless of others, they acknowledge no benefactors but their own; and never having experienced in their own persons the protection which arose from the courage of some hero slain a few years before their time, they have no sympathies to excite concern

for his loss; they have no generous regrets for the noble creature him

self; for his being cut off in the meridian of life and of honours; for the

tender relations who mourned his fall; nor for the country at large which was thus rifled of one of its best defenders.

The death and triumph of a hero are equally short-lived in the hearts of any but his personal friends. Sorrow for the one is obliterated by some

more recent loss; and pride in the other superseded by the victories of some brother in fame. Few, like you, can give an equal homage to the great and good of all times. But it is a delightful sensibility, for in proportion as you feel their virtues, you enjoy them; they become endeared to you; and thus you make to yourself a second kind of existence; a sort of mental intimacy and relationship with the noblest beings of every age. In this friendship may you ever associate the idea of your faithful friend.

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LETTER XXII.

Mosco, May, 1806.

AMONGST the illustrious residents in Mosco from whom I have re

ceived the most gratifying attentions, is the Prince U——. I have lately had the honour of being his visitor at a fine mansion which he recently purchased near the Sparrow-hills, a beautiful spot three miles from the city. This palace was built by Prince Dolgorouky as a country seat; and if it does not shew the skill of the architect, its situation at least bears witness to the taste of the Prince.

It stands on a very high ground richly wooded; at the base of which flows the Moskva in Thames-like meanders through a luxuriant plain, varied with innumerable gardens and superb structures. On the right, terminating the view of the river, rises Mosco in all its ancient Asiatic pomp. Its myriads of glittering minarets and lofty palaces, as well as the pale citadel, form an object of transcendent grandeur; and then as a back-ground, the black and distant woods skirting the horizon, give an effect to the splendor of the city which can hardly be described. I have attempted a sketch, which will give you some idea of its outline; but without the aid of colours it is impossible to depict the burnished glow of the whole, when opposed to this forest, like an evening sky of fluid gold, shining through the breaks of a thunder-cloud.

On pursuing the prospect towards the left, the antiquated walls of the