the vernal green of the grass you see the young daisies dawn, as if a new firmament was rising out of the earth, studded with another milky-way of unnumbered stars. The bleating of the young lambs falls upon the ear with a strange, dreamy sound, and you seem wandering through a newly-made world—a fresh formation, that has risen above the wreck and ruin of winter, and strewn the brow of its black, naked, and volcano-like front with flowers. You hear the babbling of childish voices in the winding lanes, and by the woodside; and there is a cheerful creaking of busy wheels on the brown and dusty highway, which fills the landscape with sounds of life, where before the snow lay like a winding-sheet over the muffled lips of the dead. The streams have broken asunder their icy fetters, and like liberated slaves, with the jingling fragments dangling about them, go dancing and singing down the steep hill-sides, and through the valleys, as if their only delight was in the motion that accompanied the sounds they made. The bees, like schoolboys broken loose, come buzzing out of the hives, and murmuring to each other as they hasten along, ransack every hidden nook in search of flowers, and wage war against the velvet buds; while those dusky and noisy foragers, the rooks, either sally out to ravage the wide neighbourhood, or stay at home, brawling and fighting, among the branches of their old ' ancestral trees.' The bark-peelers are busy stripping and felling in the adjacent forest, and you inhale the rich aroma as you wander along, and sigh when you think of the baked atmosphere which you are doomed to breathe in the burning summer of the city. If you ramble beside the clear river, there, in the willow holt, you see the busy osier-peelers at work, hear the rods whistling through the brake, and behold the tall taper wands spread out in the breeze and sunshine to dry. Field and farm, forest and river, hill and valley, are all alive, and throbbing beneath the stirring impulse of spring.

As the season advances, the day is cheered by the glad shouting of the cuckoo, and the silence of night awakened by the song of the nightingale; for as the voice of spring deepens, it is heard everywhere; and a hundred different choristers come from distant lands to swell the great anthem which is poured forth in our wild greenwoods.

Spring-time is the youthful season of the year; it passes its babyhood in the lap of winter, wrapped in its swaddling-clothes of snow; summer is the beauty of its full manhood; and autumn, with its yellow and fallen leaves, the old year in its age and decay. We have not that love for the flowers of autumn which we extend to those of spring, beautiful as many of them are; for we know that when they are withered and dead, nature must sink into a long sleep before others will grow up to replace them. With spring it is different: the violet and the primrose are quickly followed by the rose and the lily; and when the hawthorn has shed its pearltinted blossoms, the sweet woodbine appears with her crimson-streaked cheek. Yet if we love the flowers of spring more, we see them pass away with less regret than we do those of autumn. So with the loves and friendships formed in our youthful days; the broken and parting pangs seem more severely felt at the time, but they leave not the lingering regrets which make the heart empty and desolate in its old age. In the spring of our lives we shoot up amid sunshine and beauty, but bear no fruit; even that which hangs upon the summer of our manhood is green and crude, and scarcely worthy of being garnered until mellowed by the mists of autumn.

When shed and treasured, the season is again in its infancy; for spring leaps not up from the ashes of the dying year, but sleeps throughout the long night in the womb of winter. The child cannot begin with the knowledge we leave behind us when we enter the mysterious gates of the grave. There is a closer affinity between the out-of-door world of nature and ourselves than may at a first glance appear. The bud, the leaf, the flower, and the fruit, exhibit every stage of progression from infancy, youth, and manhood, to old age. The perfection of all intellectual growth is but a superior seed dropped into fruitful soil. The spirit of Shakspeare lives not when grafted on a dull human stock-the rose cannot take root in a heap of cinders and ashes-the mountain-heath withers and dies in the swampy soil of the reedy marsh.

There was a time when, to our own minds, spring brought but few associations, saving such as were connected with the lengthening of the days, the return the singing-birds, and the coming again of the flowers. Even now, we can ramble throughout the whole livelong tented to watch the shifting colours that fade over the day, and divest our mind of all graver memories, conlandscape, and to burrow about the banks and hedgerows. But amid those grave and sable hours which slowly close the curtains of the midnight, almost every distinct object assumes a shape, and has a meaning; it becomes a part of one great whole, proving that

The whole round earth is every way

Bound with gold chains about the feet of God.' The sunshine of spring comes in light and gladness, and throws open hundreds of narrow courts and suffòcating alleys in London; and in the warm mild evenings, you see the inhabitants congregated on the broad pavements of the open streets, or seated upon the kerbstones, or the steps around the mouths of those inhabited charnel-houses. The little, ill-clad, half-fed, dirty children are no longer driven to their pallets of straw They now run riot in the streets, chasing each other or shavings at so early an hour as they were in winter. like swallows, forgetting even for the time the pangs of hunger in the midst of their momentary happiness. The blessed sunshine, that God scatters like gold from heaven upon the rich and poor, even in these places, produces enjoyment not the less pure because unpurchased by the worldly man's standard of wealth. Many have to stop to replace the little dirty frocks that have of these children are shoeless. After every romp, they slipped off their thin spare shoulders: for every pull, and drag, and rent, they will probably, when they arrive at home, receive a blow; this they appear perfectly conscious of from the exclamations occasionally uttered; yet they bate not a jot of heart nor hope,' but run until summoned in by the shrill voices of their mothers. after each other with merry whoop and loud halloo, Many of them, during the daytime, had wandered from door to door, perfect in the very trick of the beggar's suffering look and canting whine, bearing a box of lucifers or a row of pins, under cover of which they escaped the vigilance of the police. It would be difficult to recog nise these juvenile impostors amongst that merry group, were we not accustomed to meet them in their daily walks and ancient neighbourhoods.'

6

hand of spring at work as she hangs the tender green The village poor, amid all their poverty, can see the upon the branches, and scatters flowers of every hue over upland and valley. Unpoisoned by the malaria that rises from sink and sewer, the unadulterated air of heaven blows sweetly through the open doors of their thatched cottages, and there the morning sunshine comes streaming in, bright and beautiful as when it first of the waving of ill-washed garments, which send up an issued from the golden chambers of the east. Instead unhealthy smoke as they hang to dry in the city courts, the long leaves are talking to them all day long; and in place of the bawling of the costermongers, who from morning until night are ever breaking the peace of the

neither party bestowing even a look upon the performances of the other. While mentioning the peasantry, we may as well say that it is not brandy, as it is called throughout the work, that is the common spirits of the country, but votki, a liquor distilled from grain, and somewhat resembling, both in taste and weakness, the gin of the Londoners.

With regard to the churchmen, our traveller tells us that they do not form so distinct a group of the population as the other classes; the higher clergy intermixing with the nobles, and the lower with the tradesmen. This is quite a mistake. The higher clergy are monks of St Basil, sworn to perpetual bachelorhood, and they do not go into lay society at all. They confine themselves to their convents, where they live well, and wax portly, and (belonging by birth to the upper classes) are indeed the most gentlemanly-looking men in Russia. The lower classes, on the contrary, are part and parcel of the people. They must be married before they are ordained, and they are ineligible to the higher offices of the church. Though their functions are sacred, they and their families belong to the vulgar; and we have seen these clergymen, in their canonicals, go into the votki shops of Moscow, and reissue while depositing gravely in their pockets a bottle of their favourite liquor. The religious feelings of the better class must have much decreased since Mr Erman's visit, since he tells us that a custom prevailed among them, which is rarely seen now, of offering adoration before meals to a crucifix set up in the room. The word crucifix we presume to be a mistranslation, for the Russians_hold graven images in as much abhorrence as the Jews, paying their devotions instead before painted and gilded portraits of the saints.

6

The cautious reserve of the natives,' their 'shrinking from contact with a foreigner,' and their repugnance towards everything foreign,' are not merely unknown among the Russians of the higher class, but they are the very reverse of the fact. There is, in truth, throughout this order of society, to use the words of a more recent traveller, a sickly craving after everything foreign, and an unmanly affectation of scorn for everything native.' But while protesting against the book before us being received as high authority in anything but practical science, we would by no means be understood as being blind to the real merits of our author. Even leaving science out of the question, he is obviously an intelligent and accomplished man; he has a taste for the picturesque, and with good descriptive power; and, above all things, he has a sympathy with human nature even in its rudest condition, which throws a charm over the whole work.

In a work of such various and extensive information, the choice of subjects for notice is a difficult task; but we think we can hardly go wrong in devoting some little space to what many will deem rather a curious exposition of the economical importance of the Ural Mountains. Here, it seems, there are 132,000 tons of iron produced every year, four- sevenths of which are destined for European Russia, two - sevenths for Asiatic Russia, and one-seventh for the states on the south-west. The iron,' says our author, thus dispersed from the Ural would, if collected into one mass, constitute a sphere of only forty-seven feet diameter; and, if we assume the ores raised at five times the quantity of iron produced, we shall see that the diminution of the beds of the Ural will not exceed the contents of a sphere of 380 feet diameter in one hundred years. The result of this calculation will, as usual, only furnish another instance of the insignificance of human operations; for a globe of this size would not quite equal the dimensions of the Blagodat, as far as the ores are exposed above ground; so that many centuries must pass away before it will be necessary to go beyond the metallic accumulations which present themselves to view.' About the same value of gold and platinum is produced every year, and about one-fifth of the value of copper; giving of these metals the annual

amount of nearly five millions and a half sterling. To this must be added the produce of salt springs, rising through artificial borings carried into the lowest bed of the mountain limestone.

The magnitude of this branch of industry will be still better appreciated from our author's statement, that it would require 361 vessels of 400 tons each for the transport of a like quantity of minerals by sea. Here, with the exception of a comparatively small portion, it is distributed throughout the empire by means of river navigation, extending from Slatoust to the Baltic, or in an uninterrupted line of about 3350 miles. During 1000 miles of this route the boats have to struggle against rapid currents; and after all, they are prevented by the cataracts of Bronitsui from retracing their route, and on reaching the Baltic, are broken up as firewood for the denizens of St Petersburg.

The vessels used in this remarkable voyage are 120 feet long and 25 broad, flat-bottomed, with nearly parallel sides, and triangular though not sharp, both at bow and stern. Each fleet is attended by two pilot boats, and each of the larger vessels by a punt; all these vessels being constructed by the miners themselves during the winter. By the 20th of April the ice has disappeared from the rivers, and on that day the fleet, led, with flag flying, by a commodore vessel containing the owner or supercargo, leaves Slatoust; but not before a solemn mass is celebrated on the deck of the commodore, and the vessel blessed by the priest. Mounted attendants are stationed along the banks, receiving orders from the commodore, and salutes are fired as the residences of the Bashkir chiefs are passed. At night the fleet brings to, and the crew, all of whom are miners, sleep on shore, on almost every occasion surrounded by different scenery-now a narrow valley hemmed in by wooded hills, now an open plain, and again a gorge of bare calcareous rocks, sometimes rent into enormous columns, and sometimes hollowed out into caverns. At Satka an addition to the cargo is made from the magazines there, and the complement of men increased in proportion, to work the heavy oars at bow and stern. Nor is the work easy, for all sorts of diffi culties beset the navigation, sometimes impeded by shoals and banks, sometimes by rocks and islands. But the light-hearted boatmen sing their way through all, knowing that they will be recompensed at night by the enjoyment of sitting round their watch-fires, drinking the sap of the birch, collected from notches cut in the trees, and playing their balalaika, or native guitar. These men, however, do not voyage far. The crew is diminished in number as the navigation becomes easier; and at Ufa the whole of the miners are sent home, and the vessels manned by hired Votyaks.

At Laishof a radical change takes place in the voyage; for here the vessels bound for Nijnei or St Petersburg must prepare to quit the smaller rivers, along which they had hitherto threaded their way, and to commit themselves to the broad waters of the Volga, the nursing mother, as it is called, of the Russian empire. They are now therefore rigged and fitted with a railing round the deck, each having a crew of thirty men, which gives employment altogether to 20,000 of the inhabitants of the neighbouring country. The ascent of the Volga is not facilitated by tracking with cattle. All is done by means of human labour, and the boats warped along by a windlass and hawser. At St Petersburg, as we have said, their history closes.

But this is not the sole trade the Russians carry on from the confines of Europe and Asia. In one direction they barter the goods of the western world with the Chinese; in another they collect the furs of the frozen regions of the north; and in a third they exchange productions with Western Asia. The last-mentioned trade is carried on chiefly with Bokhara; and some readers will wonder in what possible way a commercial character can attach to a barbarian state, without industry or resources, and a mere oasis in a desert of sand; and why 15,000 loaded camels should wend thither every year in

The present trade is described by Mr Erman at Troitsk, one of its Russian depôts, bordering upon the steppe of the free Kirgis. On the Kirgis side of the bazaar,' he says, 'may be seen, in worn-out and ludicrously-patched garments, the men riding upon camels and horses, the women on saddled cows; and the piercing cries of the camels, which are obliged to kneel down to be unloaded, are heard continually. The men are chiefly employed in selling the horses which they bring here in immense droves, and which are kept partly in a paling within the hall, partly turned out to graze in the steppe. The women, seated on the ground on the felt mats of their tents (kibitki), carry on the retail trade, and reckon their money. The Bokharians, Tatars, and Bashkirs, are said to deal fairly and peaceably with their brethren in religion, the Kirgis, and to find amusement in their peculiar loquacity. The contrast between the grave and circumspect demeanour of the Bokharian, sitting in his dark booth on the woilok cushion, waiting quietly for customers, and the savage boisterousness of the Kirgis, is said to be very striking. These more civilised merchants are even there always clad in the rich long khalat, while the greater number of the Kirgis go about in short jackets of horse-skin with the hair on, or in ragged cloths, and with the most clownish air.'

We now come to merchandise of a different kind. The conversation of a Kirgis belonging to our host, and who was a constant companion of our nocturnal trips in the sledge, contributed not a little to compensate us for our tedious disappointment while lingering in the lonely German churchyard. He told us how, when he was a lad of sixteen-and boding no good-he was enticed by his father from the steppe to the Siberian frontiers, and was there handed over to some Russian merchants in discharge of a debt of 180 roobles. He travelled with his new master to Tomsk, and being dismissed from thence, he entered immediately into the service of his present owner. The only tidings he had since received from his own home were, that his unnatural father had met with the punishment due to perfidy, being killed by some Russians with whom he had quarrelled. Perhaps, for the sake of the appearance of revenging himself on fate, the otherwise good-natured man related, with rare glee, how he, too, had renounced the children whom he had reared at Tobolsk from his marriage, and had given them into servitude to other Russians. Among | the inhabitants of the steppes, the trade in the human being is ever a favourite business. Cases, however, like the present, which display an unnatural want of feeling in parents, are of rarer occurrence. Sometimes the eldest son, on the death of the father, gets rid in this way of his sisters, the support of whom devolves on him; the kidnapping of children is generally the work of families at variance, who thus take revenge on one another. The Kirgis, who are so numerous in ser

vice in Western Siberia, and those in Bokhara and the other Khanats, have been all carried off in this way. Those Kirgis, in particular, who attend the merchants of Bokhara through the steppes, have quite a passion for kidnapping their neighbours' children; and it is said that, in consequence, whenever a caravan in the steppe passes through an Aùl, or inhabited place, the mothers, with the anxious bustle of cackling hens, drive their children together into a felt tent, or kibitka, and there guard them from their itinerant fellow-countrymen.' The Russians, it may be supposed, who fall into the hands of these wretches are not on a bed of roses. thing of the custom, attested to me previously, and by most credible witnesses, as existing in the little horde, of knocking Russian prisoners dexterously on the head in such a way as to blunt their intellects, and so render them less capable of effecting their escape. But on the other hand, he described, as an eye-witness, a cruel practice, usual in his own tribe, and having the same object in view. When they have caught a Russian, and wish to retain him in servitude, they cut a deep flesh wound in the sole of his foot, towards the heel, and insert some horse hair in it. There is then no doubt that, even when the wound is externally healed, he will abide for the rest of his life, by a leading rule of Kirgis national manners; for as the Kirgis is always on horseback from choice, so the maimed Russian becomes a confirmed equestrian from the pain of walking.' The Siberians themselves are described by our author as an enterprising and industrious race, bearing not a few of the characteristics of the New Englanders. As for the exiles, or convicts, as we should call them, they appear to be very well off, passing among the kindly Russians by the name of the Unfortunates. 'All these Unfortunates, as they are called, live in the town in perfect freedom; and with the exception of some newlyarrived exiles, who are obliged to do penance in church, they seem quite exempt from any special control or watchfulness on the part of the police. Many of the older ones do the same thing of their own accord, and doubtless from sincere conviction. These aged exiles pass over from the luxury of Moscow to the frugal simplicity of Tobolsk with true manly equanimity. They let their beards and hair grow; and, as they say themselves, they find the life of the Kosak and the peasant far more supportable than they once believed. Hence it is easily conceivable that the children, whom they bring up from marriages with Siberian women, totally lose all trace of so remarkable a change of fortune; and that the Russian nobility employed in Siberia in agriculture, hunting, or any other promuisl, are as little to be distinguished from their neighbours as the posterity of Tatar princes.' The exiles of the better classes are officers who have been guilty of fraud or breach of trust; while those convicted of state offences are sent nearer the Icy Sea.

In pursuing his journey northward from Tobolsk, our traveller found the comfort of the people greatly dependent upon their wives, who not only kept their houses clean and in good order, but were themselves distinguished by healthy and pleasant looks, neatness of dress, and hospitality. Near the arctic circle, the town of Beresov was found steeped in that halfdark day' which, according to a Russian poet, has a magical charm for every nation of the north. A plain of snow and ice extended beyond, till it met the line of the horizon; the silence of the desert reigned in the twilight streets; and but for the smoke from the chimneys, the travellers might have fancied themselves in some city of the dead. It would be a great mistake, however, to judge of the interior of the snow-covered houses from the dreary and inanimate appearance of the streets; for instead of finding the people sunk in their winter sleep, one sees them full of hilarity and vigour, and willing to enjoy life. In conformity with the ancient Russian usage, the duty of entertaining the strangers was not allowed to fall on a