r she is now rather _passee_, and I must console myself
for this mortification by gazing upon the first pair of bright eyes which
I shall meet to-morrow on my route to Kiel."

The Russian dwarfs afford our Captain much amusement.

"Madame Divoff, like many other Russian ladies, has a dwarf in her house,
who remains constantly with the company. He is less ugly and disagreeable
than others of his species. La Princesse Serge Gallitzin has a little
fellow of this sort; the Lisianskis have also one in constant attendance.
The pretty Mademoiselle Rosetti, two evenings ago, kept caressing the
dwarf at Madame Divoff's ball. ('Beauty and the Beast,' said I to her;
'Zemir et Azor.')

"At a very agreeable family party at the Prince Paul Gallitzin's were
masks; and a party of male and female dwarfs; these droll little urchins
were all very well made and good-looking; they frisked and frolicked about
with the children of the house as if they themselves were not (as in
reality they were) men and women, but children likewise. One of these poor
little mortals, equipped as an officer of hussars, danced a mazurka with
great grace and activity, and selected for his partner the _Gouvernante_,
a fine, fat bouncing woman of twenty-five. He likewise, at my request,
sang a Russian romance, which he accompanied on the piano-forte: his voice
was a very plaintive, but weak barytone. The kindness of the Russian
nobles to these unfortunate beings does infinite honour to the national
character."

We have only time for another extract or two. At Moscow, he notes:

"I passed the remainder of the evening at the Princess Dolgorouki's; the
young ladies were in great agitation on account of the sudden
indisposition of their mother, Madame Boulgakow, who had, it seems, caught
cold in her return from the monastery of Troitza, sixty wersts from hence,
a renowned pilgrimage. She had better have stayed at home, for surely
Moscow has sufficient churches in which bigots may pray as long as they
please. When will superstition cease to usurp the place of true religion
in the human mind? I did not pity the _old devotee_, but I felt for the
young ladies, who seemed to be a good deal flurried and fluttered by this
occurrence."

At St. Petersburg:

"June 8-20.--Weather hot and sultry. At two I walked to the Summer Gardens,
which I found full of police-officers and soldiers. To-day there is a
celebrated promenade, that in which the young fillies range themselves