ay in the sumptuous style described by Archdeacon Coxe,
though the rule as to service may be said to be general--one dish
at a time, and nothing on the table but flowers and the dessert.
In the winter, when it is difficult and expensive to get dessert,
those who are rich send for it where it _can_ be obtained--perhaps
to their own hot-houses; and those who are not rich, as in other
countries, go without. At the _traktirs_, or _restaurants_, the
usual dinner supplied for three-quarters of a rouble consists of
soup, with a pie of mince-meat, or minced vegetables, an _entree_,
roast meat, and some kind of sweet. That, too, may be considered
the kind of dinner which persons of moderate means have every day
at home. Rich proprietors, who keep a head-cook, a roaster, a
pastry-cook, and two or three assistant-cooks, would perhaps despise
so moderate a repast; but from a little manual of cookery which
a friend has been kind enough to send me from Russia, it would
appear that the generality of persons do not have more than four
dishes at each meal.

The most ancient and popular drinks in Russia are hydromel or mead
(called by the same name in Russia), beer, and _kvass_. Mead, the fine
old Scandinavian drink, is mentioned as far back as the Tenth Century;
and in a chronicle of Novgorod of the year 989, it is stated that "A
great festival took place, at which a hundred and twenty thousand
pounds of honey were consumed." Hydromel is flavoured with various
kinds of spices and fermented with hops. Gerebtzoff states that
beer is mentioned (under the name of _oloul_--the present word being
_pivo_) in the _Book of Ranks_, written in the Eleventh and Twelfth
Centuries. But no drink is so ancient as _kvass_, which, according
to the chronicle of Nestor, was in use among the Sclavonians in
the first century of our era. Among the laws of Yaroslaff there
is an old edict determining the quantity of malt to be furnished
for making _kvass_ to workmen engaged in building a town.

The Russians learnt to drink wine from the Greeks, during their
frequent intercourse with the Eastern Empire, long before the Mongol
invasion. During the Tartar domination there was less communication
with Constantinople and the consumption of wine decreased, but
it became greater again during the period of the Tsars. In the
beginning of the Seventeenth Century wine was supplied to ambassadors,
but the Russians for the most part still preferred their native
drinks. Th