check and exclamation of our Jehu told us that
the harness had given way, and a conversation, freely interlarded
with epithets exchanged between the driver and the peddler, showed
that there was decidedly a difference of opinion between them. It
appeared that the man of commerce was the only one of the party
who knew the road, and having discovered this fact, he determined
to make use of his knowledge by refusing to show the way unless
the proprietor of the horses who drove the vehicle containing our
luggage would abate a little from the price he had demanded for
the hire of the horse in the peddler's sleigh. "A bargain is a
bargain!" cried our driver, wishing to curry favour with his master,
now a few yards behind him. "A bargain is a bargain. Oh, thou son
of an animal, drive on!" "It is very cold," muttered my companion.
"For the sake of God," he shouted, "go on!" But neither the allusion
to the peddler's parentage nor the invocation of the Deity had
the slightest effect upon the fellow's mercenary soul.

"I am warm, and well wrapped up," he said; "it is all the same to
me if we wait here one hour or ten;" and with the most provoking
indifference he commenced to smoke, not even the manner in which
the other drivers aspersed the reputation of his mother appearing
to have the smallest effect. At last the proprietor, seeing it
was useless holding out any longer, agreed to abate somewhat from
the hire of the horse, and once more the journey continued over
a break-neck country, though at anything but a break-neck pace,
until we reached the station--a farm-hause--eighteen versts from
our sleeping quarters, and, as we were informed, forty-five from
Samara.

_RUSSIAN ARCHITECTURE_

_EUGENE EMMANUEL VIOLLET-LE-DUC_

The Russian people, composed of diverse elements in which the Sclav
predominated at the moment when that vast empire began to be established
under great princes and amid incessant struggle, was in too close
communication with Byzantium not to have been to a certain extent
in submission to Byzantine art; but nevertheless each of these
elements was in possession of certain notions of art which we must
not neglect.

The Sclavs, like the Varangians, knew scarcely anything but construction
by wood, but at a comparatively early period they had already carried
the art of carpentry very far, and in many different channels.

The Sclavs (as extant traditions show), proceeded by piles in their
wooden buildings