at you would like to have an authentic portrait of
his imperial majesty, and he hands you a picture of the Iberian
Mother, or St. George slaying the dragon, or the devil and all his
imps; in short, you can get any thing that you don't want, and nothing
that you do. If these people are utterly deficient in any one quality,
it is a sense of fitness in things. They take the most inappropriate
times for offering you the most inappropriate articles of human use
that the imagination can possibly conceive. I was more than once
solicited by the dealers in the markets of Moscow to carry with me a
bunch of live dogs, or a couple of freshly-scalded pigs, and on one
occasion was pressed very hard to take a brass skillet and a pair of
tongs. What could these good people have supposed I wanted with
articles of this kind on my travels? Is there any thing in my dress or
the expression of my countenance--I leave it to all who know me--any
thing in the mildness of my speech or the gravity of my manner, to
indicate that I am suffering particularly for bunches of dogs or
scalded pigs, brass skillets or pairs of tongs? Do I look like a man
who labors under a chronic destitution of dogs, pigs, skillets, and
tongs?

[Illustration: PIGS, PUPS, AND PANS.]

It is quite natural that the traveler who finds himself for the first
time within the limits of a purely despotic government should look
around him with some vague idea that he must see the effects strongly
marked upon the external life of the people; that the restraints
imposed upon popular liberty must be every where apparent. So far as
any thing of this kind may exist in Moscow or St. Petersburg, it is a
notable fact that there are few cities in the world where it is less
visible, or where the people seem more unrestrained in the exercise of
their popular freedom. Indeed, it struck me rather forcibly, after my
experience in Vienna and Berlin, that the Russians enjoy quite as
large a share of practical independence as most of their neighbors. I
was particularly impressed by the bold and independent air of the
middle classes, the politeness with which even the lower orders
address each other, and the absence of those petty and vexatious
restraints which prevail in some of the German states. The constant
dread of infringing upon the police regulations; the extraordinary
deference with which men in uniform are regarded; the circumspect
behavior at public places; the nice and well-regulated