a of green-roofed houses,
gardens, churches, spires of the strangest possible form and color,
mostly green, or red or bright blue, generally crowned at the top with a
gigantic golden onion, and mostly five or more on one church,--there are
certainly a thousand steeples!--anything more strangely beautiful than
all this lit up by the slanting rays of the setting sun it is impossible
to see. The weather has cleared up again, and I should stay here a few
days longer if there were not rumors of a great battle in Italy, which
may perhaps bring diplomatic work in its train, so I will be off there
and get back to my post. The house in which I am writing is, curiously
enough, one of the few that survived 1812; old, thick walls, like those
at Schoenhausen, Oriental architecture, big Moorish rooms.

June 28th, Evening.

After a three hours' drive through the gardens in an open carriage, and
a view of all its beauties in detail, I am drinking tea, with a prospect
of the golden evening sky and green woods. At the Emperor's they want to
be _en famille_ the last evening, as I can perfectly well understand;
and I, as a convalescent, have sought retirement, and have indeed done
quite enough to-day for my first outing. I am smoking my cigar in peace,
and drinking excellent tea, and see, through the smoke of both, a sunset
of really rare beauty. I send you the inclosed jasmine as a proof that
it really grows and blossoms here in the open air. On the other hand, I
must own that I have been shown the common chestnut in shrub-form as a
rare growth, which in winter is wrapped up; otherwise, there are very
fine large oaks, ash-trees, limes, poplars, and birches as thick
as oaks.

Petersburg, July 26, 1859.

Half an hour ago a cabinet courier woke me with war and peace. Our
policy drifts more and more into the Austrian wake; and when we have
once fired a shot on the Rhine, it is over with the Italian-Austrian
war, and in its place a Prussian-French comes on the scene, in which
Austria, after we have taken the burden from her shoulders, stands by us
or fails to stand by us just so far as her own interests require. She
will certainly not allow us to play a very brilliant victor's part.

As God wills! After all, everything here is only a question of time:
nations and individuals, folly and wisdom, war and peace, they come and
go like the waves, but the sea remains. There is nothing on this earth
but hypocrisy and jugglery; and whether fev