glowering at me from among bales of goods or
cardboard boxes, blushing with the brightest
paint, and winking with all his jewels, real or
sham! The shopkeeper I know expects it.
I hope he appreciates the respect which I, a
heretic and pig, pay to his harmless superstitions.
The Joss at Heyde's is hung there,
not because Heyde or any of its foregathering
belong to the Greek Church, but because the
place is frequented indifferently by Germans
and Russians, and the latter might take
offence at the absence of the religious symbol.
The same deference to the dominant party may
be observed in numbers of the shops kept by
foreigners in St. Petersburg. Perfumers
from Lyons, Tailors from Vienna, Linen-
drapers from London, Milliners from Paris,
Statuette-sellers from Milan, bow and are
silent in the presence of the stick. In the
fashionable modistes on the Nevskoi and in
the Balscho'i Morskaia it is by no means
uncommon to see a really magnificent Saint's
Image, blazing with gilding and tinsel, and
enshrined in costly lace. There is nothing
like burning a candle to St. Nicholas— old St.
Nicholas, I mean.

Mentioning what I supposed in my first
crude notions of Russian manners to be a
custom generally prevalent in Russia, that of
taking off the hat, and remaining uncovered,
while in any room or shop in which there
was a Saint's image, I have now, however, to
confess that before I left Russia my ideas on
the subject underwent a considerable change.
I had a great deal of shopping to get through
before leaving St. Petersburg, principally
with a view to the purchase of curiosities for
anxious friends at home; and as foreigners
always have about three times more to pay
for what they purchase than Russians have,
I always took care to secure the services of
a Russian acquaintance, to whom I confided
my pocket-book and shopping commissions.
It was a source of much chuckling to me to
see my Muscovite agent beat down, higgle,
haggle, and barter, with some merchant in
the Gostinnoï-dvor,— say for a writing case,
an embroidered sash, or a model samovar, of
which I wished to become the possessor, and
when he had ultimately come to terms and
secured the article at perhaps a tenth of the
price originally demanded for it, to watch
the rage of the merchant when my Russian
friend laughingly informed him that the sash
or the portmanteau was for an Angliski. I
noticed in these shopping excursions that my
Russian acquaintances, whether they were
wearers of the cloak, of the Tchinovnik, or
the grey capote of the guardsman, never
removed their caps when they entered a shop,
however prominent the saintly image might
be. I asked one of nous autres one day, as
gently and discreetly as I could, why he
departed from what I had conceived to be an
inviolable custom? " Parbleu! " he answered,
"who is to tell us to uncover ourselves? The
Gassudar ? Bon! but the Tchorni-Narod— the
black people— the fellows who sell soap and
leather. Allons donc! " This gentleman
was right in his generation. Who indeed, in
a country where WE are everything, is to bid
us to be uncovered? Fancy a lizard telling
a crocodile that he opened his mouth too
wide.

Touching upon hats— though still at
Heyde's: I think this is not the worst of
places to observe that the Russians are the
greatest hat-lifters in the world. They need
build their hats, as they do, of a species of
brown paper covered with a silk or beaver
nap; for were the brims of any hard material,
they would inevitably be worn out after one
day's course of salutations. Everybody takes
off his hat, cap, helmet, or shako, to everybody,
The Emperor takes his off, to begin
with, when he bids his hundred thousand
"children " good morning at a review. The
humblest moujik, meeting another as humble
as he, takes off his hat and bows low. If
very drunk, he not only takes off his hat and
bows lower, but positively refuses to be
covered till the interview be terminated, and
continues bowing and bowing like the Chinese
Tombolas we used to see on mantel-pieces.
The hat, indeed, is much more off the head
than on.

And what manner of men are the midday
and the midnight, and not going
home till morning, revellers, at Heyde's?
There are portly German merchants from
Leipsic and Stettin, come to buy or see; there
are keen, dressy, dandified Hamburgers— no
thumb-ringed, slow-going, sauerkraut-eating
Germans these— but men who combine business
with pleasure, and, speculating feverishly
in corn and hides and tallow all day, drink
and smoke and dance and play dominoes and
billiards, and otherwise dissipate themselves,
all night. What lives! Wondrous travellers
are these Hamburgh men. They know all
the best hotels and best tables d'hôte all
over the continent. They talk familiarly
of Glasgow and Dublin, Wolverhampton and
Cheltenham. Their Paris they know by
heart; and there is another country they
are strangely acquainted with— Italy; not
artistic Italy, musical Italy, religious Italy,
but commercial Italy, One Hamburger
tells me about Venice. He touches not
on St. Mark's Square, the Bridge of Sighs, or
the Bucentaur. He confines his travelling
reminiscences to the custom-house regulations,
and the navigation dues exacted by
the Lombardo-Venetian government. He
has had ventures to Leghorn, and has done a
pretty stroke of business at Naples, and has
an agent at Palermo. I would call him a
Goth, but that it is much better to call him a
Hamburger. Then there are German shipbrokers,
German sharebrokers, and a few of
the wealthier German tradesmen of St.
Petersburg, who come here to quaff their
nightly bumpers, and play their nightly
games at dominoes. The Russian element