indeed, I had often heard in Russia, that all the detail of attack was carefully planned in St. Petersburg by the Emperor Nicholas, who was perfectly convinced of its complete success. And it would most certainly have sufficed had that handful of Englishmen but known when it was overmatched. "But this we could not make them understand," he said; "so in time the French came, in overwhelming masses, and our troops were forced to retire. English stupidity lost us the best chance we had during that war." When the express courier reached St. Petersburg with the first news of that defeat, and the entire failure of the carefully devised plan that was to drive the allies into the sea, the emperor, scouting the rumour of defeat, arrived the day before, received the messenger-an officer of rank-as the bearer of joyful tidings. Something, however, in the officer's looks betokened anything but joy, and in breathless silence from the assembled court, the emperor stalked up to the man, seized him by both shoulders, and said with evident effort and concentrated emotion, "Say! speak? Is it victory ?" My liege, I have instructions. There is the despatch!" c Speak one word: Victory!-quick." "Nay, sire, I am distressed to say it is Defeat," replied the officer, and hung his head. Liar!" roared the emperor; and with his whole force he flung the messenger of evil to the other side of the room, and walked into the adjoining cabinet with the unopened despatch in his hand. How far this scene, repeated again by my friend the soldier, is true, I cannot tell, but as it is said to have had many witnesses, so I know it is widely credited among men likely to be right as to such matters. The only other traveller in our kibitka was a Russianised German: one of a class very common in Russia, and, as a class, inquisitive, crafty, unscrupulous, hating the English with what soul they have, cheating and injuring them when they have the power. Russia is overrun with Germans of this sort, who are to be found in all places except where sound knowledge and honourable dealing are essential. Nearly all the apothecaries are such Germans, and the prices they sell drugs at, are audacious. They get to be stewards, and then woe to the poor peasants. They largely import German girls, who are preferred to Russian by the dissolute. They are confectioners, factors, watchmakers, sausage and ham dealers, organ and knife grinders, anything. When they first invaded the country they were called " neimitz,' or dummies, because, unable to speak the language, they talked only by signs. The army itself is overrun with greedy German officers and doctors: too commonly men who, while poor, will submit to any degradation; but who, when they get up in the world a little, are fastidious and proud. The Russians hate them with good cause, because they are cruel, extortionate, tyrannical, and practically useless. Many of the nobility and gentry are married to German women, for the Russian women are wan, and not usually good-looking. The German wives exert the influence of their husbands in advancing the interests of all their poor relations. Let me illustrate this by a short history, which will show also the state of Russian serfdom under German management. FACTORY LIFE-UNDER A GERMAN STEWARD. General R. was a pure Russian, but having in his youth been employed as a diplomatist in England and elsewhere, he became so deeply sensible of the political degradation of his countrymen, and of his own responsibility in relation to his serfs, that when he returned to Russia he obtained the emperor's permission to retire from public life, and devote himself, assisted by his wife (also of an old Russian family), to the task of improving the condition of the ten thousand serfs on his estates. These estates were extensive, had a splendid soil, and happened to be situated in a genial climate. The general himself went to live in the midst of his people, looked into their wants, established schools and churches, as well as factories, corn-mills, sugar-works, adopted agricultural improvements, and increased his wealth. He was the first to set up a cotton-mill in Russia, in order to employ profitably his people and time during the long lazy winter months formerly spent in perfect idleness. The fortunate serfs increased their allotments; the sound of whip or stick was never heard; traders came far distances to trade in the thriving valleys of R., and their produce brought the best prices in the large town, distant only one hundred versts. In all disputes the general himself was judge and jury; he was adviser and friend in all difficulties. Incorrigible delinquents were punished by being sent off the estate to work, according to the common custom, under other owners, on the " 'obrok," and on this estate no heavier punishment could be inflicted. He built a country-house, a copy from some English gentleman's seat that he had seen and liked; surrounded it with gardens and a park; erected farm-houses on a large scale; imported implements, cattle, and experienced overseers; and when his barns and coffers were full, and all went well with him and his, he died, beloved and almost worshipped by the men to whom his life had been a blessing. Ten years after the old general's death, I inhabited a wing of his mansion for a twelvemonth, so that I know well what I am relating. Evidences were around me daily, on all sides, of the good that was done, and the cause of the change that followed. "Ah!" said the old Russian overseer of the cotton-mill, "you should have come in the old general's time. Then, we were men; now, we are beasts. Then, we were all rich; now, we are skinned and robbed of our very flesh. Then, we could eat beef; now, we cannot get enough of 'casha' to keep us alive. Look at me. Am I not as thin as a ghost? The year the general died, I weighed fifteen stone, I had six hundred roubles, saved from rearing poultry, pigs, growing flax, and getting presents from the master. It's Who, indeed? There came here once, an Englishman as superintendent of these works; I liked him. When the men first went to pay their respects to him, the poor starved-looking beings told their tale in their faces, but poured out also their grievances before him. He said that he was only come to superintend the mechanical processes, that with their social relations he had nothing to do; but whatever was in his power he would do, to make them comfortable. In the mean time he gave them a day's holiday, but our German steward forbade them to take it; that, he said to the Englishman, is against all rules. But come,' said the sneak, we can make things comfortable by playing into one another's hands. Come to my house to-night and take a glass of schnaps, and we shall talk the matter over; in the mean time I have ordered the engines and works to go on tomorrow as usual.' The Englishman turned him out of the room, and then got the keys of the factory and locked out the work-people, so that they could not go to work. The frightened serfs waited about the doors. The man who gave the keys to the English superintendent, was flogged by the steward. On the same day the Englishman doubled his wages. But he could not fight against a fellow who might send what tales he pleased, to a master in the capital six hundred miles away, so he gave up the contest, and left us to our wretchedness." began, and never stopped till Sunday next at nine A.M., when six hours were allowed for churchgoing. A double set of hands working alternately, kept the machinery in constant motion: one set working for six hours while the other set lay sleeping in corners. A bell was rung at the end of each six hours, when the sleepers rose up, and those who had been working lay down. This went on night and day. Married women brought their babies to the factory, where I saw them stuck in cotton baskets, where mothers bred, fed, slept, worked, and did all manner of things in the grinding din of work-morality, decency, or cleanliness, impossible and faroff dreams. Indeed, these people had approached more nearly to the condition of brutes than I had thought possible for men and women; what I saw here and heard elsewhere, did, let me own it, turn my heart to a strong prejudice against the Russian Germans. This widow of the last male of the R.s was a German; her brother the trustee was a German; his steward was a German; and all of them were idle and rapacious voluptuaries. The poor girl when she comes of age will find the noble estate left by her Russian grandfather and father ruined irretrievably, and she will be one Russian more hating the "neimitz." I have no doubt whatever that, should a popular outbreak take place and the pent-up fury of the peasantry find vent, the first burst of retribution and vengeance will fall on this part of the population. Even the neimitz who was our travelling companion did not allow us to reach our journey's end until he had played a revengeful trick on one of us, which made it necessary for us to decide between turning him out of our kibitka, or carrying him on, bound, as a prisoner to Moscow. We turned him out, and, on the morning of the eighth day of a perilous and fatiguing journey, reached Moscow without him. PURSUIT OF CRICKET UNDER It grieves me to tell what I learnt here, and what I saw. The old general had left a son in the army, who succeeded to the family inheritance. The son, immediately on the old man's death, married a very pretty German adventuress whom he had met in one of the more questionable saloons of Moscow. A daughter was born to them, and soon afterwards the husband was seized with a fit and died in a ballroom, also at Moscow. The child being then I KNOW that we English are an angular and but three years old, the lady's brother was ap- eccentric people-a people that the great flatpointed trustee and administrator of the estate iron of civilisation will take a long time until she came of age-that is to say, was seven-smoothing all the puckers and wrinkles out of-teen years old, or married. This man's whole but I was scarcely prepared for the following effort was to enrich himself by exhausting the announcement that I saw the other day in a wealth of the place during his trusteeship. A tobacconist's window near the Elephant and German steward was put in, and every possible Castle : thing was done to grind substance out of the poor peasants. The widow, her brother, and daughter lived at Moscow in a round of gaiety and dissipation, never visiting the estates. The steward was becoming very rich. Large sums were being sent to Moscow out of mortgages effected, and instead of the old happiness and contentment amongst the serfs, there was an utter bitterness of destitution. The works were not kept in repair nor properly managed, and the people, become lazy and sullen, were forced to keep the mill going day and night in order to keep up the original rate of production. At four o'clock on Sunday afternoon the work On Saturday, A Cricket Match will be played at the Rosemary The Match to begin at Eleven o'clock A.M. Well, I have heard of eccentric things in my time, thought I, but I think this beats them all. I know we are a robust muscular people, who require vigorous exercise, so that we would rather be fighting than doing nothing. Our youth walk, run, shoot, fish, hunt (break their necks, even, in pursuit of health), tramp the world over, and leave their footprints in Arctic snows and Arabian sands. It is to this outward working of the inner fire that we owe our great circumnavigators, travellers, soldiers, and discoverers. Our English arms have built up half the railways in the world; our emigrants are on every sea; we are the harmless Norsemen of the nineteenth century. We can do (some of us) without working our brains much, but we Saxons must all exert our limbs; we pine if we are pent up at desks and ledgers. We are a race of walkers, sportsmen, travellers, and craftsmen. We are (by our arts and colonising) the peaceful conquerors of the world. The days of the old red-handed conquest being now (as it is generally thought) gone by for ever, here these one-armed men go and caricature the national tendencies. Totally indifferent to the mingled humour and horror of the day were the costermongers, who, grouped near the gate, threw a fair-day show over one section of the field. Those mere boys, with hard-lined pale faces and insinuating curls like large fish-hooks on each temple, were totally absorbed in drawing pence from the people of Peckham now that the bloom, so long expected, was undoubtedly on the Rye. There, were boys shooting down an enormous tin telescope for nuts; there, were men bowling clumsily at enormous wooden-headed ninepins. But the crown of the amusements was that corduroy-sheathed lad who had, with true Derby-day alacrity, stuck four slender sticks into hampers of matted sand, and on those shivery columns poised hairy cocoa-nuts, gilt pincushions, and wooden boxes meretriciously covered. One, two-whiz-whirl; what beautiful illustrations of the force of gravity did those boxes and pincushions furnish at three throws a penny! With what an air of sagacious and triumphant foresight did the proprietor bundle up the cudgels under his arm and gingerly replace the glittering prizes! Such were my patriotic thoughts when I trudged down the Old Kent Road-chiefly remarkable, since the old coaching days, as the former residence of Mr. Greenacre-and made my devious way to Peckham. Under swinging golden hams, golden gridirons, swaying concertinas (marked at a very low figure), past bundles of rusty fire-irons, dirty rolls of But while I dally here the eccentric game carpets, and corpulent dusty feather-beds-past | proceeds; so, avoiding the cannon-shot of chance deserted-looking horse-troughs and suburban- balls, I pass across the field to the little winlooking inns, I took my pilgrim way to the not very blooming Rye of Peckham. Rows of brick boxes, called streets, half-isolated cottages, clung to by affectionate but dusty vines eventually a canal, where boatmen smoked and had dreams of coming traffic-a sudden outburst of green fields, that made me think I was looking at streets with green spectacles on-brought me to the trim, neat public. house known by the pleasant aromatic name of "The Rosemary Branch." A trim bar-woman, with, perhaps, rather too demonstrative a photograph brooch, stood in front of a row of glass barrels labelled respectively "Shrub," "Bitters," and " Sampson," the latter, I have no doubt, a very strong beverage indeed. Nor did I fail to observe a portrait of the last winner of the Derby over the fireplace, and a little stuffed terrier pup above the glass door leading into the little parlour, where a very comfortable dinner was smoking. I procured my ticket, and was shown through a deserted billiard-room, and down a back lane, to the cricket-field. I delivered up the blue slip to a very fat man with a child's voice who sat with an air of suffering at the entrance-wicket, and I was in the eccentric creatures' innocent field of battle. dowed shed where the scorer sits opposite to the The players were not all Peckham men; that one-legged bowler, so deft and ready, I found was a well-known musical barber, a great dancer, and I believe a great fisherman, from a distant part of Essex. The one-legged men were pretty well with the bat, but they were rather beaten when it came to fielding. There was a horrible Holbeinish fun about the way they stumped, trotted, and jolted after the ball. A converging rank of crutches and wooden legs tore down upon the ball from all sides; while the one-armed men, There they were, the one-legged and the one-wagging their hooks and stumps, rushed madly armed, encamped like two neighbouring armies. Two potboys, girdled with tucked-up aprons white as the froth of bitter-beer, hurried past me as if to relieve the thirst of men wounded in After them came odd men carrying more benches for spectators of the one-armed men's prowess. The one-armed men were having their innings; the fielding of their one-legged adversaries, I could see in a moment, was something painfully wonderful and ludicrously horrible. war. from wicket to wicket, fast for a "oner," faster for "a twoer." A lcan, droll, rather drunk fellow, in white trousers, was the wit of the one-leg party. "Peggy" evidently rejoiced in the fact that he was the lamest man in the field, one leg being stiff from the hip downwards, and the wooden prop reaching far above the knee. He did not treat the game so much as a matter of science as an affair of pure fun-of incongruous drollery, with which seriousness in with calm self-reliance, and the game went was altogether out of place. If there was a five forward with the usual concomitants. Now come minutes' lull for beer, when the "over" was the tips, the misses, the by-balls, the leg hits, shouted, Peggy was sure to devote that the swinging blows that intend so much and interval to dancing a double-shuffle in the do nothing, the echoing swashing cuts, the lost refreshment tent, where the plates were now balls, the stumpings-out, the blocks, the slow being dealt round ready for some future treacherous balls, and the spinning, bruising edible game. When he took his place as roundhanders; not that our friends of the one slip or long-stop, he ran to his post while leg and one arm swaddled themselves up in any others walked; or delighted the boys by as- timid paddings or bandages; they put on no suming an air of the intensest eagerness and india-rubber tubed gloves, no shelter-knuckles, watchfulness, putting a hand on either knee and they don no fluted leggings. What is a blow on bending forward, as if he had sworn that no the knuckles to a man who has lost a leg or an ball should escape his vigilance; or when a ball arm, who has felt the surgeon's saw and the did come, by blocking it with his wooden leg, keen double-edged knife? Yet all this time throwing himself on it, or falling over it: an there was rather a ghastly reminder of suffering inevitable result, indeed, with nearly all the about the whole affair, to my mind. I could fancy one-legged faction, as the slightest abruptness the game played by out-patients in some outor jerk in movement had the result of throwing lying field of Guy's Hospital. I could believe them off the perpendicular. I do not think that it a party of convalescents in some field outside Peggy stopped a single ball unless it hit him; Sebastopol. Well, I suppose the fact is, that he generally fell over it and lost it until some men don't think much of misfortunes when comrade stumped up, swore at him, and picked they are once irretrievable, and that these men the ball out from between his feet or under his felt a pleasure in doing an eccentric thing, in showing how bravely and easily they could overcome an infirmity that to some men appears terrible. After all, one thinks, after seeing such a game, one-legged and one-armed men are not so miserable as people imagine. Nature is kind to us in her compensations. arm. The one-armed men had a much less invalid and veteran air about them. There was a shapely lad in a pink Jersey, who, from having his hand off only at the wrist, merely looked at a distance like a stripling with his hand hidden by a long coat-cuff. But then, again, there was a thickset, sturdy fellow, in a blue cap, of the "one-leg" party, who, though he had lost one foot, seemed to run and walk almost as well as ordinary people. Then, again, on the "one-leg" side, there was an ostentatious amount of infirmity in the shape of one or two pale men with crutches, yet everybody appeared merry and good natured, and determined to enjoy the game to his heart's content; while every time a player made a run, before the dull beat of the bat had died away, there was a shout that made the Peckham welkin ring again, and all the crutches and wooden legs beat tattoos of pure joy and triumph. And when the musical and Terpsichorean barber rattled the wickets or made the balls fly, did not the very plates in the refreshment tent dance with pleasure! And all this time my eye was perpetually wandering to that blue bulbing dome and the two little pinnacles, that, though from here no larger than a chimney-piece ornament, is, I have reason to believe, Saint Paul's, some five miles distant as the crow flies. How delicate and clean cut its opaque sapphire-how pleasantly it crowns the horizon! That view of Saint Paul's from the Peckham meadows I can strongly recommend to landscape painters as one of the best, because one of the nearest, suburban views of Saint Paul's. I know it, a little blue mushroom button from Banstead Downs, just cropping up above the grey rim of the horizon, where the dark brown cloud ever lingers to mark out London; I know it, a great palace of air from all the winding reaches of the Thames, but I think I never saw it before Yet, really, Peggy's conduct was most repre- so beautiful, so unreal, so visionary, so sublime. hensible. In spite of his "greyhound-in-the-It seemed more the presiding genius of the busy, leash" attitude, he was worse than useless; he kicked at the passing ball, he talked to it, he tumbled down to stop it, but for all the success he attained, he might as well have been away; why, Wilkins, with the long crutches and swinging legs, was three times as useful, though And now looking again to the game-the exhe was slow. I suppose, what with the beer, citement has become tremendous. A man with the heat of the day, the excess of zeal, and the crutches is in; he props himself artfully up, fatigue, Peggy began at last to be pretty well while he strikes the ball feebly and with lackaware that he was not doing much good, for he lustre stroke. A one-armed man with a wavertook to lying a good deal on his back, and to ing sleeve, bowls with his left hand, and makes addressing the boys, who buzzed round him like a complicated business of it: the ball moving in flies, on the necessity of keeping a steady "look-a most eccentric orbit. At the opposite wicket out" at cricket. I do not know what Peggy had been, but he looked like a waterman. Now, a lad who lost his leg when a baby, as a bystander told me, took up the bat and went turbulent, uneasy city. I felt quite a love for the old blue monster; the sight of him moved me as the sight of a great army moves me, or as the sight of a fleet beating out to sea, with their white wings set all one way. Peggy is enthroned: his attitude is a study for Raphael-intense watchfulness, restless ambition, fond love of glory slightly dashed with inebriation, slightly marred by intoxication, visible in every motion. Alas! the first fell ball comes and damages his wicket. His perfect disbelief in the reality of such a catastrophe is sublime-it typifies the dogged constancy of a nation that never knows when it is beaten. The one-arms are rudely exulting as Peggy stumps off, not that he ever made a run, but that the look of the man was so imposing. The one-legs droop, the one-arms throw up their caps, or dance "breakdowns," to give vent to their extreme joy. The outlying one-arms skip and trip, the onelegs put their heads together and mutter detracting observations on the one-armed bowling. "There was no knowing what to make of them balls;" There was no telling where to have them balls;" "They were a spiteful lot, the onearms, so cheeky, so braggy;" "But the onelegs knew what's what, and they are going to do the trick yet." And again the hawthorn pale In the long blue nights shall sing; In the light of the golden grain; Shall never return again. Weary, the cloud droopeth out of the sky, All things must come to the earth by-and-by, MR. H.'S OWN NARRATIVE. THERE was lately published in these pages (No. 125, page 589) a paper entitled FOUR STORIES. The first of those stories related the strange experience of "a well-known English artist, Mr. H." On the publication of that account, Mr. H. himself addressed the conductor of this Journal (to his great surprise), and forwarded to him his own narrative of the occurrences in question. been unconsciously done to it, in the version published as the first of the "Four Stories," it follows here exactly as received. It is, of course, published with the sanction and authority of Mr. H., and Mr. H. has himself corrected the proofs. Now the clatter of knives and forks and plates in the refreshment tent grew perfectly alarming; it was like a sale in a china-shop. The players, heedless of such poor sublunary things as boiled beef and greens and the smoke of flowery po- As Mr. H. wrote, without any concealment, tatoes, played more like madmen than sober in his own name in full, and from his own studio rational cricketers. St. Paul's danced before in London, and as there was no possible doubt of my eyes as if I was playing cup and ball with it, his being a real existing person and a responsible so dazzled did I get with the flying red ball. gentleman, it became a duty to read his commuThe leaping catches were wonderful, the leg-nication attentively. And great injustice having hits admirable, the bowling geometrically wonderful, the tips singularly beautiful; the ball smashed at the palings, dashed into thorn bushes, lost itself, broke plates in the refreshment tent, nearly stunned the scorer, knocked down a boy, flew up in the air like a mad thing. As for Peggy's balustrade leg, had he not occa- Entering on no theory of our own towards the sionally screwed it off to cool himself, it would explanation of any part of this remarkable narhave been shivered into a thousand pieces. You rative, we have prevailed on Mr. H. to present would have thought, indeed, that the bowler it without any introductory remarks whatever. It mistook his unfortunate "stick leg" for the only remains to add, that no one has for a moment wicket, he let fly at it so often and so perversely. stood between us and Mr. H. in this matter. But in vain all skill and energy; the one-legs The whole communication is at first hand. On could not get at the ball quick enough, their field-seeing the article, Four Stories, Mr. H. frankly ing was not first-rate, the one-arms made a gigantic effort, forged fourteen runs ahead, and won. Peggy performed a pas seul expressive of hopeless despair, and stumped off for a pot of stout. FALLEN LEAVES. WEARY, the cloud droopeth down from the sky, All things must come to the earth by-and-by, Let the wild wind shriek and whistle In our garden let the thistle Start where the rose-tree stood; Let the rotting mass fall rotten With the rain-drops from the eaves; Let the dead Past lie forgotten In his grave with the yellow leaves. Weary, the cloud droopeth down from the sky, All things must come to the earth by-and-by, and good humouredly wrote, "I am the Mr. H., the living man, of whom mention is made; how my story has been picked up, I do not know, but it is not correctly told; I have it by me, written by myself, and here it is." I am a painter. One morning in May, 1858, I was seated in my studio at my usual occupation. At an earlier hour than that at which visits are usually made, I received one from a friend whose acquaintance I had made some year or two previously in Richmond Barracks, Dublin. My acquaintance was a captain in the 3rd West York Militia, and from the hospitable manner in which I had been received while a guest with that regiment, as well as from the intimacy that existed between us personally, it was incumbent on me to offer my visitor suitable refreshments; consequently, two o'clock found us well occupied in conversation, cigars, and a decanter of sherry. About that hour a ring at the bell reminded me of an engagement I had made with a model, or a young person who, having a pretty face and neck, earned a |