r two hundred thousand bound volumes. This liberal multiplication
of educational advantages in the very heart of Oriental Russia is an
evidence of gradual progress, which tells its own story.

It seemed especially odd that a people who drink so profusely of
fermented liquors, should also drink so much tea. It may be doubted
if even the Japanese exceed them in the consumption of this beverage,
and it is certain that the latter people use more tea in proportion
to the number of inhabitants than do the Chinese. At Moscow
tea-drinking is carried to the extreme. The _traktirs_, or
tea-houses, can be found on every street, and are crowded day and
evening by people who in summer sit and perspire over the steaming
decoction, while they talk and chatter like monkeys. The stranger
drops in to see native life, manners, and customs, while he sips
scalding tea like the rest, and listens to the music of the large
organ which generally forms a part of the furniture, and which when
wound up will discourse a score or more of popular waltzes, airs, and
mazurkas. These remarkable musical instruments are manufactured
especially for this region, and frequently cost, as we were told, a
thousand pounds sterling each. The habitues are from all classes of
the populace, soldiers, civilians, priests, and peasants,--these
last, slow, slouching, and shabby, with no coverings to their heads,
except such an abundant growth of coarse sun-bleached hair as to
suggest a weather-beaten hay-stack, "redundant locks, robustious to
no purpose." These peasants, mechanics, and common laborers, though
they drink tumbler after tumbler of nearly boiling hot tea, are only
too apt to wind up their idle occupation by getting disgracefully
tipsy on that fiery liquor corn-brandy, as colorless as water, but as
pungent as _aqua-fortis_. To the tea-gardens in the immediate
environs both sexes resort, and here one sees a very pleasant phase
of Russian life,--tea-drinking _en famille_ among the middle classes.
The article itself is of a superior quality, much more delicate in
flavor than that which is used in England or America; but it is never
made so strong as we are accustomed to take it. Happy family groups
may be seen gathered about the burnished urns in retired nooks, and
even love-episodes are now and then to be witnessed, occurring over
the steaming beverage. These gardens are decorated in the summer
evenings with the gayest of colored paper lanterns,--the flickerin