hy of the
traveller's notice. These are the Botshoi and the Italian Opera,
where only entertainments of a high order of merit are permitted to
be given. In many of the gay cafes young girls of free manners and
lax morals dance in national costumes, among whom one easily
recognizes those coming from Circassia, Poland, Lithuania, and the
country of the Cossacks. In their dances and grouping they present
scenes that do not lack for picturesqueness of effect. Most of the
melodies one hears at these places are quaint and of local origin,
quite new to the ear; though now and again a familiar strain will
occur, indicating from whence Chopin and others have borrowed. Some
of the performers were so strikingly handsome as to show that their
personal charms had been the fatal cause which had brought them into
so exposed a connection as these public resorts of evil repute. The
Bohemian or gypsy girls were the most attractive,--poor creatures
coming from no one knows where, wanderers from their birth, and with
lives ever enveloped in mystery. One could not but recall the Latin
Quarter of Paris and the gay, dissipated night-resorts of London and
Vienna. None of the European capitals are without these dark spots
upon the escutcheon of civilization.

The author's observation in Cuba and continental Spain had led him to
believe the dishonesty of Spanish officials to be quite unequalled;
but the Russians far exceed the Spaniards in the matter of venality.
The last war between Russia and Turkey brought to light official
fraud and briberies, connected especially with the commissary
department of the army, which disgraced the whole nation in the eyes
of the world. Experiences of so outrageous and startling a character
were related to us, illustrative of these facts, as to almost
challenge belief, had they not been sustained by reliable authority.
So extensive and universal is the system of bribery in Russia, that
the question of right in ordinary matters, even when brought before
the courts for decision, scarcely enters into the consideration. It
is first and last purely a question of roubles. Counterfeit justice
is as plentifully disbursed as counterfeit money, and that does much
abound. To prove that this system of official bribery is no new thing
here, and that it is perfectly well known at headquarters, we have
only to relate a well-authenticated anecdote. A chief officer of
police, who was one day dashing along the Nevsky Prospect in