nt back with him a Turkish
embassador to the court of Moscow. Nine months, from August to May,
were occupied in the weary journey. While traversing the vast deserts
of Veronage, their horses, exhausted and starving, sank beneath them,
and they were obliged to toil along for weary leagues on foot,
suffering from the want both of food and water. They nearly perished
before reaching the frontiers of Rezan, but here they found horses and
retinue awaiting them, sent by Vassili. Upon their arrival at Moscow,
the Turkish embassador was received with great enthusiasm. It was
deemed an honor, as yet unparalleled in Russia, that the terrible
conquerors of Constantinople, before whose arms all Christendom was
trembling, should send an embassador fifteen hundred miles to Moscow
to seek the alliance of the emperor.

The Turkish envoy was received with great magnificence by Vassili,
seated upon his throne, and surrounded by his nobles clad in robes of
the most costly furs. The embassador, Theodoric Kamal, a Greek by
birth, with the courtesy of the polished Greek, kneeling, kissed the
hand of the emperor, presented him the letter of his master, the
sultan, beautifully written upon parchment in Arabic letters, and
assured the emperor of the wish of the sultan to live with him in
eternal friendship. But the Turk, loud in protestations, was not
disposed to alliance. It was evident that the office of a spy
constituted the most important part of the mission of Kamal.

This embassador had but just left the court of Moscow when another
appeared, from the Emperor Maximilian, of Germany. The message with
which the Baron Herberstein was commissioned from the court of Vienna
to the court of Moscow is sufficiently important to be recorded.

"Ought not sovereigns," said the embassador, "to seek the glory of
religion and the happiness of their subjects? Such are the principles
which have ever guided the emperor. If he has waged war, it has never
been from the love of false glory, nor to seize the territories of
others, but to punish those who have dared to provoke him. Despising
danger, he has been seen in battle, exposing himself like the humblest
soldier, and gaining victories against superior forces because the
Almighty lends his arm to aid the virtuous.

"The Emperor of Germany is now reposing in the bosom of tranquillity.
The pope and all the princes of Italy have become his allies. Spain,
Naples, Sicily and twenty-six other realms recogni