red.

We were entertained with a concert of that horn music which is
peculiar to Russia, and of which mention has been often made. Of
twenty musicians, each plays only one and the same note, every time
it returns; each of these men in consequence bears the name of the
note which he is employed to execute. When one of them is seen going
along, people say: that is the sol, that is the mi, or that is the
re of M. Narischkin. The horns go on increasing from rank to rank,
and this music has been by some one called, very properly, a living
organ. At a distance the effect is very fine: the exactness and the
purity of the harmony excite the most noble ideas; but when you come
near to these poor performers, who are there like pipes, yielding
only one sound, and quite unable to participate by their own
emotions in the effect produced, the pleasure dies away: one does
not like to see the fine arts transformed into mechanical arts, to
be acquired by dint of strength like exercise.

Some of the inhabitants of the Ukraine, dressed in scarlet, came
afterwards to sing to us some of the airs of their country, which
are singularly pleasing: they are sometimes gay and sometimes
melancholy, and sometimes both united. These airs sometimes break
off abruptly in the midst of the melody, as if the imagination of
the people was tired before finishing what at first pleased them, or
found it more piquant to suspend the charm at the very moment its
influence was greatest. It is thus that the Sultana of the Arabian
Nights always breaks off her story, when its interest is at the
height.

M. Narischkin in the midst of this variety of pleasures, proposed to
us to drink a toast to the united arms of the Russians and English,
and gave at the same moment a signal to his artillery, which gave
almost as loud a salute as that of a sovereign. The inebriety of
hope seized all the guests; as for me, I felt myself bathed in
tears. Was it possible that a foreign tyrant should reduce me to
wish that the French should be beat? I wish, said I then, for the
fall of him, who is equally the oppressor of France and Europe; for
the true French will triumph if he is repulsed. The English and the
Russian guests, and particularly M. Narischkin, approved my idea,
and the name of France, formerly like that of Armida in its effects,
was once more heard with kindness by the knights of the east, and of
the sea, who were going to fight against her. Calrnucks with flat
featu