the 6th of February Lord Carlisle and his suite made their public
entry into Moscow; but so long a time was occupied over the few versts
they had to travel, that it was dusk before the Kremlin was reached.

The formal reception of the ambassador was on the 11th of February.
Marvell was in the ambassador's sledge and carried his credentials upon
a yard of red damask. The titles of the Russian Potentate would, if
printed here, fill half a page. All the Russias, Great, Little, and
White, emperies more than one, dukedoms by the dozen, territories,
countries, and dominions--not all easy to identify on the map, and very
hard to pronounce--were read out in a loud voice by Marvell. At the end
of them came the homely title of the Earl and his offices, "his
Majesty's Lieutenant in the Counties of Cumberland and Westmorland."

The letters read and delivered, the Tsar and his Boyars rose in their
places simultaneously, and their tissue vests made so strange, loud, and
unexpected a noise as to provoke the ever too easily moved risibility
of the Englishmen.[109:1] When Marvell and the rest of them had ceased
from giggling, the Tsar inquired after the health of the king, but the
distance between his Imperial Majesty and Lord Carlisle being too great
for the question to carry, it had to be repeated by those who were
nearer the ambassador, who gravely replied that when he last saw his
master, namely on the 20th of July then last past, he was perfectly
well. To the same question as to the health of "the desolate widow of
Charles the First," Carlisle returned the same cautious answer. He then
read a very long speech in English, which his interpreter turned into
Russian. The same oration was rendered into Latin by Marvell, and
presented. Over Marvell's Latin trouble arose, for the Russians were
bent on taking and giving offence. Marvell had styled the Tsar
_Illustrissimus_ when he ought, so it was alleged, to have called him
_Serenissimus_. Marvell was not a schoolmaster's son, an old scholar of
Trinity, and Milton's assistant as Latin Secretary for nothing. He
prepared a reply which, as it does not lack humour, has a distinct
literary flavour, and is all that came of the embassy, may here be given
at length:--

"I reply, saith he, that I sent no such paper into the
Embassy-office, but upon the desire of his Tzarskoy Majesty's
Councellor Evan Offonassy Pronchissof, I delivered it to him, not
being a paper of State, nor writt