AS DESPATCH-BEARER IN WAR-TIME-1855 467 



opportunity during the previous year, when Sir Charles 

 Napier, the commander of the Baltic fleet, having made 

 a boastful speech at a public dinner in London, and in- 

 vited his hearers to dine with him at St. Petersburg, had 

 returned to England, after a summer before Cronstadt, 

 without even a glimpse of the Kussian capital. 



I am the possessor of a very large collection of his- 

 torical caricatures of all nations, and among them all 

 there is hardly one more spirited and comical than that 

 which represents Sir Charles at the masthead of one of 

 his frigates, seeking, through a spy-glass, to get a sight at 

 the domes and spires of St. Petersburg : not even the best 

 efforts of Gillray or "H. B.," or Gavarni or Daumier, or 

 the brightest things in " Punch" or " Kladderadatsch ' ' 

 surpass it. 



Some other Eussian efforts at keeping up public 

 spirit were less legitimate. Popular pictures of a rude 

 sort were circulated in vast numbers among the peas- 

 ants, representing British and French soldiers dese- 

 crating churches, plundering monasteries, and murder- 

 ing priests. 



Near the close of my stay I made a visit, in company 

 with Mr. Erving, first secretary of the legation, to Mos- 

 cow, the journey, which now requires but twelve hours, 

 then consuming twenty- four; and a trying journey it was, 

 since there was no provision for sleeping. 



The old Russian capital, and, above all, the Kremlin, 

 interested me greatly; but, of all the vast collections in 

 the Kremlin, two things especially arrested my attention. 

 The first was a statue, the only statue in all those vast 

 halls, and there seemed a wondrous poetic justice in the 

 fact that it represented the first Napoleon. The other 

 thing was an evidence of the feeling of the Emperor 

 Nicholas toward Poland. In one of the large rooms was 

 a full-length portrait of Nicholas's elder brother and im- 

 mediate predecessor, Alexander I; flung on the floor at 

 his feet was the constitution of Poland, which he had 

 given, and which Nicholas, after fearful bloodshed, had 



