ON THE CZAR'S HIGHWAY. 77 



to Russia during the reign of Peter the Great to take 

 service under him, and for various enterprises since. 

 They take pride in being of English origin, though it 

 may be but a family tradition among them. You can 

 offer no more acceptable piece of flattery to the lady 

 members of one of these Anglo-Russian families than 

 to compliment them with having the English type 

 of face. On one occasion I overlooked this delicate 

 point, until reminded of the negligence by one of the 

 ladies, who affected surprise that I hadn't mistaken 

 her for an Englishwoman, on account of her face. Her 

 father's grandfather or great-grandfather had come from 

 England some time in the eighteenth century. 



In St. Petersburg, army officers with English blood in 

 their veins affect dinners at the Hotel d'Angleterre, 

 where you may see typical English faces under the 

 Russian military visors, or even in the incongruous 

 setting of a Circassian officer's costume. Nearly every 

 day, when the writer was at this hotel, a guardsman 

 and a Circassian, both officers, used to come to lunch 

 together at noon ; as typical a pair of English faces as 

 could be found in all Britain. 



Many will be astonished, as I was, to learn that in 

 St. Petersburg, alone, are more than ten thousand 

 English, nearly all of whom are British subjects. The 

 majority of them are connected with the shipping and 

 manufacturing interests in and about Petersburg. 



Englishmen who become, as it were, isolated in the 

 provinces, soon lose interest in the doings of the outer 

 world, and surprise a passing countryman, who drops 

 in on them, by their ignorance of current events be- 

 yond the Russian border. In this respect, the disrepu- 



