PETERSBURG. 
the anomaly, the Emperor ordained, that “ no 
person should appear in public with the thing on his 
head worn by the merchant's son." 
An order against wearing boots with coloured 
tops was most rigorously enforced. The police- 
officers stopped a foreigner driving through the 
streets in a pair of English boots. This gentleman 
expostulated with them, saying that he had no 
other, and certainly would not cut off’ the tops 
of his boots; upon which the officers, each 
seizing a leg as he sat in his droshy, fell to work, 
and drew off his boots, leaving him to go bare- 
footed home. 
If Foreigners ventured to notice any of these 
enormities in their letters, which were alKopened 
and read by the police, or expressed themselves 
with energy in praise of their own country, or 
used a single sentiment or expression offensive 
or incomprehensible to the police-officers or 
their spies, they were liable to be torn in an 
instant, without any previous notice, from their 
families and friends, thrown into a sledge, and 
hurried to the frontier, or to Siberia. Many 
persons were said to have been privately mur- 
dered, and more were banished. Never was there 
a system of administration more offensive in the 
eyes of God or man. A veteran officer, who 
