MOSCOW. 
211 
The dishes and the wines correspond in grada- 
tion with the rank and condition of the guests. 
Those who sit near the master of the house are 
suffered to have no connection with the fare or 
the tenants at the lower end of the table. In 
barbarous times we had something of the same 
nature in England; and perhaps the custom is 
not even now quite extinct in Wales, or in English 
farm-houses, where all the family, from the master 
to the lowest menial, sit down together. The 
choicest viands at a Russian table are carefully 
placed at the upper end, and are handed to those 
guests stationed near the owner of the mansion, 
according to the order in which they sit ; after- 
wards, if any thing remain, it is taken gradually 
to the rest. Thus a degree in precedency makes 
all the difference between something and nothing 
to eat ; for persons at the bottom of the table 
are often compelled to rest satisfied with an 
empty dish. It is the same with regard to the 
wines : the best are placed near the top of the 
table; but, in proportion as the guests are 
removed from the post of honour, the wine 
becomes of a worse quality, until at last it dege- 
nerates into simple quass. Few things can offer 
more repugnance to the feelings of an Englishman, 
than the example of a wealthy glutton boasting 
of the choice wines he has set before a foreigner 
merely out of ostentation, while a number. 
ciiap. 
IX. 
Barbarous 
Etiquette 
observed at 
Russian 
Tables, 
