DON COSSACKS. 
385 
cleanly appearance. Polished in their manners, chav. 
instructed in their minds, hospitable, generous, ^ • 
disinterested, humane and tender to the poor, m^Lr 
good husbands, good fathers, good wives, good Ae Pcople - 
mothers, virtuous daughters, valiant and dutiful 
sons; such are the natives of Tcherkask. In 
conversation, the Cossack is a gentleman ; for he 
is well-informed, free from prejudice, open, 
sincere, and honourable. Place him by the side 
of a Russian , — what a contrast! 1 Yet the author 
would not be understood, in the eulogy he has 
bestowed upon the one, or the censure he has 
perhaps too indiscriminately lavished upon the 
other, as having used observations without ex- 
ception on either side. The Russian women are 
entirely excepted ; and it is very remarkable. 
(l) “ The manners of the people struck us , from their superiority 
to the Russians, in honesty and dignity. A Lieutenant at Petersburg, 
"ho once begged alms from us, bowed himself to the ground, and 
knocked his head on the floor. A Lieutenant here ( Tcherkask ), 
who was imprisoned, and also begged, made the request in a manly 
and dignified manner, and thanked us as if we had been bis comrades. 
“ Both men and women are handsome, and taller than the Mysco- 
titis. This name they hold in great contempt, as we had several op- 
portunities of observing. The Procurator, the Physician, the Apo- 
thecary, and the Master of the Academy, being distinguished by their 
<lress and nation from the Cossacks, seemed to have formed a coterie of 
their own, and to dislike, and to he disliked by, the whole town. The 
p ostinaster said they were much improved since he came there ; that 
then they would have pelted any stranger. We saw nothing of this 
hind, except that, when we first landed, mistaking' us for Russians 
some boys cried out, ‘ Moscoffsky Canaille 1 ' — Canaille has become a 
naturalized word in Russia.” Heber’s MS. Journal. 
VOL. I. 2 C 
