the famous chapter in Henderson's "Iceland," | starting-point. As for inns the traveller will on Snakes. There are literally none that do well to follow the custom of the natives, deserve the name. The country, however, is and take his own sheets and tea with him. very interesting, hill, glen, and forest, like But clean beds can be procured at all towns, the best parts of Normandy, and with a bet- and the general accommodation of Russian inns ter climate. It would be a noble land for is quite equal to that of German or French, English emigrants, if they went out in suffi- in parts little visited. The food is commonly cient numbers to secure an educated society, good, and Sauterne does duty for vin ordinaire. and the protection of the Foreign Office from It is true that the upper classes, being a small our unchristian friends the Turks. Land minority, have to pay rather disproportionmay be bought as cheap as in the backwoods; ately for their comforts; but less than two labor is more abundant; and the colonist pounds a day ought, after all, to defray all would be within five days' journey of London, expenses. and if he lived within a fair distance of Belgrade, could have the Times laid regularly on his breakfast-table.

The interest of Russia is, that it is unique. In no other great country has a Christian and Indo-Germanic race developed itself without Railways are doing so much for Russia, aid from Roman law, from feudalism, or from that before five years are over the great roads chivalry. From this, and from a few vesof the country will probably be as well tiges of the Tartar conquest, has come the known as the highways of Germany now are. utterly groundless idea that the Russians are There is no reason even now why a man of an Asiatic people. The truth is that, like moderate strength should not travel in the the old Greeks, they are the outpost of Euempire. The residents in St. Petersburg af- rope against Asia, and have all the burning hafect, it is true to speak of the whole country tred of a frontier people for their antagonists. beyond its two capitals as barbarous; but It would be truer to say that their civilization to an educated foreigner there is infinitely is Byzantine. Their whole history has been more of true barbarism in St. Petersburg it- moulded by a faith derived from Constantinoself, with its tasteless public buildings, like ple: their official organization is a strange palatial barracks, its dirty, comfortless hotels, reproduction of the Lower Empire; and their and its monotonous life drilled into Western policy looks steadily to Stamboul as their respectability, than in the provincial cities future capital. Their architecture and sawhich have been allowed to grow up natu- cred art are on the models which Vladimir rally. The only real difficulty in visiting the or Alexander Nevsky may have witnessed. interior is the language; and although this With all this antiquity of type, there is a will well repay learning, and is not as imprac- strange air of novelty about the empire. The ticable as it seems, a tourist may be excused bitter winters disintegrate brick and mortar if he shrinks from acquiring it. In this case he pitilessly; the frequent fires in town consume must make up his mind to the expense and wood. Every thing seems as new as in an discomfort of a native servant. But the mere American clearing; and, in fact, the Russians work of locomotion is easy. The track of are as great colonists as the Anglo-Saxons, Russian colonization has mostly been along only that they migrate within the limits of the lines of the great rivers, and the most im- their empire, not beyond it. But no one portant of all, the Volga, is now as well sup- could mistake the Russian church, with its plied with steamers as the Danube. The gaudy cupolas of blue and gold, for any thing swamps and pine-forests of the north and the but the fresh form of an immemorial faith. prarie-land of the south are beginning to be Our own Gothic cathedrals are scarcely more traversed with railways; and the line joining instinct with the life that is beyond time. Moscow with Nijni Novgorod makes it possi- The kremlins or fortesses, from their massive ble to get from St. Petersburg to the two most construction, are commonly older in actual interesting places in North Russia with only date than the churches; and the white conical some thirty hours' travel in a railway car- towers, enclosing the lowest and highest parts riage. A day and a half's easy work in a of the town, with palace and cathedral, are steamer will take the traveller on to the Tar- indescribably picturesque. It is a curious tar capital, Kazan, and a dash into the limits tribute to the permanence of type in Russian of Siberia is no very difficult matter from that | edifices, that no visitors to Moscow ever thinks

of it as a new city, though most of it, of | for the best. The great conveniences of Norcourse, dates from within sixty years. One wegian travelling are, that the light lasts far great advantage of Moscow over its rivals in into the night, that mists are unknown, and the empire lies in the fact, that it has been laid that, as a general rule, the best views may out irregularly. After the fire, which burned be seen without climbing. The waterfalls away the stain of French occupation, every are perhaps superior to the Swiss; the fiords one was allowed to build pretty much as he are longer and with more reaches than the liked palaces and gardens were clustered in lakes; and the frequent changes of scenery unsymmetrical lines, without interference along the roadside are indescribable. But from imperial edicts. Then the architects the country is not one for a delicate man, of the two greatest buildings—the Cathe- nor for any but a very adventurous lady to dral of St. Basil and St. George's Palace travel in. Oat-cakes and milk are in many have been men of the highest capacity in parts the only food that can be counted on; their respective ways. Add to this the un- and the doctor may have to be summoned rivalled natural position, and it will be under- from many miles' distance. On the other stood that the whole effect is rather that of hand, clean sheets are the rule. It is needan Arabian Knight's story than of an ordina- less to describe cottage interiors for any one ry second capital. Nijni Novgorod is scarcely who has seen Tidemann's pictures. It must less remarkable. The old town, with its be well borne in mind that such rooms as he kremlin and cathedral, on a cliff that over- paints are the only ones that await the travhangs the junction of two imperial rivers eller, except in the three or four towns the Volga and the Oka; on the other side, where there are hotels. an illimitable plain fringed with thoumany sand booths, interspersed with mosques and pagodas; and the river between gay with decorated junks, which alone contain the population of a city; Cossack, Armenian, and Chinaman here confronting the bagman from Manchester or Lyons, never surely had commerce a more fantastic metropolis. This generation will probably look upon its last. There is talk already of telegraph lines in Siberia; road and rail have made Moscow as accessible as Nijni Novgorod; and the days of fairs are numbered.

What we have said is addressed, not to the learned in travelling, but to those who are beginning it, or who have never had time and occasion to master its first principles. Of the traveller, as of the poet, it may be said that he is born, not made. There is an irresistible impulse in certain races and families to go out into the unknown world about them; and few instincts bring a richer reward with them, or are more durable. Yet we hold a sort of Hegelian doctrine, that the feeling for home is nowhere stronger than in the wanderer. Probably no nation has better proved its credentials in this respect than the Scotch, and in none is there heartier local patriotism or a stronger family pride. The Continent and sink contentedly into the secmen who really renounce England for the ond-rate circles of a provincial German town, are not travellers, or to be so accounted, because they have given up one form of cockneydom for another. They are also the last men who ever understand the society into which they have thrown themselves. They catch, perhaps, its tricks of manner or vice; dered them from taking their proper place at but the same want of individuality that hinhome unfits them to learn the more difficult lesson-what the highest aspirations of a strange people are. It is only the artist in travel, "always roaming with a hungry heart to follow knowledge like a sinking star," who is also "a part of all he meets. To those who understand this instinctively it will not seem strange if we have dwelt even to weariness on the uses to which a journey in the most hackneyed parts of Europe may

There is still one class of traveller whose interests we have not considered,—the man who wishes simply to lie fallow, and rejects all idea of self-improvement. To such a one we recommend Norway. It has lain idly looking on at the world round it since its heroic age some eight centuries ago, and has no manufactures, no art, no history, and almost no literature. The common mode of travelling in carriole, a sort of low chair upon two wheels, with a place behind for luggage, saves the tourist from some of the common and most annoying incidents of a journey,—the hurry to catch a train, the waiting-room, and the temporary loss of impedimenta. To be quite independent, however, and enjoy the country leisurely, he had better travel with his own horse: the loss, if any, on this will be slight in a country where fifteen or twenty pounds is a large sum be turned.

From The Christian Remembrancer.

1. Lost and Saved. By the Hon. Mrs. Norton. Hurst and Blackett.

By Mrs. Henry Wood.

By the Author of "East
Bentley.
By Miss Braddon. Tins-

the illustrated papers afterwards to represent the feat in the moment of execution.

We are not saying that the generation of 2. East Lynne. which this is a feature is really a falling off Bentley. from that other generation which furnishes 3. Verner's Pride. Lynne," etc. us with such pleasant memories. Each has 4. Aurora Floyd. its developments for good or evil, sense or ley Brothers. nonsense. The one is composed of the daugh5. Lady Audley's Secret. By the Author of ters of the other. The history of society is a "Aurora Floyd." Tinsley Brothers. series of reactions from faults it has become We have been counselled not to ask why alive to. We know all this; but the poputhe former times were better than these, and lar literature of the day, which undertakes are thus instructed to beware of enhancing to represent the thought and impulses of its the past in peevish depreciation of the pres-own time, almost forces us into a frame of disent, the scene of our labors and trials. The paraging comparison. The novels of twenty check is constantly needed by those whose past and thirty years ago, which told us a good is long enough ago to melt into harmonious, deal we did not like of the society of the pegolden, defect-concealing distance; but we riod, have passed into oblivion; the notions are disposed to think that such check is never and tendencies of to-day find their exponents more required than when a comparison is in novels in everybody's hands. They are forced upon us of the popular ideal of charm- peopled with characters which, if they go being womanhood in the times we remember, yond our observation, and exceed anything and what seems to constitute the modern ideal we have seen, yet indicate plainly enough the of the same thing. This ideal may be gath- direction manners have taken, and are acered from the poetry, the romance, and the cepted as a portrait of life by the general satire of both periods, as well as from closer reader, through his very act of taking them experience. There was a time when the into favor. charge against young ladies was a morbid The sensation novel" of our time, howlove of sermons and a too exclusive devotion ever extravagant and unnatural, yet is a sign to the persons that preached them; then they of the times-the evidence of a certain turn were the subjects of tender ridicule for a of thought and action, of an impatience of fantastic refinement; then they doted upon old restraints, and a craving for some fundaFouqué and Sintram, and were prone to sac- mental change in the working of society. rifice solid advantages and worldly good things We use the popular and very expressive term, to a dream of romance; then it was interest- and yet one much more easy to adopt than to ing and an attraction, at least to seem to live define. Sensation writing is an appeal to the in ignorance of evil; then they felt it good nerves rather than to the heart; but all extaste to shrink from publicity, and submitted citing fiction works upon the nerves, and to the rules of punctilio and decorum as if Shakspeare can make " every particular hair they liked them. Those were the days when to stand on end" with anybody. We supthe red coat was not unreasonably jealous of pose that the true sensation novel feels the the academic gown, when dash was not the popular pulse with this view alone-considers fashion, when the ordinary gayeties of life any close fidelity to nature a slavish subserviwere entered into not without a disclaimer, ence injurious to effect, and willingly and deand an anxiety to assert an inner preference signedly draws a picture of life which shall for something higher and better, fuller of make reality insipid and the routine of ordiheart and sentiment, satisfying deeper in-nary existence intolerable to the imagination. stincts. Those were the days before Punch's To use Punch's definition in the prospectus generation of "fast young ladies" were of the Sensation Times, "It devotes itself to born; while it would still have been a wild impossibility for the Times to announce beforehand that an earl's daughter would, on such an occasion and in such a theatre, dance an Irish jig, and a still wilder impossibility for the lady to keep her engagement, and for

harrowing the mind, making the flesh creep, causing the hair to stand on end, giving shocks to the nervous system, destroying conventional moralities, and generally unfitting the public for the prosaic avocations of life." And sensationalism does this by drugging

thought and reason, and stimulating the at- natural mother, performing the very oppotention through the lower and more animal site of the maternal part. In the same way, instincts, rather than by a lively and quick- Richardson's Clarissa Harlowe has as goodened imagination; and especially by tampering with things evil, and infringing more or less on the confines of wrong. Crime is inseparable from the sensation novel, and so is sympathy with crime, however carefully the author professes, and may even suppose himself, to guard against this danger by periodical disclaimers and protests.

they open out a picture of life free from all through their minds and tongues alone, but

the perhaps irksome checks that confine their the people in all sensation writing rush to own existence, and treat all such checks as blows at once. Whatever training they may real hindrances, solid impediments, to the have had, it all drops from them on provocadevelopment of power, feeling, and the whole tion, and the wild animal proclaims itself. array of fascinating and attractive qualities. Most readers are familiar with Aurora Floyd's The heroine of this class of novel is charming castigation of her stable-boy; indeed, this because she is undisciplined, and the victim fascinating lady is so ready with her natural 、of impulse; because she has never known re- weapons, that we find her on one occasion in straint or has cast it aside, because in all the presence of two men, on whom she has these respects she is below the thoroughly inflicted stripes and scratches, the scars of trained and tried woman. This lower level, which they will carry to their graves. And this drop from the empire of reason and self- the writer of "East Lynne" is not behind control, is to be traced throughout this class her more impetuous sister authoress in her of literature, which is a consistent appeal to belief in the possibility of blows in civilized the animal part of our nature, and avows a circles, for she makes a countess strike her preference for its manifestation, as though heroine furiously on each cheek, while that power and intensity came through it. The interesting young lady was her guest, stimuvery language of the school shows this. A lated solely by the jealousy of one pretty whole set of new words has come into use, woman for another. But what will not Mrs. and they are caught up and slipped into, as a Wood's countesses do?-though, indeed, matter of course, to express a certain degra- Mrs. Norton, who should know what grand dation of the human into the animal or brutal, ladies are made of, brings her marchioness on the call of strong emotion. "One touch to very much the same pass of animal abanof nature makes the whole world kin," says don. Blows imply passion, so perhaps it is the poet; the whole world of this school in-needless to speak of the previous uncontrolled cludes things that Shakspeare never dreamed passion, which is another characteristic of of. Thus the victim of feeling or passion the sensational heroine in common with brute sinks at once into the inspired or possessed nature; but Miss Braddon enlarges on it, as animal, and is always supposed to be past ar- a feature of the temper that most interests ticulate speech; and we have the cry, the her, in terms which we prefer to our own :smothered cry of rage, the wail, the low wailing cry, the wail of despair, with which, if our readers are not familiar, ad nauseam, we can only say we are. The curious thing is, that probably no writer ever heard a woman utter this accepted token of extreme emotion, which would indeed be a very intolerable habit in domestic life; but it is evidently accepted by a very large circle as the exponent of true, thorough-going passion. It is the same with motion. It is man's privilege to walk; in novels men, or at any rate the women, creep. In love, in helplessness, in pity, in tenderness, this abject, fawning, catlike movement is found the most expressive sign of a mental posture. Again, these people writhe and twist and coil themselves. "This self-sustained and resolute woman writhed in anguish." They have." tine arms," and "snake-like, Medusa locks." On occasion they will stand rampant, erect, with glittering serpent eyes. They are prone to blows. It is one of the privileges of reason and cultivation that men can be angry

"Have you ever seen this kind of woman in a passion?-impulsive, nervous, sensitive, sanguine. With such a one passion is a madness-brief, thank Heaven!-and expending itself in sharp, cruel words, and convulsive rendings of lace and ribbon, or coroner's juries might have to sit even oftener than they do."-Aurora Floyd, vol. ii. p.

264.

And the scene in "East Lynne," where Barbara, with vehement hysterical passion, upbraids the innocent and unconscious Carlyle for having married somebody else, is another example of the disgraceful unrestraint which some writers think a feature of the ideal woman. Another characteristic is the possession by one idea-an idea so fixed and dominant that the mind impregnated by serpen- it has no choice but to obey. The faithful or the vicious animal is so influenced, but a man thus out of his own control is on the high road to madness. However, it is thought sublime, and the reader is expected to be awed by the strength of a character led by