The Press. — London, England, 1854-05-13 00:00:00

to th© primitive inhabitants of Russia—Cos sacks, Calmues, Tatars, Bashkires, and the like. The strongest case of Muscovite misma uagement really attested on competent evi donne is that of the Calmuc, or Eleute, tribes. They had served peter the Great as faithful allies, and sent 30,000 soldiers to aid Elizabeth in her war on the Crimea. These things were done while they yet possessed a certain degree of self-government under their own Khans. On the death of the chief of these, in 1724, the Czar took occasion to draw the reins tighter, putting a viceroy of his own in supreme com mand. The result was a general feeling of discontent, which continued unabated during half a century, and in 1771 caused a national migration to China. Except the Mormon movement in our own time, modern history has scarcely an example of an organised exo dus on such a scale On the 15th of January, 1771, 70,000 families withdrew, under the conduct of the khan Übakha, taking away with them by force the Russian Captain Dudin and a hundred soldiers. They were attacked by Cossacks and Kirghis on their march, lost a great many men, fought their way through, the Russian General Tautenberg not pursuing Item from Orenburg. They were plundered by Turkoman and Tahtar tribes ; they lost 20,000 families on a journey that continued fur eight months ; arrived notwithstanding, though half starved, on the Chinese borders at Ily, in the year 1772, and were received by the Emperor of the Celestial Empire with pride and pomp. In order to pre- serve the remembrance of that event, which reunited the Mongol race under his sceptre, the Chinese Emperor erected a monument, with an inscription in the four languages of his dominions. Only 15,000 families remained in Russia, which were detained by the extraordinary circumstance of the Volga not being frozen over. The Russian Government endeavoured to represent the case in a light less unfavourable for themselves. They laid the blame on Chinese intrigues, on the embassy of Tulichen, who, in the year 1724, was sent from Pekin to Aiouki ; but a mere invitation to go back to China would not have availed, nor would it have taken fifty years for its accomplishment. Kicheuski, the Pristaf, had abused his power. From that time too the power of the pristaf was limited, yet the Kalmucks did not regain their own admi nistration,and the committee, who reside at Astrachan, and preside over the affairs of the whole country, consists of a Russian president, two Russian judges, and two Kalmuck deputies. The book closes with a dissertation on Rus sian parties, including sketches of Menschi koff, Orloff, and Nesselrode. Here is a portrait of the first, but we do not vouch for the re semblance : lhe present Minister of Marine, Prince Alenshikoff, is Nicholas's Falstaff, and is known for his play upon words. " What do you think of my ministry ?" asked the Czar of him once. " How is it to succeed ?" answered Menshikoff, " with one long arm (the name of Dolgorouky, Minister of War, signifies long arm) and one with only one arm (Bibikotf, Minister of the Interior, has lost an arm) ? Adlerberg (Court Minister) is not amiss, but his mien (Mina is the name of his mistress) does not please me." A. French girl in an equestrian troop obtained the admi ration of all Petersburg by her skill in horsemanship. Called to the palace of the Grand Duke Michael, she suc ceeded in breaking in a vicious horse, that nobody could ride before. " Absurd!" cried Menshikoff, " I will also do the same," and, forgetting his age, he also mounted, but was thrown, and broke his legs, so that he was for a long time obliged to keep his bed. When the Duchess of Leuchtenberg, whose conduct is subject to suspicion, gave birth to a sun who was called George, Menshikoff said, " Leuchtenberg has got the George (a Russian order for bravery) without having been in action." He obtained a name in war by taking Anape ; at Varna an exhausted ball rolled over both his feet when he was taking a pinch of snuff. He has talent and ambition, ambition perhaps more than talent. You may see him sometimes in Petersburg on horseback in naval uniform, with white hair, sallow face, and a soldier's moustaches. And the veteran diplomatist against whose advice the present war has been undertaken is thus described : Charles Albert, Count Nesrelrode, was born in 1770, on board an English vessel in sight of Lisbon. Hia parents were Germans in the Russian service, and, as there was no Protestant minister in the vessel, he was baptised accord ing to the Anglican rite. England, therefore, may claim the honour of reckoning him among her citizens. Pope Gregory XVI., anticipating a visit of the count to Rome, said, " I must be watchful of M. de Nesselrode ; he combines four or five different nationalities." The rela. Lions counts and reason why he 3 was intended o him one day count entered therefore, was happened to Staselburg, Hague, and write French He has never write his name tions of the Russian minister are Westphalian counts of the Holy Empire, and that is the met han constantly refused Russian titles. He wi se nav . The Emperor Paul I. said to h •! diplomatist, and the coi ors diplomacy. Paul, the ~ , .een said to be ; he h ;t.': • 1 served under Count .; . • Embassy at the I- l 'eßN l 1 .re he learned to wr . 41 0414g.1" 3 1 11 C., out elegance. He ••• • ei •is • only able to writ naciVd yi a • 4 THE PRESS. in that language. However, in that respect he is certainly superior to those who are reduced to the necessity of making a cross for their signature. Count Nesselrode owes his successful career to his wife, the daughter of Gourieff, Minister of Finance, who was very ugly, but very rich—very intellectuai, and very in fluential, in consequence of the position of her father. Having been refused, on accountof her plainness, by several Russian Eiegants—Count Moussin Pushvin among the rest —she offered her hand to Count Nesselrode, whose abilities she esteemed, and whose career she undertook to advance. She also played a prominent part in the administration of foreign affairs ; so much so, indeed, that it was generally supposed it was she who directed her husband. That suspicion, however, was only true so far as regarded the distribution of offices. Whoever incurred her displeasure was sure to fail, and whoever was fortunate enough to deserve her favour might calculate upon promotion. A certain method of obtaining it was by little gifts which betoken friendship. She was particularly fond of objects of fine art—pictures and statues. Her death gave hopes of the fall of her husband, but nothing came of it, and proof was soon afforded that she was not the pervading spirit of his acts. There was even more impartiality in the bestowing of offices. The count does not much like changing his o.mp/uyis, but remains constantly faithful to the same. For the rest, of all Russian ministers, he is the most illiberal in his rewards to his subordinates. Count Nesselrode is not now considered as a diplomatist of the first order, and that is not only the result of his sub- ordinate position with regard to the Czar, but of his natural talents. Metternich and Pozzo di Borgo are justly placed above him. There are, says M. Golovin, three political sections into which the thinking part of the Russian people is divided—the old " Rus sians," headed and represented by Menschi koff, opposed to the adoption of European customs, and to an extension of Russian power westward, but strongly, and even fanatically, pa triotic; "young Russia," which aims at social and constitutional reform, framed on the pat. tern of Western Europe ; and the " Slavo philists," a party whose ideas and objects are not very clearly set forth, but who seem to combine a desire for national progress with a strong dislike to copy any foreign model. Aloof from all these stands the corps of Ger man employes, whom the Czar prefers to his Muscovite subjects, partly on account of their greater diligence in business, partly also be cause, having no personal or patriotic interest in the empire, they form more ready and obe dient instruments of his will. German officers are especially unpopular with the army : their exaggerated ideas of discipline, unconciliating manners, and extreme severity in the infliction of punishment, earn them the hearty detesta tion of the Russian soldiery. Table Traits, with Something on Them. By Dr. Doran. London : Bentley. " THERE are upwards of seventeen works ex " tent on the subject of diet and digestion," writes Dr. Doran,—an evidence, we think, that men study the first much more than the second. The cook or the appetite is to blame much oftener than the stomach. Papers on gourmandism, when seasoned with wit and anecdote, read pleasantly enough, and exhibit it under an attractive aspect ; yet its extrava gances have an ugly aspect if surveyed too closely, and we would hope that there is more of affectation than truth in the favour with which some of our youngsters profess to re gard it. Dr. Doran's book, as its title indicates, is chiefly made up of anecdotes, tending, however, to the illustration of useful rules. He begins with the classical story of Amphitryon, and ends with the lamentable decay of the author of the " Almanach des Gourmands." Some times our author's information is apocryphal. " Rebecca and Jacob," we are told, " ate of " a pottage in which the meat was cut into " small bits before the muscular fibres had " cooled and become hardened and stewed "in milk thickened with meal and herbs." The tradition must be curious which has pre served these minute particulars. One of Dr. Doran's earliest chapters is on water, to which marvellous efficacy has been attributed at different times for the cure of diseases. Water-doctors were more in favour with the luxurious citizens of imperial Rome than they have have yet attained with us. " Patients resorting to Charmis to take cold " baths in winter under his direction were re " (Diked to pay him a consulting fee of $OOl. Ho was the first water-cure doctor that ever pract ised. and he realised a fortune such as " his successors may aim at in vain." Pru- S4TIIIIPA dent people manage to reap all the advan tage of bathing without such costly superin tendence. The late Vice-Chancellor Sir Lan celot Shadwell was an indefatigable bather:— Every morning throughout the year, during his resi dence at Barnes Elms, he might be seen wrestling joy. ously with the Thames. It is said that, on one occasion, a party, in urgent need of an injunction, after looking for the judge in a hundred places where he was not to h e found, at length took boat, and encountered him as he was swimming in the river. There he is said to have heard the case, listening to the details as the astonished appli cants made them, and now and then performing a froltck• some " summersault," when they paused for want of breath. The injunctiou was grunted, it is said ; after which the applicants left the judge to continue his favourite aquatic sport by himself. A chapter on corn follows that on water. American ingenuity has discovered a novel purpose to which the staff of life can he put. We extract the passage for the benefit of gen tlemen troubled with tight boots : None of its uses are so singular as ono to which corn was applied, some thirty years ago, in the western settle ments of America, namely, fur stretching boots and shoes. The boot or shoe was well filled with con►, and made secure by such tight tying that none could escape. It was then immersed for several hours in water, during which the leather was distended by the gradual swelling of the grain. After being taken from the water, a coating of neat's-foot oil, laid on and left to dry, rendered the boot or shoe fit for wear. The " materials for breakfast " suggest to our author some amusing stories. Here is one illustrative of French manners under Louis XV. which reads like a page from a lively romancist One afternoon that M. de Saint Foix was seated at bis usual table, an officer of the King's bodyguard entered, sat down, and ordered " a cup of coffee, with milk, and a roll," adding, "It will serve me for a dinner!" At this Saint Foix remarked aloud, that " a cup of coffee, with milk, and a roll, was a confoundedly poor dinner." The officer remonstrated ; Saint Fax reiterated his remark, and again and again declared, that nothing the gallant officer could say to the contrary would convince hint that a cup of coffee, with milk, and a roll, was not a confoundedly poor dinner. Thereupon a challenge was given and ac cepted, and the whole of the persons present adjourned us spectators of a fight which ended by Saint Foix receiving a wound in the arm. " That is all very well," said the wounded combatant; " but I call you to witness, gentle men, that 1 am still profoundly convinced that a cup of coffee, with milk, and a roll, is a confoundedly poor dinner!" At this moment the principals were arrested, and carried before the Duke de Noailles, in whose presence SaiutFoix, without waiting to be questioned, said, " Monseigneur, I had nut the slightest intention of offending the gallant officer, who, I doubt not, is an honourable man ; but your excellency can never prevent my asserting that a cup of coffee, with milk, and a roll, is a confoundedly poor dinner." " Why, so it is," said the duke. " Then I am not in the wrong," remarked Saint Foix • " and a cup of coffee,"— at these words magistrates, delinquents, and auditory burst into a roar of laughter, and the antagonists became friends . Mention is made of a beverage new to an English breakfast-table, we believe, but worth trying : I must not omit to mention, that the favourite beverage of Voltaire, at the Cafe Procope, was " choca,"—a mixture of coffee (with milk) and chocolate. The Emperor Na poleon was as fond of the same mixture as he was of chain bertin: and, in truth, I do not know a draught which so perfectly soothes and revives as that of hot, well-frothed " choca." Good tables, like necessity, make men ac quainted with strange company. What but an excellent dinner,—that social cement of our time,—could have brought together such a party as one of our Coalition Ministers re cently managed to assemble?— A trait of the customs of this country is presented by the dinner given in February of the present year by Earl Granville, the guests at which were Lord Aberdeen, the Bishop of Oxford, and Mr. Bright. There were not such startling contrasts at the reconciliation dinner which brought Wilkes and Johnson together as at Earl Gran ville's unique banquet. The host and the Premier repre sented—the first smiling courtesy ; the second, the most frigid severity of a freezing civility. But the strongest contrast was in the persons of the Bishop and the " Friend" —Dr. Wilberforce, highest of Churchmen, briefest of preachers, and twice as much curled as the son of Clinias himself ; while Mr. Bright, with every hair as if a plummet depended at the end of it, hating the Church, but not in different to petits path a la braise, must have looked like the vinegar of voluntaryism that would not mingle with the oil of orthodoxy. To have made this banquet complete there should have been two more guests—Dr. Cumming and Dr. Cahill, with appropriate dishes before each. Some gourmands have held that a good dinner is but spoiled by company:— The late Duke of Norfolk need habitually to dine at one of the houses in Covent•garden, out of pure liking to it. He was accustomed to order dinner for five, and to duly eat what he had deliberately ordered ; but, as he one day detected a waiter watching him in his gastro nomic process, he angrily ordere•.l his bill, and never en tered the house again. I