It has always appeared singular to me that there are so few Bajozzos and Policiiiellos at a Russian Katsheli, as no people are readier in satire and persiflage, or in imitating the oddities and peculiarities of others. The slightest anecdote related by a Russian of the lower class, is always accompanied by the liveliest mimicry, and on a thousand occasions he shows himself as a ready speaker and actor. Nevertheless it is a fact that all the harlequins and jesters who travel about the Russian fairs are foreigners — chiefly Germans and Italians. The greater part of these worthies are stupid enough, like many a journalist, whose profession makes it daily incumbent on him to show his wit. The crowd follow, however, laughing aloud wherever the music from the balcony of a theatre announces that such a one is about to exhibit. Perhaps the very peculiar Russian spoken by these Neapolitans and Hamburgers may make them comic in their own despite, for it is certain that the natives seem excessively diverted by them.
Among the Petersburg Bajozzos, however, there was one who had a great fund of humour, but he was a native Russian.
In the front of the booths and theatres swarming with the tea-drinking, nut-cracking pedestrians, there is always a broad space reserved for the equipages of the grandees, who make their appearance about noon, to see the fair. A universal driving in carriages takes place regularly in the " butterweek" at the Katsheli, the Easterweek, and on the first of May, throughout Russia. On their estates, the wealthy Russians and their guests enjoy these " Gulanies" in the evening ; every thing that can be called horse or vehicle is put in requisition ; droshkies, kaleshes, chaises, landaus, hunting and provision carts, are m-ounted by the whole domestic population, and away they go coaching it through the country.
The enormous number of equipages in a Russian city, where, from a tailor of any eminence upwards, every body keeps one, renders these Gulanies very amusing. The luxury in this respect is greater in fact in some
A thousand times I have been offered " grjishneviki," a disgustmg kind of fasteakc, baked in stinking? oil, and other dehcacies of that sort, with " Ugodno 'ss ?" (" Will you please to buy the very best cakes ?") And often I have felt inclined to answer " Booby ! don't you see I am a gentleman, and do not devour such filth ?" but when I looked at the smiling face, courteously lifted hat, and heard the ready jest, I could only reply " Thank you my merry friend, keep them for yourself."
provincial cities than in the two capitals, as in the former there is no prohibition of four or six horses for certain ranks, and every one is at liberty to make his team as long as he likes, or as he can.
The splendid horses of a Russian equipage do not, however, show to so much advantage in the slow parade step to which they are confined by the throng of carriages on such occasions as the Katsheli, as they do when going at their usual speed. The horses are not so round in fomi as our Holstein and Mecklenburg breed, nor have they the supurb manes and tails of tlie Andalusian race, nor did they seem to mc to step well together. The enormously long traces, too, necessarily drag on the ground in a walk. They are like the ostrich, which makes no very pleasing figure when walking, but which running at full speed with outspread pinion seems borne on the \^^ngs of the wind.
The merchants are known by their brightly furbished kaleshes, drawn by tvi^o black horses, with their manes plaited into a multitude of little tails. The foreign ambassadors generally adopt the Russian style in the number and caparison of their horses. The carriages go so slowly, that their contents may be contemplated at leisure ; fair young maidens, with their pretty French governesses ; countesses and princesses, enveloped in their sables and silver fox furs, reclining at their ease and sun^eying the crowd through their eye-glasses ; boys in the national costume with their tutors ; here a corpulent merchant with his long beard, and his equally jolly spouse ; there a bishop or metropohtan, meditating on the vanities of the world ; then a foreign ambassador, then a nuncio from the pope, reflecting on the increasing power of the northern heresy. Further on, twenty court-kaleshes, each with six horses, and filled with young girls — these are the damsels from the Smolnoi Convent. English merchants, German artists, French doctors, Swedish professors, Tm-ks, Persians, Tartars, even Chinese, and last of all an emperor and his whole court.