In the cases containing Lieberkuhn's preparations are some specimens quite unique in their kind. Among other things there are some excessively fine injections of many of the minutest vessels of the human body, done by the late Professor Lieberkuhn, of Berlin. Every injection is enclosed with a microscope of its own, through the glasses of wliich the most inteicsting and wonderful perspective is afforded into the fathomless depths and sliuio.-jitlcs of a morsel of fat, or of a scide of the skin. In one of the microscopes the objects are tlie pores of a square hnc of a liuman gall-bladder ; into the most delicate arterial divisions and fibres, imperceptible to the naked eye, Professor Lieberkuhn has injected some fluid so subtile, that every thread is as perceptible as those in a fine piece of embroidery. It is a pity the whole human frame cannot be in like manner contemplated, thus enlarged and Lieberkuhnized^ with all its mechanism at work ; that the effects produced by the raging of the passions in the ramifications of the vessels might be studied, together with the impulses of virtue and of thought upon the web of our nerves. Spirits so fine, and hands so dehcate as Lieberkuhn's are not often bom ; and it is much to be lamented that the recipe for the preparation of the red material used by him for his injections should have died w^ith him.
The collection of human skeletons is very complete ; there are not less than forty specimens varying from the embryo, five inches long, to the full development of the organization. They are arranged on stages in the hall ; which contains many other things calcidated to awaken the zeal of a former professor of the University of Kasan, who, when he heard of the godless work carried on by the anatomists in the institution under liis charge, ordered an immediate stop to be put to it, caused all the human remains of bones and skeletons to be collected, and then had them buried.
The same Isvoshtshik who had brought me to the university, drove me also to the Synodalniya Typographia (Printing-office of the Synod), which I had the permission of the director to inspect. As children want counters to reckon with, the Russians cannot get on without the help of tlieir reckoning tables. If these are not at hand, they imagine them and push the beads to the right and left till the desired result is obtained. When I asked the director how many books were printed at his offic6 in the year, he moved the beads with great rapidity on his board and reported the numbers. In 1836 his presses sent forth seventy-six w^orks, of which 261,000 copies were thrown off, containing 1,333,000 sheets, to be sold for 360,000 rubles. The principal work was the Slovenskaya Asbuka (the Slavonian A-B-C-book) which alone took up nearly a third of the immber.
The Synodal Printing-office is remarkable as being the oldest in Moscow, and indeed in Russia. It was founded in 1563 by Ivan IV. This date is inscribed in large figures over the building, although the greater part was burnt down in 1812 ; but it was rebuilt in the old style, — a most unwise expedient, for if there is any good to be derived from a conflagration, it is the destruction of old, inconvenient forms, and the opportunity afforded for the introduction of a better style of architecture.
We nmst not, of course, come to the Synodal Printing-office in Moscow, founded 300 years ago, and which in 1812 again assumed the robe of the middle ages, to study the progress of Russian printing. The ancient venerable Slavonian writings, clinging so fondly to what is old, that they are still printed in the primitive letters brought to the barbarian Slavonians by Kyryll and Methodius, 1000 years ago, are naturally slow to adopt improvements in machinery, which being innovations are very unwilHngly admitted at aU. The presses in this establishment are all constnicted after antique models, in which more oak than iron is used. Even the little "quick press," introduced here in 1830 from the Alexander machinemanufactory in St. Petersburg, groans fearfully mider its work of enlightenment ; one may perceive by ihe clang and clatter, how very tedious it must find the task of bringing old Slavonian A-B-C-books into the world. Some radical defect there must be in the machine, for every sheet came out notched, and with a fold in it.
Not only the types with which the old Slavonian church-books are printed differ from those of profane presses, but the whole manner of setting them differs likewise. The letters are taken up with the left-hand, and the whole manual labour, even to the minutest detail, has its antique peculiarities. Unfoiiunately the time was too short for me to find out the why and wherefore of these peculiarities.