Count A was perhaps the most comprehensive collector that ever existed. There was scarcely a class of objects, living or dead, to which he had not devoted a division of his museum. Of shells, insects, plants, birds, and minerals, he had great quantities, and some of great value. The greater part of the collection of the celebrated circumnavigator Foster, was in his possession. His collection of precious stones was one of the completest that had ever been seen, and was valued at a miUion-and-ahalf of inibles. He was continually increasing and enriching' it by the aid of the Jews of Odessa, from whom he purchased rings, necklaces, and bracelets, which he deprived of their stones to place in his cabinet. He possessed also a valuable collection of every kind of wood. To these he had allotted large spaces where they were garnered up, not in small specimens only, but in beams and whole trunks of trees. The rarest •woods were found among them by the cabinet-makers after the count's death, when they were sold by auction. His collection of birds was so large, that he kept a stuffer constantly at work for him. Yet more even than objects of natural history, the productions of manufacturing industry seemed to interest him. He went so far in this respect, that it would be necessary to enumerate every article in a Leipzig fair, if we would name all the count's presses contained. He had samples of every possible cloth and stuff in pieces of four ells length. In order to ensure a supply of every novelty of this kind, he had correspondants in Paris, Brussels, Hamburg, and other towns, who sent him specimens of every kind, in pieces of four ells. He was a great connoisseur in the productions of the loom, and could give very interesting lectures on that subject when he opened his treasures to any one, which was very rarely the case. Those parts of his collections that he seemed to cherish most were his locks and his buttons. In the former, every possible kind of bolt and lock, secret and non-secret, was to be found ; some, of his own invention. The button collection was probably unique. It contained the buttons of all the innumerable Russian uniforms, from the lowest soldier and clerk, to the greatest general and minister ; all that are now or that ever were in use among men or women, from the most elegant little sleeve button, to the button as big as a plate worn in the last century ; all and every button, in use in every nation wild or tame. It was a sure way to the count's favour to send him from some old wardrobe any form of button that he did not already possess. The count also played a little on the piano, and had therefore devoted one hall to musical instruments, in which the ceiling was thickly hung with fiddles, and the floor choked up with pianoes of the oldest and the newest models. The greatest intrinsic value was hidden in the drawers of a chest in his cabinet, where he had heaped together three himdred valuable snuffboxes, worth above a million.
His furniture magazine surpassed any thing of the kind Odessa had to show, and when on. the purchase or building of a new house, a number of tables, chairs, and presses of various kinds were withdra\Mi, the diminution was scarcely perceptible. The fm'niture of his private cabinet was in the same taste as his chimneys, that is, covered with hieroglyphics, dragons heads, and all kinds of fantastic carving. His collections of various kinds were indeed so numerous and so large, that his most intimate friends were very imperfectly acquainted with them. Some he showed so seldom, that his house physician in twenty-five years' service saw the whole but once, and there was one room in his house that he never opened to any human being. What he did in this cliamber or what it might contain was never known ; of course his retainers whispered of some great mystery therewith connected.
Of the living part of his collection, besides the fine^st cattle, horses, sheep, and swine, he had three or four aviaries, wherein sung, chiiiK-d,