At times any intercourse between well-dressed people woidd be impossible in Kharkoff, if they were not so well provided with horses and carriages. There are more coaches-and-four and coaches-and-six to be seen driving about here than in six German capitals put together. In the capital of the Ukraine it is quite usual to drive with six horses to visit a neighbour, and the land is often so deep that all six have enough to do. For the non-possessors of carriages there are droshkies to be hired at a more reasonable rate than in the north. For 200 rubles (9Z.) a pair of good horses may be bought in Kharkoff. More than 200,000 rubles, reckoning from the fares and the number of hired carriages employed, must be expended by neighbours in driving about to visit each other — a sum which, in any city of Hke size in western Europe, would go to the profit of the shoemakers.
There are four booksellers' shops in KJiarkoff — three Russian, w^here they sell books by the pound and learning by the ell, and one French, whose owner boasts of valuing his intellectual wares by their intrinsic worth. For liis books he finds a sale by combining with his literary dealings a trade in wine, liqueurs, and cigars. Nevertheless, some progress is making, for Kliarkoff contained but one bookseller fifteen years ago.
Almost every Russian town of any consequence has its public gardens ; even towns like Akerman, in Bessarabia, and places of moderate importance in Siberia. Kharkoff, of course, is not wanting in this particular. These gardens are generally called botanical gardens, probably because young plants and seeds are sold there, or because the Russian public has misunderstood the word. If these gardens are not to be compared with similar ones in German cities, it is certahdy interesting to hear that such things exist at all in Russian provincial towns. The efforts of the government to procure the people all possible opportunities for instructive amusement are hig'lily praiseworthy ; it were to be wished, on the other hand, that the people could be commended for meeting the efforts of tlie government, and zealously profiting by what is offered. The real btitanical garden, lor the use of the university, is in the neighbourhood of tlie one that bears the name.
I went, on my first amval, to an hotel in Nicholas-place, in tlie upper part of the town — a gray house, with an enormous saloon, and a multitude of smaller rooms. They gave me good tea, and the cookery was not despicable. Some larks and nightingales, whose cages were suspended near the great chandelier in the middle, amused us with their song during our breakfast, assisted by a Russian officer, who strummed away on a pianoforte considerably out of tune. The bedchambers were miserably deficient in accommodation ; there were bedsteads without beds, toilets without glasses, and washstands without soap. I asked for a towel. " Ah, sir," said the waiter, an old Cossack, " towels are to be had in Moscow, but there are none here in hotels." Travellers, in short, are expected to bring half their household utensils with them. Portraits of some Greek leaders (Kanaris, Bozzaris, and others )j of Moscow manufacture, after Cossack originals, decorated the walls ; and on the door a large printed placard was nailed, in which a dentist recommended liimself to the pubhc, asserting that he had passed his examination at all the Russian and German universities, and possessed no less than 1 200 certificates from kings, princes, and celebrated men. Twelve hundred make sixty score ; and if this man, for every score of infirm royal teeth, got only an additional dozen of common people to operate upon, he must have had tolerable practice in his time.