The spectators are not mere lookers-on on these occasions, but show a lively interest in the progiess of the dance, criticise the perfonners without the least reserve, and frequently enHven their evolutions with a vocal accompaniment. On these occasions a constant fire of bons mots is often kept up. Towards the end of our festivity, when the hilarity of the company was becoming' more and more unrestrained, even the beggars, who had been attracted by the sounds of merriment, began to muster courage, and mingle in the dance. One of them, who was many degrees removed from sobriety, a dirty rogue, with every mark of the vagabond upon him, from his tattered hat down to the torn remnants of his boots, was received with an obstreperous chorus of laughter when he entered the circle to display his abilities on the light fantastic toe. Nothing daunted by such a reception, nor by the incessant banterings of an admiring crowd, he went gaily through his evolutions, and seemed to enjoy the fun quite as much as though it had not been raised at his own expense.
The prettiest Russian dance, however, is the vesnanka^ which can only be danced in the open air. A party of young girls join hands, and trip it away from one end of the village to the other, unaccompanied by any other music than their own voices. One girl acts as leader, determines the ever •varj'ing figure of the dance, and is closely followed by her companions. Now the train advances in a straight line; now it winds into a multitude of intricate mazes; and now again the merry party um-avel the knot into which they have so ingeniously wound themselves, or, joining hands, form a merry circle, moving rapidly round without stirrmg from the spot. The vesn'dnlia never fails to put hfe into the whole village. The old people come into the streets to rejoice in the sprightly movements of their daughters; the children nuister speedily to form their own vesn'dnka^ and the young men are not slow in making up similar parties of their own. Sooner or later it mostly happens that the two sexes join hands, and then the merriment grows fast and ftnious. The perseverance of the dancers on these occasions is wonderful : v^^hen such a dance has once begun it mostly lasts till the end of the day.
Nor were our guests deficient in perseverance. The gay scene was prolonged till a late hour of the night, when the par-ty formed again into procession to return to their village, where they purposed to renew their merrymaking, for no Malorossian considers that less than four days ought to be devoted to a feast that is to exercise so lasting an influence over the remainder of Ixis life.
Immediately beyond cm" garden was an old Malorossian village, that bore the same name as the chateau (Dikanka), and a Httle farther on lay another called Budushtshi. To these two villages I frequently directed my walks, for the purpose of studying the manners of the people, particularly to Budushtshi, which was considerably larger than the other, and was, moreover, not without some historical interest, for it was under the roof of one of its houses that Charles XII. slept on the night before the battle of Poltova. These villages in Little Russia are mostly imbedded in a ravine, and extend generally over a large sj:)ace of ground, containing sometimes as many as five or six thousand inhabitants, and seldom less than two thousand. In the centre of the viUage, on an elevation, stands, usually, the church ; and sometimes, when the village haj^pens to be a large one, there are as many as five or six churches, and these are generally placed so as to produce a pretty picturesque effect. The houses lie scattered about, concealed by a luxuriant foliage, or by the yet more luxuriant weeds, which rise in surprising abundance from the steppe, wherever its soil has been disturbed by the plough or the spade. Without the village, on the plateau of the steppe, are grouped the windmills, of which there are usually from fifty to one hundred, and the whole produces a most pleasing effect when a traveller arrives at the edge of one of these ravines, and looks down from the elevated steppe into the snug little world of a Malorossian village.