Description of the Ukraine

The youth of the Ukraine are not softened by luxury. The young Ukrainian, in addition to having received advantages of a high intellectual education, is taught to handle the sabre, to fire the pistol, to hunt wolves, and to tame a wild horse, a feat by no means easy of accomplishment. The Ukrainian ladies are taught music, painting, dancing, and several languages. They are at once graceful and beautiful; preserving their freshness to declining years, uniting to an eastern imagination a persuasive eloquence, and possessing manners amiable and distinguished, and are especially celebrated for the beauty of their eyes, for the most part dark, which attract and burn at the same time; and can almost guide a misdirected traveller in a gloomy night. During ten years' residence in England, I have met only three ladies whose features bear decidedly an Ukrainian impress, namely, Mrs. L. G. Remington, in London, whose father is a governor of a part of British India; Miss Fanny Brandling, at Newcastle; and the dashing and handsome maiden sister of the fair Mrs. Simpson, at the Grieves, the general favourite at Lancaster, known in the neighbourhood under the glorious denomination of a most excellent daughter.*' There is in the Ukraine a singular custom prevalent during the carnival: whole families visit each other, prolonging their stay for several weeks. As many as ten or twelve of these families, or more, are thus often congregated under the same roof; while the vacant houses are left to the care of the domestics. This usage is confined to the upper class; and a sort of rotation is observed in the order of the visitors and the visited. Such a habit of life, although practised only at the season of the carnival, would be scarcely practicable in western Europe; it tends, however, greatly to develope the manners, the happiness, the sociability, the wit, and the eloquence of the Polish nobles; and renders them, without any Exaggeration, the most courteous and attractive in the whole world. The Polish nobles are a singular race of men; outrageously jealous of any encroachment upon their class- privileges, they were yet often despotic towards those of humbler station: their lives were principally devoted to war, political strife personal contests, and aflfairs of gallantry: they must consequently have acquired great skill in the successful management of such matters. These family meetings (termed kuliki), are sometimes productive of domestic troubles and conjugal separations. They are more in vogue in the Ukraine and Polessia, than in Poland Proper.