at Richmond House upon the subject of the present alarming state of affairs. Lord Bathurst suggested the propriety of resorting to the system of terror of 1793; "nothing but the Pitt system can save us." Hints were dropped relative to the Chronicle. Who is to be the leader? "Lord Castlereagh won't do! Will Canning?"

The Subscription has failed! It is said to be given up by ministers. As a finishing stroke, the paragraph in the Times acts as a closer! "When money was wanting during the last recess of Parliament for a purpose which, considering the state of the country, we blush to describe, the droits of the Admiralty were seized and applied. Where, we ask, are the droits of the Admiralty now?"

London, August 9, 1816.

Those who have the best opportunity for making observations say, that within the last five days a great alteration is observable in the countenance of the Prince Regent; he is become pensive and absent; his mind preys on itself. No longer is he amused with the gorgeous trappings and other gewgaws of his palace. He could no longer bear the atmosphere of the metropolis, and therefore go he must into seclusion somewhere! All those who live on his smiles are continually echoing, how shockingly unpopular he is.'"

The portraits drawn, in the daily papers, of the Prince and the Duke of Gloucester, are rather disadvantageous to the former. These representations are certainly very goading; and particularly in that journal which is emblazoned with the plume of ostrich feathers, called the Morning Herald. The duke is eulogised as possessing all the cardinal virtues, and amongst them his economy of the public money is not forgotten.

The Divorce.-The whole administration of this momentous affair devolves on Leach; a friend of his thus speaks! "How the affair will terminate I cannot say. John Bull is not in a state of mind to gratify royal feelings!"

That is made of "penetrable stuff" is proved by the intolerable apprehensions which have lately embittered every moment. The fever, in the public mind, will not be allayed by the process now going on. You have heard that the Prince Regent's yacht is now being fitted up in a style of great splendour, but for what purpose, neither you nor I know! A report, certainly mightily absurd, is whispered about Carlton House, that H. R. Highness means to pay your side of the water a visit, and then proceed incog. to Paris.

There is a division in the Opposition respecting the projected divorce. Lord Grey is not favourably inclined. As to Fitzwilliam, and his son, Lord Milton, they mean to make a stand against it in the House. Lord Dundas was ordered by the Regent to present a carte blanche to them, but it would not do !

Many reports are in circulation as to the line of policy which the Duke of Gloucester will take. It is supposed by many that he will desert the Opposition. No such thing! The Prince Regent does not calculate upon him, and the duke cannot forget that the prince opposes the alliance with all his strength, calling him and his sister, the descendants of a washerwoman, cannot soon. be forgotten. The Princess Mary declared to the Queen that she would espouse her husband's interest, she having seen nothing but misery resulting from party contests. This will be an effectual check against all interference.

June.-VOL. LXXX. NO. CCCXVIII.

N

London, August 13, 1816.

The droits of the Admiralty are often alluded to when money is required for the exigencies of the state. "The droits of the Admiralty! pooh! why there are none left." So said Mr. S, yesterday, at a private house wherein we dined together. This Mr. S has been lately appointed by government to inspect the accounts; and such was his report as to the state of these droits. The Prince Regent, you may recollect, received 50,000l. and 40,000l. from that source in March last. The Duke of York has also been secretly accommodated from the same fund, and the Queen has had a finger in the pie!

At no period in the history of this country were there such real grounds for alarm as at the present moment. The dreadful state of the provincial towns, from the incalculable number of persons without employment, and without bread, excites the most painful ideas; a tremendous explosion must take place, and at no distant period. Threats are held out by the peasantry against the property of absentees. I should not wonder if their chateaux were to go!

General ——, attached to the staff of the commander-in-chief, said, yesterday, "the picture before our eyes is a hideous one-they are all damnably frightened;" speaking of the court and the ministers.

Cobbett has lately received pecuniary aid from Burdett, who lent him 3000l. the other day. Cobbett has burnt his fingers in buying land. Notwithstanding the gift of prescience he has been done!

The determined adherence of the Duke of Gloucester to the Whigs, galls the prince exceedingly.

Governor Maitland (who has here the character of being a clever man), is said to have advised the ministers to abandon the Ionian Islands.

I was assured last evening, in the most positive manner, that Vansittart would remain in office for another session.

The Post, Herald, Sun, Globe, and British Press newspapers, all teem with articles upon the favourable disposition of the American government. What admirable sources for information they possess !! Oh! Johnny, Johnny! how thou art gulled.

P-ry, the Courier correspondent, said, ere his departure for Paris, at R's there will be a pretty blow-up in the month of October."

Mr. W. Nicholls, M.P., dined yesterday with the Duke of Sussex. He told me that the ministers came to a determination on Saturday last, upon the subject of calling the Parliament together. They have abandoned all intention of again assembling the House of Commons constituted as it now is! A dissolution was proposed and carried in a Cabinet Council, which has been sanctioned by the Regent. This information came from the Duke of Sussex, from motives of delicacy and honour. Wellington left town this morning at four o'clock, direct for Paris. Sir Henry Wellesley has again postponed his journey to Madrid. He said, an hour since, that he should go in September. He professes to have no reluctance, but the ministers have no money!

Another defalcation in the funds-60 for money.

You may buy four good waggon-horses for 40l., which, three years ago, would have fetched 1601.

Five o'clock.-The treasury clerks are making preparations for the expected change!

London, August 16, 1816.

The week has nearly passed over without any event occurring worth recording. The Prince Regent has employed himself in visiting his mamma, a sisterhood of nuns, and his stud at Hampton Court. His R. H. is now rusticating at the Thatched Cottage, amid swarms of rats (not political ones) which occupy the roof of that matchless appendage to the establishment. Here his H. proposes to sojourn until Monday next, when he returns to town, to celebrate the birthday of the Admiral of the Fleet; and thence he goes on a three weeks' tour to Ragley Hall-preparations are making for a fortnight's residence-so says my Lord Yarmouth. About the 25th of September, perhaps, the P. R. will proceed to Brighton, and thence he talks of taking a cruise in the royal yacht. When the accounts, however, come before Parliament, they will find that the gilding the state cabin, and painting the external and internal works (this has nothing to do with the ordinary painting of the ship) have cost full 13007. An idea of the furniture may be implied from the above specimen.

I believe that my last contained an observation made in the leading article of the Morning Post upon the existence of a perfectly good understanding among the Allies, it says, "the excellent Emperor of Russia."

The fact of the Princess Charlotte not attending any of the royal parties lately, verifies what I have already communicated - the report of her miscarriage was very true; Dr. Croft attended her, and he says so.

The last debate in the India House related to increasing the military force in the East Indies. They proposed and carried the question for an increase of thirty regiments, i.e., cavalry and infantry; they are all to be native troops. Will not these troops turn their arms upon their patrons whenever a favourable moment arrives?

The great success of Mr. T. Walsh in improving the human voice, we are told has induced Mr. Vansittart to put himself under that gentleman previous to the opening of the House of Commons.

Sir Henry Wellesley is gone unexpectedly to Paris. He said, in April last, that he should return to his diplomatique appointment at the court of Madrid in May-in May, he said June-in June, July, and on Saturday last. September. Will he go at all?

The Lord Chancellor lately waited upon the strong room; and that if this be the case, his lordship has already suffered for breaking prison, and the law will not allow a man to be punished twice for one and the same offence. If there be any statute in existence which enacts that the party breaking prison may be prosecuted by indictment, or punished in this summary way at the discretion of the gaoler, this would be a valid defence, and it would be only necessary to prove that the marshal had made his election. In that case his lordship's friends may confidently presume upon his success. I do not know what weight there may be in these suggestions, and have no opportunity to consult any authority upon the subject. The trial has excited much expectation. Every horse, chaise, and carriage are placed in a state of requisition for to-morrow. W. Sir F. B, and others of the mountain, are going down to Guildford this evening. Mr. Justice Burrows is expected to preside.

Sir R.

Five o Clock.-Nothing new-Sir R has been again with the Regent upon the same errand as before.

SOUTHERN RUSSIA, AND THE CAUCASUS.*

I. ODESSA AND KHERSON.

SOUTHERN RUSSIA, with its characteristic plains or steppes, its motley population of Cossacks and Kalmucks, Mongols and Tatars; its colonies of Germans, Greeks, Armenians, and Jews; and its peculiar social condition, midway between that which is presented to us by the East and the West; is far more replete with interest and variety, than Muscovy or Great Russia, with its more pretentious aspect, its formal buildings, and still more formal society, alike stamped with the military stiffness and the frigid etiquette of absolutism.

"It is," says Madame de Hell, "on account of the greater liberty which they enjoy there, added to the facilities afforded by a free port, to the indulgence of the national taste for dress, and other luxuries, that the Russians prefer Odessa to St. Petersburg. Odessa is their Paris; and how, indeed, can any one refuse to be enraptured with a town that possesses an Italian Opera, fashionable shops, wide footways, an English club, a boulevard, a statue, and two or three paved streets? Barbarian taste or envy, the Russians think, could alone behold all this without admiration."

Odessa, which has within the last forty years outstripped the halfSclavonic, half-Tatar, cities; Kiev, the holy; the great Novogorod and Vladimir, all celebrated in the bloody annals of the tzars, and already old before Moscow and St. Petersburg were yet in existence; has been indebted not solely to its position and commercial freedom for its rise, but also to the liberal and enlightened policy of Count Woronzov, who, brought up in England, has retained nothing of his nationality except his devoted loyalty to the emperor. In addition to the public works undertaken by this public-spirited nobleman, he devotes more than 6000l. a year to those pomps and entertainments of which the Russians are devotedly fond.

Quitting Odessa, Mr. X. de Hell and his lady started for the countryhouse of General Potier, where it was their intention to pass the winter. This gentleman, a Frenchman by birth, was the proprietor of a farm of 20,000 sheep, which, in a country where all matters are regulated by military rank-a prince royal being a field-marshal at his birth-entitled him to the social status of General.

Posting in Russia is the opprobrium of the country. Not only the posthouses, as in the East, have no beds, but the foreigner who has no legal right to lay his cane over the shoulders of the post-masters, must make up his mind constantly to endure the most scandalous impositions and annoyances at their hands. Neither threats nor entreaties can prevail on the post-master to make him furnish horses, if it does not suit his humour. The epithet "particularni tcheloviek," which is applied in Russia to all who do not wear epaulettes, and which signifies something less than a nobody, is a categorical reply to the traveller's utmost eloquence.

Nicolaïef, which, founded by Nicholas, has succeeded to Kherson as the seat of the Admiralty on the Black Sea, is described as daily increasing at its rival's expense. At the present moment, its great dock-yards

* Travels in the Steppes of the Caspian Sea the Crimea, the Caucasus, &c. By Xavier Hommaire de Hell. With Additions from various Sources. 1 vol. 8vo. Chapman and Hall,

attract a whole population of workmen, whose presence swell its wealth and importance; and its position on the Bug, its new houses, and pretty walks planted with poplars, give it a most inviting appearance; but these favourites of the day have often but an ephemeral prosperity. Witness the once favoured towns founded by Catherine and by Alexander. This is no more than can be expected. The prosperity of cities does not so much depend upon the fostering care of a despotic prince, as upon the circumstances of position, and their social and commercial relations.

Kherson, once a city of great opulence, and the seat of a small but powerful republic, exhibits at present, by the rise of its rival, the melancholy spectacle of a town entirely ruined; its population does not exceed 6000 or 8000 souls, and, expelled from the imperial cities of Nicolaïef and Sevastopol, the Israelites constitute the majority of its inhabitants.

Nothing," says Madame de Hell, "can be more hideous than the appearance of the Russian Jews. Dressed in a uniform garb, consisting of a long robe of black calico, fastened with a woollen girdle, canvass drawers, and a broadbrimmed black hat, they all present so degraded a type of humanity, that the eye turns from them with deep disgust. Their filthiness is indescribable ; the entrance of a single Jew into an apartment is enough suddenly to vitiate the atmosphere."

But while the aspect of Kherson, with its dilapidated houses and abandoned sites, is as dismal as that of Nicolaïef is brilliant and lively, nature still proclaims its superiority in point of position. Viewing the city from a distance, as its rises in an amphitheatre on the banks of the Dniepr, with its numerous belfries, its barracks, and its gardens, one would be far from suspecting the sort of spectacle its interior presents. The Dniepr also, as seen from Kherson, is an imposing object. It resembles a vast lake studded with islands, and the views it presents are described as being very beautiful, and partaking much of the character of maritime scenery.

II.-DOMESTIC MANNERS OF THE RUSSIANS.

Clarofka, M. Potier's estate, whither our travellers were bound, lay on the other side of the river. The sheep farm is as large as many a German duchy, but instead of the fertile fields and thriving villages that adorn Germany, it presents to view only a vast desert interspersed here and there with the oft-described tumuli-sepulchres of the Scythians of old-salt-lakes, and a few sheep folds.

Clarofka itself, however, was a place of princely sumptuousness, its gardens producing every thing that the most capricious taste could desire, and that in the midst of those steppes where hot winds scorch up every thing during the greater part of the fine season, and which yet have in parts been rendered a source of immense wealth since the introduction of Merino sheep breeding.

During a long winter spent at this interesting spot, Madame de Hell's attention appears to have been chiefly directed to the depravity of the Russian clergy, whose ignorance, she says, is on a par with their vicious propensities. Most of the monks and priests pass their lives in disgraceful intoxication. This deplorable passion for strong liquors is described as being continually on the increase among the peasantry, and with the fondness for dancing, and an inordinate love of eating, constitute the characteristics of the unfortunate serfs.