a diamond, and, in short, behaved quite like a lunatic. At length an officer appeared in the town with troops, and requested speech of the Prince. The latter donned his general's uniform, bade his servants bring the heaviest whip, and then prepared himself for a due reception of the new arrivals. When they entered, he scarce deigned to rise from his chair.

"We have come, Prince Alexis Yurivitch, to make an investigation into your treatment of the Princess Varvara, and your conduct generally," said the Major.

enormous, that it did not appear possible to dissipate it in two generations. Boris certainly did all in his power to effect impossibilities, and lived "as if he had been engaged to ruin the family property"still, the task was too great for him. He lived as an honest and thorough old Rus sian lord, not so rough as his father, but quite as extravagant; and at last died of an indigestion, produced by overfeeding at his club.

When the Prince heard these words, he trembled, and yelled, "I am lost! I am lost!" knelt down to the Major, offered him twenty thousand roubles to spare him, and humiliated himself in the most pitiful manner. The Major asked him several questions, but the Prince rolled his eyes like an idiot, and answered in unconnected sentences, so that the officer saw he was not in possession of his senses, and deferred the examination till the next day. The Prince went to his bed-room, and in doing so was compelled to pass through the picture-gallery. Suddenly he stopped before the portrait of the Princess Varvara, and gave a start; he fancied the head of the picture was nodding to him; he took one more glance, and then fell unconscious on the ground. When he came to himself again, he ordered the servants to paint the face black. He was put to bed, and a barber opened a vein. He asked were the face hidden over, and on hearing it was so, he gave up the ghost.

The family of the princes of Zaboria is extinct. Prince Alexis, when he came into possession of the family estate, was so wealthy, that he was wont to reckon his gold and silver plate by hundredweights, and his ready money by barrels. His reckless extravagance naturally injured his property, and his son Boris, when he came to it, did not find what he had anticipated. Still, his fortune was so

de Krüdener, subscribed large sums for the establishment of freemasonic lodges and the Russian Bible Society, and got rid of about eight hundred souls in this way.

The daughter of this interesting Daniel, the Princess Natalia Danielovna, immediately after her parent's decease, started for Italy, where she resided five-and-twenty years. When a box arrived one day at Zaboria, from Rome, with the mortal remains of the Princess, the family exchequer contained the exact sum of twelve roubles fifty copecks, while the mortgages on the estate was estimated at one million roubles. The deceased Princes had no near relatives, and among the distant ones not one of them loved her sufficiently to accept Zaboria and her Italian debts. The end of the story was this: the estate was brought to the hammer, the son of an ex-waiter at the town hotel bought palace and estate, and the late Princess's creditors received sixty-five copecks in the rouble.

On reading the strange story which a Russian author has raked up for the edification of his countrymen, we can hardly believe that the events he records took place so short a time back as the vaunted eighteenth century. At a period when Russian empresses affected wit, and were in correspondence with one half the Encyclopedia, savages like this boyard could coolly commit the most atrocious crimes, and display the most cynical contempt of laws that are recognized even among savage nations. In his way, this Prince Alexis, who commits murder for a cross

He might travel from Dan to Beersheba and declare that all was barren, particularly in the commercial way; but if there is any region where he would be likely to forget the Ready Reckonor, and to think little about the closing price of the funds, it is that where man measures himself against the giant hills, and discovers that he is a mere pigmy in stature, and an insect in power. When he sees peaks he can not climb, and precipices down which he is afraid to look; when he listens to the roar of the merciless avalanche, or watches the fall of the granite particles which indicate the march of the stealthy but resistless glacier; when he is overtaken by one of those snow-storms which serve so often as the traveler's shroud, or hears the "live thunder" leap from crag to crag, whilst rock and sky are all ablaze with red lightning; then, if ever, the most unromantic wanderer will be likely to confess that there are more inspiring topics in the world than the fortunes of cotton, or the results of the last division in the House.

And not only does nature work upon a colossal scale in all her mountain transactions, but the changes and contrasts she presents are such as can not fail to astonish us poor dwellers on the plains. We set out, after breakfast, from a valley where we leave the heats of summer, and, crossing the frontier line of snow, find ourselves before dinner within the haunts of perpetual winter. Perspiring, we make the plunge from July to January; and, frozen, we return, in the course of a few hours, to the dog-days again. Through forests full of noble trees, and vineyards loaded with luscious grapes, we pursue our morning course; but before long we reach a region where not a shoot of grass is to be seen, and where no vegetable, however hardy in its habits, could be induced to grow. We proceed with the burning beams of the sun playing upon us as fiercely as if we were in India, and yet beneath our feet there may be a mass of ice as thick and solid as if it had been bred in Greenland; the very water in its pools producing such a deadly chill that it curdles the blood in our veins, and seems to drain out all the life from the part immersed. In fact, in the course of a single day, we pass through all climates, run through all seasons, and traverse all latitudes, from the smiling south to the frozen pole. The ends of

the earth are brought together for our benefit, and the wanderer finds that time and space have been magnificently subjugated as if to minister to his passing entertainment.

Now as the tide of adventure has set in so strongly for the hills, we presume that some of our more sedentary readers will not be unwilling to follow us whilst we glance at a few of the chief features and peculiarities of the mountain world. These we may seize in succession (as far as our space will permit) whilst indulging in an imaginary ascent.

The first thing to be done is, of course, to fix upon your mountain. In revolving this question, it is a point of honor with every gallant explorer that he should not allow himself to be determined by any considerations of ease, facility of access, or lightness of labor; on the contrary, he is bound, in justice to his character, to select one which is difficult, obstinate, and, to say the least, slightly dangerous. Should it be a rock on which no human foot has hitherto been planted, he is fairly entitled to a few complacent reflections upon his daring, and the possible advantages which may result to mankind from the exploit. To a practiced cragsman, indeed, there is a peculiar charm about an untrodden peak. It lifts its head with a jaunty, defiant air, which seems to challenge the whole world in general, and the Alpine club in particular. It soars up saucily as if it fancied that it was safe from mortal tread, and would never be touched, except by the eagle's wing, or perchance by the chamois' hoof. But some desultory Briton in search of a sensation arrives in the neighborhood, and learning that the mountain has never been scaled, resolves to take the conceit out of it, or perish in the attempt. Indeed, the cool cavalier way in which some of our countrymen now beard the most truculent mountains frequently astonishes the natives themselves. When Mr. Mathews, Jr., and Mr. Jacomb laid seige to Monte Viso last summer, the guide who was provided for them intimated that he had ascended as far as the foot of the peak, and on hearing that they wished to reach the top instead of the bottom, he and the landlord "burst out into a chorus, of which impossible, inaccessible, frightful precipices, madness, and death formed the principal burden."

The first question, however, being set

tled, namely, upon what hill you shall operate, there remains much to be done before the attack can commence. A suitable storming party must be formed; guides and porters must be engaged; (subject to considerable expostulation in all probability as to expense, for many of the Alpine conductors exhibit as deplorable a weakness for money as British cabmen ;) the undertaking must be duly victualed; ropes, axes, poles, thermometers, and other instruments, must be procured, and then, perhaps, it may be requisite to wait for two, three, or four days, before the rain ceases, and the clouds, together with your own gathering wrath, are dispersed. No wonder that an impatient man groans under such a watery dispensation; for of all dreary things in the world, what can be more trying to the temper than to be shut up in a little, secluded hostelry, whilst your soul is athirst for mountain glory, and compelled to murder time by composing querulous verses, writing lamenting letters to friends, performing little tailoring tricks upon your attire, or studying the aspects of the sky until you grow desperate, and conclude that here at least it is St. Swithin's Day all the year round. Mr. Tuckett, indeed, is of opinion that these intervals of vicious weather are of great service to enthusiastic climbers, who would otherwise "swallow" their mountains at the rate of two or three a week, to the injury of their persons and to the loss of their relish for stately scenery. Rocks, as he intimates, ought to be bolted with discretion, and when a man's appetite for this species of fare has been thoroughly excited, there is a fear amongst the members of the Alpine club that he may become more ravenous than reasonable in his demands.

But at length the elements relent, and the ensuing morning is fixed for our start. Soon after midnight we are astir, for it is one highly objectionable feature in such expeditions that we must set out at an hour which is unknown in lowland life as a constituent of the day, being supposed to belong exclusively to the jurisdiction of night. We push on rapidly through the zone of forest vegetation, and taking our leave of the last-inhabited outpost, enter a region where men never appear but as visitors, and where the graceful chamois may be considered as the lord of the waste. We then reach a spot where blocks of all dimensions are strewn in the

wildest confusion, as if the Titans had been pounding a mountain in order to macadamize the roads to Olympus, but had left their purpose unfulfilled. Over these we clamber, and find ourselves standing in the presence of the greatest curiosity of the Alps. It is a glacier-one of the frozen streams which creep down from the hills with such a slow, passionless movement that they seem to make no decided advance in the valley beneath, and yet travel onward with such prodigious force, that huge stones are carried, like straws on their surface, and rocks are scored and plowed beneath them as if they were composed of mere putty. But having spoken so recently of these singular phenomena,* it may be enough to say that the sight of one of these great white monsters dragging its vast frame through gloomy gorge and crooked defile, suggests as many inquiries to a student of nature as the appearance of the sea-serpent in its proper person would to a ravished naturalist.

For some distance our route lies over one of these icy streams. Rougher traveling, in parts at least, can scarcely be well imagined; for where the frozen torrent has poured over some precipice or steep incline in its bed, it has cracked and shivered into big blocks, which assume the most fantastic forms, from the shapeless berg to the graceful pyramid or obelisk. Amongst these, in the very bowels of the glacier, we may have to thread our way for a while, the procession winding in and out like a captive snake seeking some outlet from its dungeon. Then there are the crevasses, which render locomotion so toilsome, though certainly so picturesque upon the surface. A turnpike road, perpetually intersected by ditches, trenches, rivulets, wells, and chasms, (to say nothing of innumerable toll-gates,) would afford commodious traveling compared with that which the back of a glacier affords. These fractures, which result from the unequal motion of the ice, may be a few inches in breadth or several feet across. They may be clefts of no great depth, or they may penetrate into the very profundities of the mass. Between these fissures the ice frequently runs in a fine ridge, along which it may be necessary to creep with extreme caution, for a single erring footstep would send the wanderer shooting down the

*British Quarterly, October, 1860.