one more attempt to regain power in 1827, and their factiousness so irritated the Emperor that he resolved to reduce the Moldavians to the most absolute political and administrative nullity, even to the prejudice of the national prosperity, by emancipating the serfs. The consequences of so abrupt a proceeding were most disastrous to agriculture. In the hope of bettering their condition, the peasants abandoned their old abodes to settle elsewhere, and in this way many villages were left deserted, the lands remained untilled, and the landowners found themselves suddenly deprived of the hands necessary for their work.

In order to remedy as far as possible this untoward state of things, the immigration of Bulgarians and Germans was favoured by grants of the most fertile lands in the Budjiak. The Bulgarians were chiefly seduced at the termination of the war of 1828-29, when the consequences of returning to their olden allegiance to the sultan were depicted to them in the most gloomy colours, and contrasted with the treatment they would meet with under the paternal government of their co-religionaries. Their colonies numbered, in 1840, 16,153 families, and those of the Germans, 1736, in nineteen villages. Several villages of Cossacks and of Great Russians were settled in the same regions; and attempts were even made, with some success, to colonise a few tribes of gipsies.

The reader will see from these details how exceedingly mixed is the population of Bessarabia. The Budjiak numbers among its inhabitants, Great Russians, Cossacks, Budjiak Tartars, Germans, Bulgarians, Swiss vine-dressers, gipsies, and Greek and Armenian merchants. The northern part of the province, on the contrary, is occupied almost exclusively by the Moldavian race, whose villages extend along the Dniester even to Ackerman. Jews abound also in the northern part.

Leaving the townspeople out of account, the Bessarabian population may be divided into four great classes: the nobles, the free peasants who possess lands, the newly-emancipated peasants, and the gipsies. The nobles consist of the ancient Moldavian aristocracy, the public functionaries, retired officers, and a great number of Russians, who have become landowners in the province. To this class we must join the Mazils, who are descendants of the ancient boyars, but whom war and the numerous revolutions that have desolated the land have reduced to penury.

In Bessarabia, as throughout Russia and the Principalities of the Danube, the new generation of nobles have completely renounced the habits of former days. They have adopted the straight coat, trousers, cravat, and all the rest of our western costume, and nothing national remains in their outward appearance. The old boyars alone adhere to their ancestral customs; a broad divan, pipes, coffee, sweetmeats, and the kaif after dinner, are still as indispensable to them as loose robes and a capacious head-dress.

The most charming thing in the Bessarabian villages is the extreme cleanliness of the houses, which are generally surrounded by gardens and thriving orchards. Enter the forest dwelling, and you will almost always find a small room perfectly clean, furnished with a bed, and broad wooden divans covered with thick woollen stuffs. Bright parti-coloured carpets, piles of cushions, with open work embroideries, long red and blue napkins, often interwoven with gold and silver thread, are essential requisites in

every household, and form a principal portion of the dowry of young

women.

The women are also well treated, and kept in their proper places. Taking little or no part in field labours, they become exceedingly industrious housewives. They are all clever weavers, and display great art and taste in making carpets, articles of dress and linen. The great object of emulation among the women of every village, is to have the neatest and most comfortable house, and the best supplied with linen and household utensils.

The towns are neither large nor numerous. After Kichinev, the capital, the most commercial are Ismail, Remy, Novo Selitza on the Austrian frontier, and Skouleni and Leovo on the Pruth. The Austrians used to draw as many as from 12,000 to 15,000 horses every year from Bessarabia for her cavalry; this fell in 1839 to less than 3000, and latterly has been null.

The fortresses are Ismail and Kilia on the Danube and Khotin, Bender and Ackerman on the Dniester. The fortress of Ismail is famous for the sieges sustained in it by the Turks against Suwarof. Its fortifications have been strengthened by Russia, and she keeps in it generally a numerous garrison, and a well-supplied artillery. The flotilla of the Danube is also generally stationed at the foot of its walls. The fort of Kilia is now quite abandoned.

The fortress of Khotin is half of Genoese, half of Turkish construction. The citadel or castle is an irregular square, flanked by enormous towers. The Turks and the Russians have added new fortifications to the old works, without, it is said, increasing the strength of the position. In the present state of military art, Khotin is of no importance whatever. Commanded on all sides by hills, and situated on the very edge of the Dniester, it would not resist a regular siege of a few hours. The walls consist of courses of brick and cut stone, and bear numerous Genoese inscriptions. Over the principal gate are seen a lion and a leopard, chained beside an elephant bearing a tower. The doors and the uprights of the windows are adorned with verses from the Kuran. The great mosque of the fortress has unfortunately been demolished, and nothing remains of it but its minaret, which stands alone in the midst of the place, as if to protest against the vandalism of the conquerors. On the other side of the Dniester, at a short distance from the river, is Kaminietz, the capital of Podolia.

Bender and Ackerman likewise possess two castles of Genoese and Turkish construction; the latter, situated on the delta of the Dniester, has been abandoned; the former, which stands on the main road to Turkey, is duly garrisoned. Between Bender and Khotin, on the banks of the Dniester, are the ruins of a fortress called Soroka, altogether different from any other in that part of the world. It is a great circular enclosure, having four towers, which project externally in a semi-cylindrical form. Between the two towers, on the river side, there is a fifth, which commands the single gate of the castle. The walls have embrasures in their upper parts, and a few openings at various heights. All round the walls in the inner court there is a circular range of apartments on the ground, in tolerable preservation, and consisting of ten casemates, lighted only from within. Above this range are the remains of an upper

story, which served with the towers for lodging the garrison. The whole building exhibits the greatest solidity, and the mortar is wonderfully hard. The fortress never had ditches; its strength lay in the height and thickness of its walls. The only entrance is towards the Dniester, four or five yards from the scarf, that flanks the river. No inscriptions on the walls, or sculptures of any kind, exist to fix the date of this interesting ruin.

The great tasks to which the allies will have to direct their combined efforts in the existing war with Russia is by common consent the restoration of Finland to Sweden-supposing the Swedes to become active allies in the war-and the expulsion of the Russians from the Danubian Principalities, the mouth of the Danube, from Bessarabia, the Crimea, and the Transcaucasian provinces. In every one of these undertakings the allies are supported by the wishes and desires of the native populations, and unless Russia secures herself by a timely peace, or Austria and Prussia intervene successfully in the Tsar's favour, the result of the war will most undoubtedly be her curtailment of these unjust conquests. It is not indeed desirable, now that war has been entered upon, that peace should be concluded upon any other terms. As to the question of Central Asia, we entertain upon that subject totally different feelings to what generally prevail, more especially among Anglo-Indian Russo-phobists. We cannot but imagine that it will be better for the interests of civilisation and general humanity that such marauding, slave-capturing, and murdering tribes as the Tartars of Khiva and Bokhara should be reduced to some sort of bondage. The Anglo-Indians will not, nor could they, undertake such a task. The Russians, who have already brought the Kirghiz, the Yaiks, and so many other Tartar tribes under the sway of a more or less civilised rule, seem pointed out by Providence as the future rulers of the fertile valleys of the Amu, or Oxus, and of the Syr Darah, or Jaxartes. Already they have their strongholds on the latter river, and the first ships they launched on the Sea of Aral discovered therein a large island, well-stocked with animals, the existence of which was actually unknown to the natives! Are these the people to hold regions so rich in the gifts of Providence, so neglected by man, the men who put Connolly and Stoddart to the most cruel death, and who hold thousands of Russians in the most degrading bondage!

With regard to the future fate of the Danubian Principalities, the Transcaucasian provinces, and the Crimea, the subject will require further consideration. So many strange and little anticipated incidents will arise out of the war amid the heterogeneous populations of Turkey in Europe, that the less said at the present moment the better. We have, however, indulged in a few words regarding Bessarabia, and it may be as well to remark that the Transcaucasian provinces are by no means Turkish, nor ever were. They are not even Muhammadan. The Gurdji, or Georgians, who occupy almost the whole of the peninsula south of Caucasus, between the Black Sea and the Caspian, are a people of no slight historical and commercial renown, who had their own dynasty at the time of the invasion of the Greeks under Alexander the Great. This dynasty was known by the unpronouncable name of Mtskhethos. Other dynasties succeeded one another till Miriam, son of Khusru, having married a daughter of Aspaghur, the last of an Armenian race of kings, he embraced Chris

tianity, and his example was generally followed in 318. The first Christian dynasty was followed by that of the Bagratians, under whom Georgia fell successively under the dominion of the Arabs and Persians, the Emperor of Constantinople, Genghis Khan, and Timour. Nevertheless, a king designated as George VII. drove all the Muhammadans out of the country in the fifteenth century, and re-established the Christian religion in his dominions. His second successor, Alexander I., paved the way for the downfal of Georgia, by dividing the kingdom among his sons. The Turks on one side and the Turkmans on the other, seized upon the frontier territories, and their princes were driven to seek the aid of their co-religionaries the Russians. The latter obtained a further footing in the country by two successive invasions of the Persians, and ultimately succeeded in extending their rule undisputed, except in the Caucasus, to the banks of the Araxes.

It is needless to speak here of the long endurance, tried bravery, and national gallantry of the Caucasian mountaineers. They are deserving of all honour and all praise-as auxiliaries to the Turks they will be invaluable; they have held their own, and proved themselves worthy of their mountain eyries and fastnesses-but neither they nor their country are in the same predicament as Georgia, Imeritia, Guriel, the Crimea, Bessarabia, and the Danubian Principalities. Of their most gallant tribes, the Tcherkesses, or Attaghai, as the Circassians love to call themselves, Dr. Clarke wrote in his time, " they are a horde of banditti inhabiting the region whence the Cossacks originally descended;" nor can anything much better be said of the other tribes, even of the brave Lesghi, followers of Schamyl. These predatory and warlike habits have gained in dignity by long exercise in a patriotic cause, but would stand much in the way of their ever being permanent and honourable allies in time of peace to powers high in civilisation and punctilious in points of principle. So also of their country, it possesses resources and commands lines of communication, which it would be desirable for the sake of general civilisation to see held by a hardy, generous, honest race of mountaineers like the Swiss; but it has neither the fertility, the climate, nor the capabilities which would render the countries enumerated in connexion with it, under a benign, liberal, enlightened, and yet efficient rule, among the most prosperous and the most flourishing in the world.

No country nor region in the East presents itself more strikingly under the latter aspect than the Crimea. It is a land of peculiar fertility, wondrous fine climate, and unbounded natural resources. Under the Greeks, the Khersonites, and the Genoese, this favoured spot centralised the commerce of the Orient. We must return to a consideration of its peculiarities-its past condition-its strange successive political phases, and its great natural and local capabilities. If the allies must have a material guarantee for indemnification of expenses incurred in staying the unprovoked aggressions of Russia-none so compact, so available, or so useful, in a political, military and naval, as well as in a commercial and economical point of view, present themselves to compare for a moment with the Crimea.

THE REAL STATE OF THE CASE, SET FORTH

BY MRS. MACTURTLE.

I AM of a very kind and conciliating-I may add, of a very patient and forbearing disposition; yet there are some things that go far entirely to change one's nature; and mine, perhaps, may have been a little disturbed by the existing state of affairs.

Mr. MacTurtle, my husband, has a very decent income. What with the ten thousand pounds I brought him, five more (in which we have a life-interest) left by Mr. Biggs, of the Treasury, his official salary as Commissioner of-(never mind what Board)-for which he gets the usual twelve hundred a year, and his picking-up as a Director of the Inscrutable and Tremendous Assurance Companies, we make up, clear of income-tax (that is to say, before Mr. Gladstone doubled it), something like two thousand a year.

Upon this, you will say, we ought to live pretty comfortably, and I don't deny that we always have done so, up to a certain point. But when one's girls grow up and don't go off quite so quickly as one expected, and one's boys, though "provided for"-as people say-can't make their pay and allowances suffice, and are always coming down upon "the governor" for something extra, it requires a little more, I think, than two thousand a year to make things as pleasant at home as one could wish.

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Not that I mean to complain of Mr. MacTurtle. He works hard, as he often tells me, for what he gets (though I never heard of any Government Commissioner sinking under his labours, or of a Director of anything becoming a martyr to his exertions), and, of course, he has a right to give dinner-parties in his own house" (these are his own words); it may also be desirable for him to subscribe to three different clubs (though one, I think, would be sufficient for me, if I were the father of a family); and I never raise any objection to his joining Blackwall parties, or going to Epsom and Ascot (without us), or shooting in Scotland (that wretchedly selfish amusement, in which ladies can have no share) during the autumn vacation. But these things (as I sometimes observe to Mr. MacTurtle) cost far more than the little dance I give at Christmas; the déjeûner (dansant also) in June (for the whole expense of which I regularly contract with Gunter); my girls and I must have dresses, if we wish to appear commonly decent when we go into society (and how necessary society is when one has four girls to marry every mother with a heart well knows); and if Mr. MacTurtle thinks himself obliged to keep up his three clubs (though, as I said before, one appears to me quite enough,—indeed, I don't see that a married man has any occasion for a club at all-he has the newspapers at his office, gratis), he surely can't refuse me my brougham, or the girls their season-tickets to the Horticultural, the Botanic, the Ancient Music, and one or two other places where, if we are to live in the world, we must show ourselves now and then. Then I am sure Mr. Mac Turtle need not reproach me (I don't accuse him of doing so in direct terms, but there's a way of saying things) if what one thought was a match falls