M. Schnitzler disapproves even of the physiognomy of the Duke. “His nose was too aquiline, and stood out too prominently on his sunburnt countenance, and his features, all strongly marked, were not devoid of an air of pretension.” He objects to his appearing “without a splendid military costume, to _improve his appearance_!” And yet, all this foolery is the wisdom of foreigners. No man, however renowned, must forget “the _imposing_.” Hannibal, or Alexander the Great, would have been nothing in their eyes, except in the uniform of the “Legion of Honour.” His walking, and walking without attendants, through the streets, was a horror, rendered worse and worse by his “wearing a black frock-coat and round hat.” Even when he appeared in uniform on state occasions, “he was equally luckless;” for the _costume_ of a Russian field-marshal, which had been given to him by Alexander, did not fit him, and was too large for his thinness. On the whole, the Duke _failed_, as we are told, to “gain any remarkable success in the Russian salons.” The countesses could make nothing of him; the princesses smiled on without his returning the smile; the courtiers told him _bons mots_ without much effect; and the politicians were of opinion that a Duke so taciturn had no tongue. Still the emperor’s attentions to him continued; and, on the day of distributing medals to the army, he gave Wellington the regiment of Smolensk, formed by Peter the Great, and of high reputation in the service. But he succeeded in his chief object, which referred to Greece; and which ultimately, in giving independence to a nation, the classic honours of whose forefathers covered the shame of their descendants,—and by a succession of diplomatic blunders, has turned a Turkish province into a European pensioner, enfeebling Turkey without benefiting Europe, and merely making a new source of contention between France, Russia, and England. The career of Nicholas has been peaceable; and the empire has been undisturbed but by the guilty Circassian war, which yet seems to be carried on rather as a field of exercise for the Russian armies, than for purposes of conquest. But all nations now require something to occupy the public mind; and an impression appears to be rising in Russia, that the residence of the sovereign should be transferred to Moscow. Nothing could be more likely to produce a national convulsion, and operate a total change on the European policy of Russia, and the relations of the northern courts. Yet it is by no means improbable, that the singular avidity of the Russian court to make Poland not merely a dependency, but an integral part of the empire, by the suppression of its very name, the change of its language, and the transfer of large portions of its people to other lands, may have for its especial purpose the greater security of Russia on the West, while she fixes her whole interest on a vigorous progress in the South.