"The promise that I would hold sacred the confidences of that shattered heart compels me to leave my narrative imperfect. Two days later I embarked on board the steamer _St. Nicholas_, gazing with inexpressible regret at the shores of the Tauric peninsula as they gradually blended with the horizon, their broken outline melting finally into the mists of evening." That Madame de Hell to a habit of close and profound observation, added very remarkable powers of description, will be apparent, we think, from the preceding summary, brief as it necessarily is, of her record of travel in the Caucasus and the Crimea. FOOTNOTES: [5] A verst is equal to 3,500 feet. [6] Except when broken by the war of 1855. [7] A. W. Kinglake: "Invasion of the Crimea," Vol. i., c. 1, 6th edition. [8] See Carlyle's "Biographical Essays, Sec. Diamond Necklace;" also, H. Vizetelly's "True Story of the Diamond Necklace." MADAME HOMMAIRE DE HELL. III. Madame de Hell and her husband spent the winter of 1841 at Odessa. Thence, in the following year, they repaired to Moldavia--a country which was just beginning to revive from the barbarism and desolation in which the Turkish rule had so long condemned it to linger. Under the prudent and energetic management of the Aga Assaki, "The Moldavian Bee" and "The Gleaner" announced the resurrection of liberal thought and the patriotic sentiment in literary articles, nearly all signed by Moldavian names and written in the national language. In the young Princess Morosi, the daughter of the Aga Assaki, afterwards married to Edgar Quinet, Madame de Hell learned to know and love a charming wit and a rare beautiful nature. She studied the French poets with assiduity, and her great ambition was to visit France, little thinking that she would one day become French by her marriage with the illustrious French writer. In the Caucasian steppes our traveller's life had been singularly calm and serene; in Moldavia it was agitated and disturbed by mundane occupations, by official receptions, balls, concerts, dinners, the theatre, and the thousand and one responsibilities of social life. Worn and weary with the monotonous round of pretended pleasures, she frequently looked back with regret to the solitudes of the Caspian. Yet the event which delivered her from it was one that caused her a very keen anxiety. Her husband was attacked by one of the malarious fevers of the Danube, and in order to recover his health was compelled to throw up his engagement and return to France, after some years of almost constant travel and exploration.