[Footnote 21: Potemkin was created by Catherine II. Prince of Tauride, with the title of Highness, an honour rarely bestowed in Russia, and which he had fully deserved by his exertions in rendering Russian the provinces which, only a few years before, were under the dominion of the Crimean Tartars. All South, or New Russia, offers at every step records of the administrative genius of Potemkin, who, if at the outset of his career he was indebted for the favours of his sovereign to his personal appearance (which was remarkably handsome, notwithstanding a cataract in one eye), succeeded in justifying those favours by his talents, which give him an undoubted right to rank amongst the greatest statesmen of Catherine's reign--a reign which abounded in great statesmen.] [Footnote 22: The author alluded to is _Von Wiessen_, who, in his writings (particularly in two comedies, the "Brigadier," and the "Young Nobleman without Employment,") ridiculed the then prevailing fashion amongst the Russian nobility of despising national and blindly following foreign (particularly French) customs.] [Footnote 23: Ukraine, i.e., the Borders, an appellation which was of of yore given to the country now called Little Russia, which formed, in fact, the border between the territories of the Czar of Muscovy and those of Poland, the Sclavonic provinces under the dominion of Austria, of the Sultan of Turkey, of the Khans of the Tartars of the Crimea and of the Golden Horde (residing along the Volga). The name of Ukraine is, down to this time given to Little Russia by its natives, they considering it derogatory to acknowledge their country to be smaller than Great (Middle) Russia.] TARASS BOOLBA: FROM THE RUSSIAN OF NICHOLAS GOGOL. I. "Well, son, turn round! let me see thy back! What a queer figure thou art! What priest's cassocks have you got on? And do all of you at the College dress like that?" These were the words with which old Boolba greeted his two sons, who, after completing their education at Kieff, had just returned to their father's house. His sons had just dismounted from their horses. They were two strong lads, who still looked from beneath their brows as young collegians are apt to do. Their manly healthy features were covered with the first down of hair, unacquainted as yet with the razor. Such a greeting on the part of the father, put them to great confusion, and they stood motionless, with their eyes bent down on the ground. "Stay, stay a bit; give me leisure to look at you," he went on, turning them round; "what long coats! what coats, indeed! Never in the world were such coats! Here, let one of you just try to run! We shall soon see if he does not fall, and get his legs entangled in his skirts." "Don't laugh at us, father, don't laugh," said at last the elder son. "Look at the haughty fellow! and why should I not laugh?"