The interruption--nay, the paralysis--of commerce occasioned by the present war is another source of exhaustion. Except for ordinary necessaries of life, Russia draws her supplies from foreign countries in exchange for raw material produced from the estates of the nobles. She has such endless supplies of timber that to give an idea of some of her forests, it is said, as a specimen, that a squirrel might hop from Saint Petersburg to Moscow from tree to tree without touching the ground, and that she could, under a rational system, afford illimitable tallow, hemp, and oil; but these sources of wealth are impeded and crippled very naturally when nearly every port she possesses along her limited sea-board is blockaded. A SMALL MONKISH RELIC. No more than a few months have elapsed since the greatest Greek scholar of the day, the Reverend Doctor Gaisford, late Dean of Christchurch, Oxford, was carried to his last resting-place within the walls of the ancient cathedral over which he had presided so many years. The students of the house, clad in white surplices, preceded the remains of their venerated Dean as the procession passed along the east side of the quadrangle, from the deanery to the cathedral. Great Tom had, by tolling every minute (a thing never done except at the death of the sovereign or the dean), announced the decease; and now a small land-bell, carried in front of the procession by the dean’s verger, and tolled every half-minute, announced that the last rites were about to take place. The cathedral clock struck four; the usual merry peal of bells for evening prayers was silent. We strolled towards the cathedral, and finding a side-door open, walked in. The dull, harsh, and grating sound of the workmen filling up the grave struck heavily on our ears, as it resounded through the body of the church. The mourners were all gone; and alone, at the head of the grave, watching vacantly the busy labourers, stood the white-headed old verger; another hour, the ground would be all levelled, and the stones replaced over the master he had served faithfully so many years.