miserable failure of Napoleon’s stupendous plan of subjugating Russia. In the centre of the market-place they have set up a stone bearing this significant inscription,— “In 1812, Russia was invaded by an army numbering 700,000 men. The army recrossed the frontier, numbering 70,000.” When Napoleon entered Wilna on his fatal march to Moscow, he occupied the same rooms in the episcopal palace that the Emperor Alexander had hastily vacated the day before. We shall not have the same apartments, but we are here at the same season of the year; it was June 28, 1812, when the French army took possession of Wilna, the Russians having evacuated it in the night. We had been riding eleven hours steadily, yet the cars were so comfortable, the road so smooth, and the motion so easy and gentle, that we had suffered little fatigue. The scenery had been improving. The country was more uneven, rolling, and actually rising sometimes to the dignity of hills, until we were able and obliged to pass through a tunnel, being our first experience of the kind in some days, so level had been the regions through which we had travelled. Wilna is surrounded by hills, and enjoys a river flowing out of the valley, and the ravines are filled with birch and larches, giving something of the life and beauty of verdure, which is quite inspiring in this latitude. In the fourteenth century the people here were pagans, and a fire was kept burning day and night at the foot of one of the castle-crowned hills. The ruins of the castle, which was reared in 1323, are still visible on the summit. What a history of war, famine, and fire these intervening centuries have seen. Thirty thousand inhabitants were destroyed by famine in one year, 1710, and five years afterwards nearly the whole town was burned. The people are still impatient of the Russian yoke. They are always ready for an outbreak. In 1831, they tried and failed; and in 1862 they made a desperate effort, and the leaders of the movement were summarily hung or shot.