back and forth across the empire--now in the lumbering diligence, now in the luxurious railway train, and many a time and for long distances in rude sledges across trackless wastes and through fearful snows. In some parts of Russia there are seasons when the mere act of travelling is a perilous adventure. In March, 1860, our author, in company with a Russian gentleman, made a dangerous journey of two hundred miles in an open sledge, through a snow-storm of memorable severity. They had been struggling for some miles through drifts and hidden pits, when the driver alarmed them with the cry of "Volka! volka!"--"Wolves! wolves!" Six gaunt-looking animals {112} sat staring at them in the road, about one hundred yards in advance of them. The horses huddled themselves together, trembling in every limb, and refused to move. The Russian, who is known in the book only by the name of Fat-Sides, seized a handful of hay from the bottom of the vehicle, rolled it into a ball, and handed it to our author, saying "Match." The Englishman understood the direction, and as soon as the horses, by dint of awful lashing and shouting, were forced near the motionless wolves, he set fire to the ball and threw it among the pack. Instantly the animals separated and skulked away with their tails dragging, but only to meet again behind the sledge, and after a short pause to set out in full pursuit. The tired horses were whipped to their utmost speed, but in forcing their way through a drift they had to come to a walk, and the wolves were soon beside them. The first of the pack fell dead with a ball through his brain from the Englishman's revolver, and another shot broke the leg of a second. At that critical instant the pistol fell into the sledge as, with a sudden jolt the horses floundered up to their bellies in in deep drift: then they came to a dead stop, and there was a wolf at each side of the sledge, trying to get in. The Englishman fortunately had a heavy blackthorn bludgeon, and raising it high he brought it down with the desperate force of a man in mortal extremity, crash through the skull of the animal on his side of the vehicle; while Fat-Sides coolly stuffed the sleeve of his sheepskin coat down the mouth of the savage beast on the other, and with his disengaged hand cut its throat with a large bear knife. The pistol was now recovered just in time to kill a fifth wolf which had fastened upon neck of one of the horses. The sixth, together with the one that had been shot in the leg, ran away. [Footnote 24: Sketches of Russian Life before and during the Emancipation of the Serfs. Edited by Henry Morley, Professor of English Literature in University College, London. 16mo, pp. 298. London: Chapman and Hall. Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott and Co.]