A nobleman’s mansion contains as much beautiful furniture, as many articles of taste and luxury, as we could see anywhere else; the apartments are, generally speaking, much larger and loftier than with us; the whole of them are thrown open for the reception of guests and for the free circulation of the air; and a long suite of rooms thus disclosed has a very pretty perspective effect. The floors are not covered with carpets, but are composed of parquet, or inlaid oak; very often each room has a floor of a different design; the doors are shaded by rich portières, matching the window-curtains of each room; splendid chandeliers are everywhere suspended from above; many of the ceilings are richly painted in fresco, and a great deal of gilding adds to the effect; the chairs and sofas are covered with velvet or flowered silk of the most beautiful and delicate colours; marble statues and elegant vases are placed here and there, with objects of virtù, &c. The lady of the house has a boudoir which is often a complete gem; the splendid furniture, covered with light blue or rose-coloured satin or brocade; the inlaid floor partly covered with a Persian carpet; the tables in marqueterie, enamel, and ormolu, on which elegant trifles of the most exquisite taste are placed; fine and valuable pictures decorate the walls, which are probably covered with flowered silk or satin, instead of paper. The gentleman’s cabinet is but plainly furnished in comparison. I do not know where I read, some time since, ‘A Description of the STIES of the Russian Nobility.’ It was certainly with indignation that I did so: whoever wrote the description could never have seen or entered the house of a nobleman either in St. Petersburg or Moscow; nor is it fair or just to speak so of a people, merely because our nation is at war with them; the truth ought not to be affected by any sentiment of hostility we might feel to the government. The above description may serve to give a slight idea of what _really_ exists. The less wealthy of the nobility take a suite of apartments (flats as they are called in Scotland) in some large hotel, built on the plan of those in France. Some of the extremely poor gentry do, it is true, live in a very comfortless state, of which an anecdote has already been given in these pages; their pride of birth preventing them from gaining a livelihood by following any profession, for fear of losing caste; and their natural indolence making them prefer a life of poverty, and almost of want, to the doing anything to increase, by their own labour, the slender means furnished by the serfs of some insignificant estate, who generally are doubly miserable from the pressing indigence of their owners. To these people and their dwellings the names of _sties_ and their usual occupants may be justly applied, for they live in dirt and discomfort, in the midst of filth and vermin that could only find their equal in an Irish lodging-house; they sleep on the