One morning I went to call on a lady, and as usual the parties present were railing at the English. At last I asked my friend why they did not say something about the French as well. Her answer was naïve enough: “Oh, we don’t mind them; but I believe they talk about the English so much because they fear them the most. Our people you know,” she continued, “are accustomed to think of the former as a nation they have vanquished, but they were not prepared to see your countrymen in the light of enemies, the two countries have been so many centuries friends.” Certainly the communication with England has existed from time immemorial; even in the remotest ages commerce was carried on between the two countries, although it was only _established_ in the reign of Ivan IV.; and it may be remembered by the reader of Russian history that the daughter of Harold the Unfortunate married a Russian prince.[26] I remember a gentleman near Orenburg informing me that, in digging among the ruins of an ancient Tartar city near his residence, fragments of English pottery were frequently turned up, yet the very name of the town had disappeared and was forgotten. An English gentleman in Moscow once showed me a gold coin, half the size of a fourpenny-piece, of Ethelred, or Ethelbert, I am not sure which, that had been dug up or found near the lake of Ladoga, and, as he supposed, had been dropped there by some British merchant on his way to the fair of Nisny Novogorod, which has been annually held at that place for centuries beyond record, and was in former ages the grand emporium of Europe and Asia, whither merchants of both continents repaired to exchange the manufactures and produce of each. It is still held in the month of July, and lasts six weeks, and is also still resorted to by dealers from most of the nations of Europe to purchase cashmere shawls, &c. I was once very near the place during the time of the fair, but, as it is not considered “comme il faut” for a lady to be seen there, I did not visit it. It is the grand market for tea, which is brought thither by the Chinese to exchange for Russian money. Formerly the Russians gave their own manufactures of cloth instead of paying in coin for the chests of tea, but I was assured that their speculations on that head had been entirely ruined by themselves; “for,” said my informant, “with true Muscovite dishonesty they, finding that the Chinese did not unroll the bundles of cloth, hit upon the ingenious plan of making the first few arsheens of good quality, and the remainder of the veriest rubbish: the unsuspecting Celestials took them as usual without much examination at the word of the western merchants, and carried them back to China, the Russian cheats meanwhile laughing in their sleeve to think how they had taken them in. But they were severely punished the next year, and have been ever since, for the Chinese tea-dealers were not to be duped a second time; they attended the