On my expressing regret that so many fine buildings should be destroyed, “It seems so at the first sight,” replied my friend, “but it ought to be done for more than one reason, for the sake of the human race thousands of years to come, who would bless the hands that had dealt chastisement to a tyrant, and had shown an example that would be felt to the end of time.” He finished by presenting me with a copy of the imperial proclamation concerning the miraculous preservation of Odessa, which he laughingly bade me keep as a precious document, one of the most wonderful productions of the age, and a most astonishing proof of the extent it was possible to lie in the face of Heaven. I believe that, although I had been acquainted with the family seven or eight years, my friend would not have dared to speak so freely, had he not been aware that the next day I was to leave Russia probably for ever. Whether my friend’s ideas be just or not, I cannot tell; but how can we expect that a blessing will be on a city, every stone of whose foundations was laid at the cost of a human life?[27] The Russians themselves have ever had a foreboding that St. Petersburg will not long exist, and that evil will befal it. Perhaps they feel that the myriads whose clay has long ere this mingled with the morasses into which they were thrown, still cry for vengeance unto Heaven, and that they will be heard at last. When I was on the road to Warsaw, I saw the large army that Russia was sending through Poland to the south and the Principalities; as nearly as I could calculate there were about sixty thousand men, chiefly infantry of the line, in three divisions, perhaps at the distance of fifty versts apart. It was not without a feeling of sincere compassion that I gazed on the poor people’s faces, and thought how few, how very few, of all those would ever return again. One division of many thousands was bivouacked on the plains _à la belle étoile_; most of them were fast asleep on the bare ground, their arms piled up near them, with sentinels guarding different points; videttes were stationed at a distance, looking in their dark coats like bronze statues, with the twilight sky in the background. Here and there were watch-fires, with a few soldiers sitting around; scores of ammunition-waggons and gun-carriages were at a little distance further on, with men standing under arms, and the horses grazing on the scanty grass of the fields close by. I came up with the second division early on the next morning; the soldiers were all marching merrily along to the voices of those in the van of each regiment, who were singing the war-song of the Russian army; and they really seemed, in the excitement of the moment, to have forgotten the scanty rations and infamous treatment they receive, and for which they are compensated by the munificent pay of _nine shillings per annum_! I remarked that the officers were dressed precisely the same as the privates; a small