notwithstanding the untiring efforts of her friends and the large sum offered by them for some information concerning her fate. Many of her acquaintances were therefore reluctantly obliged to conclude that in some sudden fit of insanity she must have committed suicide by throwing herself into the water. The mystery was however, at length cleared up. It so happened that a gentleman, a friend of this lady’s, while taking a ride, was accosted by a butitchnick, who asked him if he would like to buy a parasol. It immediately struck him that it was very similar to the one which the unfortunate lady had in her hand when she so suddenly disappeared. He therefore told the man to keep it until his return, which would be soon, as he had only to call on an acquaintance. The policeman, suspecting nothing, promised to do as he was requested, and the gentleman rode on. The butitchnick’s surprise may be well imagined when he saw him come back with the police-master and two or three of his men to take him into custody. He soon met with the punishment he so well deserved: he was knouted, and, if he survived, was afterwards to be sent to the mines. No man in Russia can be punished unless he confess his crime, but means are resorted to for making him do so. This man’s reason for committing the murder was his being unable to withstand the temptation offered by the lady’s handsome dress, and he unconcernedly lifted up a part of the floor of his house and showed where he had buried her. In winter the aspect of the streets of St. Petersburg is very different from what it is in summer. Instead of the venders of lemonade, &c., we see the itinerant tea-sellers furnished with a kettle well wrapped up in towels to preserve the heat, and a whole row of glasses in a kind of leathern rack in front of them, slung round their neck in some way or other: their tea finds a ready sale among the groups of red-faced, sheepskin-clad boys and men whom they meet in the street, and the shopmen in the Gostinoi Dwor. Instead of droshskies, the sledges filled with ladies, smartly dressed in gaily-coloured bonnets and fur-lined velvet or satin cloaks, glide swiftly along the streets. The Nevsky Perspective is crowded with belles and beaux, all anxious to display the newest fashions from Paris. The innumerable officers saunter along equally desirous of admiration. Here and there may be seen a nurse in the full splendour of the national costume—gold embroidered head-dress, the resplendent pavoinik and crasnoi sarafane, kasackan, and immense amber necklace, which they wear “pour guérir les humeurs froides,” as they say. The coachmen are conspicuous from their red velvet caps stuffed with wadding and trimmed with gold lace, and their long caftan with red scarf tied round their waist; their strangely cropped hair[2] and bushy beard, all covered with frozen breath, appear as if they were thickly powdered with snow; their horses’ backs are like fleece from the same cause,