The usual parades took place on the 21st of May, the day of the patron saint, Nicholas, and on the 20th of September; but this time it was a special review of the household troops alone. They are distinct from the rest of the army; each regiment has a different uniform. The Life Guards wear white uniforms, with shining gilt breastplates; the Cuirassiers, light-blue tunics, with white, plated cuirass; the uniform of the Jerusalem Regiment is crimson-red, with gilt breastplate. The ranks, from officer down to corporal, are all knights of the Order of St. John, and even the common soldiers are all of the nobility. And every regiment boasts its past, its history, which passes on to the successors as a tradition, and keeps up the glory of its name. The regiment of St. John of Jerusalem was so cut to pieces in two battles that in one battalion only eighteen men were left. The Preobrazsenski Regiment has the proud distinction of having deposed Czar Ivan and set Elisabeth in his place. Every man in the regiment received his patent of nobility. The Ismailoffski Regiment bears on its colors the trophies of seven conclusive battles. At Borodino half the troops remained on the battle-field, and not a single man came home without a wound. These regiments compose the aristocracy of the Life Guards. The rest of the household troops, too, are characterized by a brilliant variety of dress. Hussars in uniforms of the most varied colors, cuirassiers, mounted grenadiers, pontoniers, Cossacks, Asiatic hordes with their fantastic arms, Kirgisians, Kalmucks with their slender spears, their arrow-laden quivers on their backs; Circassians in their scale-armor, with their pointed helmets; and then the long row of cannon, the ammunition wagons (painted green), the pontoons, the flotilla on wheels--and the whole mass drawn up on a boundless plain in squares, in geometrical lines, and advancing, charging, halting motionless as a wall, at the word of command, like a machine. May he not rightly deem himself a god who with a gesture can set all this in motion or make it stand? And they only need a second gesture to charge and dye the ground beneath them with their blood. When the household troops advance from St. Petersburg it means that the army is on a war footing and is taking the field. Then let every man concerned summon all his strength. In the centre of the Field of Mars are pitched the sumptuous tents of the Czar, the foreign ambassadors, and the members of the government; but the Czar himself rides at the head of his suite, and passes the assembled troops in review. As he thus rides past the separate regiments they salute him with welcoming stanzas, in time like the chorus of a giant theatre, with rifle, sword, and lance held rigid at present arms. The Czar's face beams like a day in summer; every one sees again in him the hero of Leipsic. The inspiration of the army has communicated itself to him too.