galaxy of generals, brilliant with plumes, embroidery, and decorations, galloped into the arena. His Imperial Majesty was received with three roulades of trumpets, and the presenting of arms, while he saluted. I was much struck with the noble appearance of Nicholas. In height, he seemed to be upwards of six feet, and of athletic make, his features Roman, and his nose aquiline. He sat on his horse well, and wore a cocked hat, with a white and yellow feather, a plain green coat, with a pair of gold epaulets and green trousers, fitting tight to the shape, with an edging of red down the outer seams. His sword was an infantry one: The Grand Duke is of the same powerful make as the Emperor, and was similarly dressed. His features are Russian, and he much resembles the late Emperor Alexander.'

After the troops had been reviewed, and captain Alexander presented, the Emperor" wrapped himself in a quilted cloak, seated himself in a handsome single-horse sledge, with a richly-dressed Ivostchich, and glided off at a gallop towards the Winter palace."

But to turn to more important matters, in which the book is far from deficient. War, the royal game of war, is the sport of the Russian autocrat. A vast camp supplied by slaves or serfs, seems to be the correct description of the Russian empire. The author reckons the army of Russia, enumerating its different bodies, and including the irregulars, at a million of men. The troops are perfect at drill, neatly trimmed, and well clothed, but fed upon black bread and salt. Obedient and docile, they follow wherever and against whatever they are led, but they appear to want all the vigour and spring of better fed persons; they look up to the colonel as their father and he generally considers his regiment as his children; they listen to him with reverence, and hang about to hear the words that drop from his lips.

But with all the cares and attention bestowed upon the Russian troops, they seem to make but inefficient armies; in the late war with Turkey they succeeded, but chiefly because they were opposed only in two places with any vigour, at Shoumla and Varna, Before the latter place, we learn upon the authority of captain Alexander, that the Russians lost seventy thousand men; disease, of course, was a great consumer of this tremendous mass of physical existence. The two campaigns, cost the Russians altogether upwards of two hundred thousand men! And in this second one, it seems pretty clear they would not have managed any better than in the first, without the succour and diversion supplied by admiral Greig's fleet in the Black Sea, giving due credit to the masterly arrangements of Diebitch the Balkan-passer, whom the Russians call their petit Napoleon. But what can be expected from men who eat

only black bread? "From the indifferent food on which they are accustomed to subsist," says captain Alexander, "they are much inferior in physical strength to our men; and as to reckless gallantry, either displayed in storming a breach bristled with every engine of destruction, or cutting out from under an enemy's battery, our soldiers and sailors will ever bear the palm from all competitors,"-Russians at least. When the author was confined in quarantine at Odessa, he had an opportunity of seeing some British sailors during some very severe weather, and the contrast of the English and Russian sailors was very remarkable. "Whilst the latter stood shivering in a corner in their great coats, the blue-jackets formed two sides, pelted one another at a famous rate with snow-balls, and practised all manner of practical jokes on one another when they landed for their provisions." The children of the sea thus discoursed-"I'm blest if this i'nt thundering cold," said a stout fore-top-man to his mess-mate. "D-n it, it would not be Russia without snow," said the other. "Suppose they let us freshen hawse with a gallon of rum ?"-" Where are we to get it? Pigtail-juice is the only liquor we'll have till we go aboard -but keep a look-out for the bears-I say, won't we have a crack at them? D-n me but I'll have a fist in the fun! Curse the frost! Beat to quarters and let's have another shy at the snow-balls-Fire away, my men!" Sweet as when the Nereid winds her sounding shell, is this prattle of the boy-dolphins. The Slavonian race listen and obey: such is their habit.

After sailing about a good deal with admiral Greig, and witnessing a considerable number of successful descents on the shore, the author procures means of being forwarded to Headquarters; where, after incurring some awkward suspicions, he is at length introduced to the field-marshal Diebitch.

'After making myself as gay as the uniform of the 16th would enable me, I proceeded to the residence of Diebitch, who occupied a suite of rooms in the same house to which I had been conducted in the morning. On mounting the stair-case I was shewn into a large hall, open on one side; in this about a dozen officers were promenading, dressed in their green surtouts and wearing their swords. Several came up and spoke to me, and examined my regimentals with great minuteness. In a few minutes a side door opened, and a personage advanced towards us, on seeing whom, all the officers fell back to attention, and saluted him with repeated bows. The object of their respect was a little man with an aquiline nose and florid complexion; his hair was dishevelled and streamed from his head like a meteor. He also was dressed in a green double-breasted surtout and trousers, and wore round his neck the cross of St. Andrew, and at his button-hole the black and yellow ribband

of St. George. Advancing towards me, bowing, he said he was happy to see me in a camp. This was Diebitch Zabalkansky.

'We then adjourned to the dining-hall: it was a comfortable room, with a divan round three sides, the walls painted with flowers, and the roof of trellice work; in the centre, a fountain poured out a gurgling rill into a marble basin. The field-marshal seated himself at the head of a long table, and his guests took their places on chairs of every shape. Two general officers were on Diebitch's right and left, and I was placed next to my examiner, Danileffsky. The Russian dishes, which were handed round, were dressed with an over-abundance of rich sauce. Not a word was spoken for some time. At last, the field-marshal, after satisfying his appetite, addressed himself to those on either hand.

'The count talked a good deal about the Turkish artillery, and their superiority of practice by land over that by sea. He then turned to me, and asked regarding the Burman and Persian warfare; then touching the pay of officers in India, the amount of which was hardly credited; for a Russian colonel, in command of a regiment, receives about 150l. per annum, whereas many subalterns on the staff in the East receive between 600l. and 800l. The count then said, that though the Russian military system was considered the most perfect in the world, yet that in one point the English was preferable; viz., in a senior department at the Military College, of which officers could become students, &c. &c. &c.

At this entertainment, as at similar ones at which I had been present in Russia, there was hardly a word spoken except by the chief, No man held social communing with his neighbours, but every eye was turned to the count; his remarks were listened to with the greatest attention, and his jokes laughed at, as if by fugle. I made several attempts to draw my neighbours into conversation, but it was unavailing; for it was contrary to etiquette to take off attention from the field-marshal; so, like the rest, I listened to him, arrectis auribus.'Vol. ii. p. 122.

This is not a pleasing picture of Russian military manners, and, by the side of French and English frankness, becomes absolutely odious; it even seems foreign to the character of a soldier, but we presume it is part and parcel of the autocracy.

With all the tremendous preparations of Russia, and the great number of its troops that we hear of at the period of which our author speaks, when they were proceeding against Adrianople (in the beginning of October), there were only eight thousand effective men at head-quarters; for, of the thirty thousand that had crossed the Balkan, at least nine thousand were sick and dying with plague and fever; and thirteen thousand men kept up the communication between the coast, the Balkan, and head-quarters.

Captain Alexander's style is a very careless one, and when he writes his despatches, should that day arrive, we counsel him to

be more careful of his pronoun relatives, and other grammatical proprieties. He makes some apology for negligence, but even a careful perusal of his MSS. must have led him to the correction of a great number of inaccuracies of language.

ART. X.-Chronicles of London Bridge. By an Antiquary. Smith, Elder, and Co. 1827.

Reports from the Select Committee of the House of Commons on the State of London Bridge, and Minutes of Evidence taken before the Committee. 1820, 1821.

Minutes of Evidence taken before the Lords Committees, on the Approaches to London Bridge: and Appendix to the Minutes. 1829.

HERE will have been, by the time this job is done with, an expenditure of some THREE MILLIONS of public money. Let us see for what good end.

A bridge, like every other work of art, is either useful or ornamental, or both, or neither. The bridge between Hyde Park and Kensington Gardens, over the penned-up water which used to trickle through two or three holes in the wall, has been built for ornament only; it was clearly not wanted for utility, The old wooden bridge at Putney has long been useful: nobody will call it ornamental. The Suspension-bridge at Hammersmith is both useful and ornamental: useful as shortening the distance from London to Richmond and Hampton; ornamental in the highest degree, as a beautiful work of art. A bridge that is neither useful nor ornamental, is a Chinese bridge over a royal fish-pond, interdicted to all but royalty, which never sets foot on it. The new London Bridge will be more ornamental than the old one in the eyes of all but antiquaries and lovers of the picturesque. It will be in some respects as useful to those who pass over it, though far less convenient to many, without being more so to any. The increased utility, if any, will be in the enlarged waterway. We shall inquire whether, on this ground, a sufficient case has been made out for demolishing the old structure, with its nineteen irregular arches, and setting up the new one, with its "five beautiful elliptical arches, constructed on the most scientific principles of any arches in Europe:" to borrow the words of a paragraph, which we may suppose somebody paid for very handsomely, as it appeared simultaneously in all the newspapers of one morning. If it should turn out that we have got nothing by it but a pretty toy, it will be worth while to see how much it is to cost, who is to

pay for it, and how the whole concern has been schemed and executed.

The old London Bridge* was begun in 1176, and finished in 1209. It was built on such unscientific principles, that it ought to have been carried away before it was finished, when it was finished, and at any given time subsequently; but partly by the awkward contrivances of barbarous men, partly by its own obstinacy, it has stood six centuries and a quarter, amidst the perpetual prophecies of disinterested engineers that it could not stand any longer: while one bridge after another, on different parts of the same river, in which no son of science had espied a flaw, has wilfully tumbled to pieces, by the sinking of the piers, or the yielding of the abutments, in despite of the most mathematical demonstrations of the absurdity and impropriety of such a proceeding.†

During the six centuries and a quarter of its existence, London Bridge has undergone many changes, and projectors have always been busy in proposing more. The waterway has been contracted for the benefit of the water-works, which wanted a head of water for a fall to turn the wheels; widened for the benefit of the navigation, which wanted a broad and safe passage through the bridge; contracted again for the benefit of the navigation, which wanted a head of water to give a sufficient depth during the latter half of the ebb. These two last wants of the navigation, being incompatible, have oscillated in petitions and counter-petitions, for keeping up the head of water, or for making a clear waterway. Committee after Committee of the

Previously to this stone bridge there was a wooden bridge, which had existed, as some suppose, from 994: having of course required and received great and frequent repairs.

†The bridge over the Thames at Staines is a notable instance of this perversity in brute matter. About thirty years ago there was, at this place, a wooden bridge, which was condemned, and a stone bridge of three arches was built just below it. This was scarcely finished, when the piers sunk, and the arches cracked; luckily in time to stop the removal of the condemned wooden bridge, which, it was discovered, might be trusted till another new bridge was completed. It was now taken for granted that the bed of the river could not support piers, and an iron bridge of one arch, with comely stone abutments, spanned the Thames with infinite grace. But this again had scarcely been opened, when, under the pressure of a herd of cattle, the arch stove-in the Middlesex abutment, and again, luckily, in time to stop the removal of the wooden bridge, which, it was again found, would serve till the completion of a third new edifice. This was a wooden bridge with an iron railing; of which the piles rotted with a celerity quite edifying and now, after repeated repairs, this is condemned in its turn, and another stone bridge is in progress, and nearly completed, which will of course last till Doomsday.