LITERARY SPECTATOR.

CAPTAIN ALEXANDER'S TRAVELS TO THE SEAT OF WAR IN THE EAST *.

INFORHATION could not certainly be presented in a pleasanter or easier form than in this young officer's travels to the seat of war. Gossip. military and social, takes its turn with adventure and de- scription: professional observations are mixed up with personal anecdotes : the scenes are varied, the objects curious, the temper of the author charming, the subject important, and the people he travels among imperfectly known, and in every point of view inter- esting. What would you have more ? The expedition was something Quixotic ; for who but a young and enthusiastic soldier would have encountered in search of in- struction the perils of an Eastern climate and the dangers of a Russian camp ? But is it not better for its dash of Quixotism ? —the ayes have it. The plague spared the young Lancer, but not so the Briarean Autocrat: it was, luckily, only after seeing all he had to see, that he was laid hold of, shut up in a fortress, and ultimately sent off in a sledge to St. Petersburg, to meet the charge of being a Bri- tish spy. The pleasantest of all spies was the Turkish spy, but the British Spy is not amiss. When the Emperor was informed what Captain ALEXANDER had to say for himself, he declared he was extremement !ache, and gave the Spy the honour of an audience. It was of course all a mistake: but it is a very disagreeable country to travel in, where an honest man may be whipped up and sent off a couple of thou- sand miles all of a sudden, in a dreadful hard winter like the last, and then find it is all a mistake.

Captain ALEXANDER crossed Russia from St. Petersburg to the Crimea in summer; and after .sailing about the Black Sea with Admiral GREIG, and marching about Roumelia with Count DIEBITSCH, he was dreaming (good easy man !) of a tour in Egypt, when the Destinies whirled him back again to St. Peters- burg. This winter journey gave the Captain an opportunity of seeing Russia under a new aspect, and, consequently, has en- riched his book; which is the only amende the author is likely to receive, except the audience. Captain ALEXANDER'S report of Russia and Russians is favour- able—more so than any other report we have read, whether French or English: it may have been that he was always in good humour, and they liked him, or that the Russians of all ranks are rapidly improving, and have greatly improved in the last six or seven years. It is almost a matter of course that the first thing spoken of in a Russian book of travels is the police. A great deal is said of its vigilance and adroitness, and Captain ALEXANDER certainly tells some extraordinary anecdotes of their dexterity. Espionnage is also carried-to a very vexatious pitch: the Captain thinks that a regular and complete system of espionnage is necessary to the ex- istence of the Government. The spies of St. Petersburg assume -all sorts of disguises, from the peasant to the prince ; and in short, from his account, appear as clever as ViDoco himself. That spies make a great deal more mischief than they find, is ge- nerally true ; and an instance occurred in his own case. The most innocent speech man ever made was twisted into something treasonable • and it was with difficulty that his friends could quash 'the affair. ?We had nearly lost our Travels ; for had the Captain been sent out of the country at that time, he would have returned to Sandhurst with an empty note-book. In Russia, where the breath of the Autocrat makes or unmakes * Travels to the Seat of War in the East, through Russia and the Crimea, in 1829 ; with Sketches of the Imperial Fleet and Army, Personal Adventures, and Characteristic Anecdotes. By Captain James EdWard Alexander, (late) of the 16th Lancers. K.L.S., H.R.A.S., &c. Author of Travels in Ave, Persia, and Turkey. 2 vols. 8vo. London, 1830. a man, official rank is everything : they cannot understand what a private gentleman is : a mere gentleman would be thrust below the salt, while any one calling himself the King's breeches-maker would be placed in the seat of honour. Dr. CLARKE told us this long ago ; but Captain ALEXANDER himself heard the following dialogue at Cronstadt, between his friend and a police-officer.

" What are you ?" said the officer.

" I am an English gentleman."

"What chin (rank) have you ?"

" None."

"What is your profession ?"

"I'm of no profession."

"How so ? '

"Because I am a private gentleman."

"But you must have had rank some time or other, and you must have

been in some business ?"

" I live on my property."

"But that won't do, Sir. In God's name, what are you ?" " Well, then, I am a magistrate of a county, and deputy lieutenant."

" Well, then, that will do. Why did you not say that at first ? "

A Scotch physician, driving very fast into St. Petersburg, was stopped by the sentinel, who asked his name and rank; thinking by his pace he was an officer of high degree. He answered, " I'm a tailor, sent for in a hurry to repair General Rousomoufsky's smallclothes."

"A tailor l" replied the sentinel with contempt; " your betters only are allowed to drive at that rate. Be off."

These are the humours of despotism. But under PAUL, be it said, the pseudo-tailor would have stood a good chance of mend- ing smallclothes in Siberia.

The pay of a Russian foot soldier is six rubles (five shillings) per annum. Every Russian recruit, when brought to the head- quarters of his regiment, is obliged to learn a trade. To one man they say, " You must be a carpenter ; " to another, " You must be a shoemaker or tailor." It is the same with the different services. " You must be a sailor," is said to a creature who does not know what a sea is ; but he is drilled, and makes a sailor in an incredibly short time.. In a word, volition is obliterated in Russia; or rather, there is,bat one volition in the country, and that is the Emperor. The sailors are equally taught the land service, wear its costume, and on deck look like a regiment of soldiers. It is the case with the French navy. Every man has his corresponding rank on shore, and is drilled as regularly as in- fantry. The troops are fed on black bread and salt. The author agrees with all other writers on the Russian army, that it is en- during and obedient, but that it wants physical force, spirit, and gallantry. The pay of an ensign is 201. per annum, out of which he finds his uniform : we hope they feed him. The pay of a colo- nel is 481.; of a major-general 1001.

The Russian tradesman is an economical animal: when alone, he will dine on an egg. and drink quass ; but when he gives a party, his expenditure is lavish in the extreme—he locks the door and makes his guests drunk ; when, however, he above all wishes to show his wealth, he dresses up his wife in every description of ex- pensive article—silks, jewels, and shawls, and sends her out to ride in a coach. The Russians frequently give 600/. for a shawl. They are also very curious in tea, and commonly give 2/. a pound for the flower of tea—this is the top of the chest. Their tea comes overland direct, and is said to be much better than ours. Very good tea may be bought in St. Petersburg at Ss. per lb.—far superior, says ALEXANDER, to any thing he ever tasted in Eng land. Our tea is kept sometimes two or three years in chests ; and it must be confessed, generally speaking, it is sad garbage— dry as a stick, and with little more flavour. English housewives judge their tea by its colour in the cup : they might as well decide upon a man's strength or intellect by the colour of his coat : the test of tea is its aromatic flavour.

Smoking is not general, except among the officers ; but the mooziks (or peasants) are great snuff-takers. A great rough boor may be seen every now and then, lifting up the skirt of his caftan, thrusting his hand into his boot, and pulling out a birch-bark snuff-box, the contents of which he nuzzles up with three of Ins fingers. At Moscow, Captain ALEXANDER met the Embassy from Per- sia sent to apologize for the massacre of the Russian Ambassador and suite by the populace of Tehran. The Persians were ALEX- ANDER'S old friends and acquaintance ; his intimacy gave rise to jealousies on the part of the Russians, who are aware of the good feeling that subsists between the English and Persians. Captain ALEXANDER gives a very clear and circumstantial account of the unhappy affair of the massacre. As is the case with all mortal coil, two women were at the bottom of the business. The Am- bassador was overweening, and somewhat insolent ; and two Ar- menians he had taken from a khan, on pretence of their being Russian subjects, set up a crying and screaming at his window : a mob was quickly collected ; and their hatred and irritation against their victorious enemies the Russians began to work. The Cos- sack guard fired upon them, and war was declared. The Persians scaled the walls, broke into the house by the flat roof, and, armed with axes and poniards, put to death every soul in the hotel ex- cept the interpreter, who contrived to escape. The Ambassador sent on the occasion was Kscossiov Musa, the Prince of Persia's son ; a boy of only sixteen years of age, who conducted himself with all the gravity and savoir faire of an old man. The Russians tried to the best of their ability to asto- nish him, by all kinds of parade and...show ? • but were vexed at not being able to extort the faintest mark of surprise. It is the custom in Russia to preserve the clothes of their dif- ferent Emperors. At Moscow " the large square-toed and high- heeled jackboots of .PETER were arranged in line with those of his successors, including the neat modern boots of NICHOLAS." A person unacquainted with bootology, looking at these relics, would probably conclude that the enormous boots of PETER belonged to a much larger man than the neat little boots of NICHOLAS; whereas the contrary is the case. He would thence perhaps infer, that there were giants in those days—especially if he were an an- tiquary. Antiquaries dig up' huge coffins, and say how big must the men be who filled those huge troughs !—whereas it may be simply that the coffin-makers of those days were clumsy workmen, and large coffins, like large jackboots, the fashion. It is the same with swords. It is a mark of the progress of the arts when the same effect is produced with a saving of material ; and neatness of workmanship always accompanies this economy of stuff. The rule seems to apply to loaves of bread even—the more refined a people, the smaller their rolls : at Paris and London, they are bijoux ; at Brussels, somewhat bigger; in Yorkshire, a loaf lasts a family a week ; in the heart of Russia, "the rye-bread loaves are immense, some of them six feet in circumference and two feet thick."

Russian post travelling is very different in summer and in winter. The snow makes all tolerably smooth, and a fall on the "white hard water," as the Chinese call it, does no great harm: but in summer it is a very serious undertaking, and the state of the roads may be understood when a drive across the country is thought a matter of preference. " After leaving Orel," says our author, " the

yemchich ,or driver) insisted on going across the country, to save seven versts ; and away he set, as if the Father of all Evil had

been after him, screeching, bellowing, and stamping on the foot- board, making the horses leap, britchka and all, over small ditches. I thought all this very amusing, until we were brought up in a deep water-course, and were beginning to float ; when it was high time to give him a little sober advice, and direct him to keep the fords and within bounds." The Italians have a proverb—" to travel post, requires the purse of a prince and the strength of a porter." Leaping water-courses in a britchka, is worse than bear- hunting in a kibitka after the manner of our Kamschatkan friend Mr. DOBELL.

Captain ALEXANDER at last arrived at Sevastopol, and received an order to join the fleet. No sooner had he climbed the deck, than he was saluted with the eternal Kakoi chin 8—What's your rank ? Kak vas famine 7—What's your name ? These being satisfied, the Captain commences his part of spectator of the war.

While he is in the fleet, he witnesses the reduction of all the prin- cipal places of the Black Sea,—a task of no very great difficulty ; the Turks rarely made a stand. As the Russians were getting

over the walls, they generally saw the last of the Turks fleeing out of the gates : sometimes they withstood an attack, and fled in the night ; at others, they did not wait even to see the troops land. But the Russians had a worse enemy to contend with than the Turks. After the taking of Miada, in examining the houses, many Turks were found in them in a dying state from fever, and the beach was strewn with unburied corpses of the recent dead : the cause of this was not then explained, and the fleet sailed, leaving the garrison in possession of the redoubts. About a month after- wards, the Admiral returned to Miada, and was shocked to find that only a few officers and men were alive of the four hundred that he had left there, and the survivors also were in a dyinc, state. It seems that Miada was the most unhealthy station on the coast of the Euxine : and it was discovered, when too late to remedy the evil, that the Turks never kept the garrison there beyond a fort- night, and that short time was sufficient to kill several of them. No fewer than seventy thousand men fell before Varna in the first campaign, and these chiefly by disease.

From the fleet the author visited the army, the head-quarters of which were in camp a short distance from Adrianople. His jour- ney lay through the seat of war, and abounded in scenes of wretchedness and melancholy interest. The following passage presents a characteristic picture.

" At the first station we found fresh horses, in the remains of a village where all the soldiers were dying of fever and ague; and we met many sick officers on the route from head-quarters to the coast. Disease and death were seen on every side ; every one was pale and haggard with care and suffering ; and the Russian soldiers were walking listlessly about, col- lecting fuel to cook their victuals, or sitting on the ground in the sun, and shivering with ague. The unfortunate peasantry, in their fur caps, brown jackets and trowsers, were repairing their half-demolished cottages. Their women, though pale and thin, from want of food, and the hardships they had endured when driven from their homes before the retreating Turks, were still clean and neat in their attire : the head was enveloped in a white kerchief falling on the shoulders ; and they wore besides, a long blue and striped dress, folding over the breast, and confined round the waist with a leather or silken sash. I saw them dig up the heads of the Indian corn, which they had buried in the ground, and then feebly pound the grain in wooden mortars. I asked them to spare me a little bread, and they offered me a few heads of corn ; and when I offered them money for some milk, they replied that their cattle had all been swept away many months ago."

The author proceeds to head-quarters ; where he has an invi- tation to dine with DIEBITSCH. He partakes of a stiff and formal meal with the General, whose fame success has placed so high in Russia. At a Russian officer's table, no one talks excepting the first in command ; so that the dinner was dull enough. There were but very few troops at head-quarters • and of all the troops that were sent to Turkey, such was the nature of the service, that Dissmscn had some trouble in getting together twelve or fifteen thousand men. - On the author's return to Odessa, with a view of sailing to Constantinople, he was seized as a spy, and made to return to St. Petersburg. His journey back presents many interesting re- marks ; and if a little more pains had been taken with the composi- tion, it would have been still more valuable.

There are several plates,—for Captain ALEXANDER is ready with his pencil, as all soldiers ought to be,—which are very we executed.