SPECTATOR'S LIBRARY.

A Residence on the Shores of the Baltic. Described in a Series of Letters. in two

volumes Murray. Moms.

Cecil a Peer; a Sequel to Cecil, or the Adventures of a Coxcomb. By the same

Author. In three volumes Boone. NAVIOATTOIV, The Seaman's Manual ; containing a Treatise on Practical Seamanship, with plates, a dictionary of sea-terms, customs, and usages of the merchant-service; laws re- lating to the practical duties of master and mariners. By R. H. Dana junior, An.

Haw of 'Two Years before the Mast." Moses.

LETTERS FROM THE BALTIC.

THIS is a very charming and instructive work, notwithstanding an occasional disposition to dwell too much upon personal feelings

and affairs, and a tendency to fine writing that sometimes verges upon brilliant commonplace. Leaving England to visit a married sister settled in Estonia, the fair writer narrates her stormy voyage to St. Petersburg ; her sight-seeing in that capital ; her winter's journey through the wastes and pine-woods of the country that in- tervenes between St. Petersburg and Revel on the shores of the Baltic, the capital of Estonia ; as well as an account of her twelve- month's sojourn with her sister, and sundry courtly and social doings at the Russian capital on her return. The form of composition is that of letters, written apparently to some member of her family: and they describe with spirit, feeling, and feminine grace, the inci- dents of her journey, the appearances of nature, and the striking and peculiar society amid which she was thrown.

Her outward voyage was enlivened by tempest and danger ; and the steamer, driven from its course to a refuge in Norway and Den- mark, afforded an opportunity to its passengers to take a transient glimpse of Christiansand and Copenhagen. Escorted through Petersburg by an officer of high rank, our authoress had ample op- portunity for seeing its sights and marvels; but though her descrip- tions are written with spirit, and her judgment is favourable to the imposing effect of the capital, she rather adds to the impression of former travellers than shakes it—that the city is a creation of force, rather than of healthy circumstances—an emanation of imperial will, rather than of national wants and wealth. Boldly trusting herself in a single carriage to a single attendant in the depth of an Arctic winter, she gives a graphic picture of the desolation of the country and Of the hardship of Northern travelling off the great road : but it is not till she reaches Estonia that her matter begins much to differ from common books of travels. In that peculiar pro- vince of the empire, a twelvemonth's residence, and the opportuni- ties enjoyed by being domesticated in one of the principal families,

have enabled her to present a pretty full picture of an interesting state of society,—all the more interesting to British readers as

closely resembling that which obtained in parts of England and Scotland when the power of the feudal system was destroyed but its forms had not been replaced by a new civilization.

Originally a conquest or colony of Denmark, the capital of Es. tonia subsequently became a member of the Hanseatic League, and the province the dominion of the Teutonic Order. Distracted by oligarchical oppression—lay, clerical, and military—the serfs rose upon their oppressors; • and Russia threatening invasion, the Es- tonians submitted to Sweden ; under whose power they remained

till the downfal of CHARLES the Twelfth, when they fell to Russia, preserving their national privileges. These are political antiquities

into which we do not enter : but the commercial and religio-mili- tary spirit that first civilized the country left in its social institu- tions strong traces of the middle ages: extensive estates, cultivated by but lately emancipated serfs partly for themselves partly for their lords; large, splendid, ill-furnished country-mansions, with domestics more numerous than Scorr introduces in his novels descriptive of a half-feudal age,—the people requiring to be managed and the house to be stocked with all the precision of a garrison; a peasantry who are helpless and improvident, expecting their lords to aid them in their distress,—which their lords very

seldom do ; an hereditary nobility, or rather, it would seem a landed nobility, whose families may change, but whose numbers

cannot very readily increase, and who form a fixed "order,"—very formal, very hospitable, very worthy, but somewhat dull, and given to playing at cards in the day-time, from sheer want of conversa- tion; whilst under all, we suspect, there exists at Revel the germ of a middle-class in the shape of burghers. So completely, how- ever, are these persons beyond the pale with the gentry of Estonia,

that we have no sketch of them by our authoress, though she picks up in the streets a wandering Jewess to describe and draw. The chief indication of their evidence we have noted, was in the case of a charity-coneert, got up by the fashionables; when "a few prac- tised singers, belonging to a musical club among the unadeliche, or not noble," volunteered their assistance and were about the only pe4sons who, could sing in time or tune, assistance, Roma (SorersA) excepted. The concert, however, answered its purpose ; aud, what is more to people at a distance, gave rise to a very large witti- cism, whose severity is lost in its felicity.

LADY CHORUS-SINGEES.

These ladies were worse to teach than charity-girls. Some of them deemed the rehearsals utterly superfluous, others left their parts behind them, and others were so inveterately in good humour that it was difficult to scold them for being as much out of tune. Of one pretty creature, with more animation in her face than music in her soul, whose voice in the Creation wandered to forbidden paths, a Russian humorist observed,," Rile chante des choses qui Wont jamais existe, Mame dans la Creation ! "

• As the feature of this book which separates it, front other tours

is its picture of Estonian manners, v!e shall chiefly confine our ex- tracts to the provincial sketehes.

ESTONIAN HO USES AND HOUSE-KEEPING.

A few days after my arrival we removed into the country, a day's journey through a richly-wooded landscape; and arrived in the evening before a grand crescent-shaped building, recalling in size and form the many-tenemented ter- races of Regent's Park. If the exterior promised fair, the interior far surpassed all expectation, and I have only to shut my eyes to a certain roughness and want of finish to fancy myself in a regal residence. The richness of the archi- tectural ornaments, the beauty of the frescoes and painted ceilings, the polish of the many-coloured, and marble-like parquetes, the height, size, and pro- portion of the apartments, produce a tout ensemble of the utmost splendour, en- tirely independent of the aid of furniture, which here like the Nerve chaise, seems to have been constructed before comfort was admitted to form an ingre- dient in human happiness. It is a strange assimilation, this splendid case built over the simplest, most primitive customs. The family have no fixed hours for rising; and sometimes you find only your host's empty coffee-cup, whilst he is abroad or busy writing ere you have risen ; or you meet a servant bearing his slender breakfast to him in bed ; and long after you are settled to the occupation of the day, you see him emerging from his dormitory in his dressing-gown and with a most sleepy face. Breakfast here is not considered a meal, and not half the respect paid to it which the simplest lunch-tray would command with us ; some take it standing, others smoking, and the children as often as not run off with their portion of butterbrod to devour it in comfort in some little niche, or upon the base of a pillar in the magnificent salle ; or facilitate the act of mastication by a con- tinual wandering from place to place, which upon English carpets would be considered nothing less than petty treason.

We continued our walk to the housekeeper's rooms, very comfortable and

warm, with three little children and half a dozen chickens sharing the brick- floor; to the kitchen, where the men-cooks were in active preparation round their flat stoves; and then on to the Vo/hstube, or people's room, where all the lower servants, the coachmen and grooms, (here not included as house-servants,) the cow-girls and the sheep-boys, &c. all come in for their meals at stated times, and muster between twenty and thirty daily. This was a room for an artist—a black earthen floor, wails toned down to every variety of dingy reds, blacks, and yellows, with a huge bulwark of a stove of a good terra-cotta colour, and earthen vessels and wooden tubs and benches, and in short every imple- ment of old-fashioned unwieldiness and picturesque form. But the chief at- tractions were the inmates; for, hard at work, plying their spinning-wheels, sat either singly or in groups about fifteen peasant-girls, their sunny-striped pet- ticoats and dull blue or gray cloth jackets, their tanned locks falling over their shoulders, and deep embrowned spinning-wheels, telling well against the warm tones around them. In some the hair was so light a hue as exactly to repeat the colour of the flax upon their spindles ; and these, the housekeeper informed us in broken German, were the surest of husbands—flaxen hair being a feature that the hearts of the peasants are never known to resist. Most of these pic- turesque damsels were barefooted, and one pretty yellow-haired lassie, observ- ing that she was particularly an object of attention, let her hair fall like a veil over her stooping face, and peeped archly at us from between the waving strands. I can't say that any of these young ladies looked particularly clean or inviting ; but every vice has its pleasant side, and the worst of dirt and filth is, they are SO picturesque. Some of them retie on being addressed, and stooping low, coaxed no down with both hands, much as if they were trying to smooth down our dresses. This is the national salutation to their superiors, especially if there be a request to make. Further on, stood a stout kitchen-girl, herjacket thrown off, and only her shift over her shoulders, kneading in a deep trough with a strong wooden bat the coarse bread which is called by distinction the

Trollzsbrod, or people's bread. The spinning-girls belong to the estate, and at- tend at the hof, or court, as the seigneur's house is termed, for so many weeks in the winter, to spin under the housekeeper's superintendence; nor do they appear very averse to this labour, for, besides the smart grooms and soft shepherds who assort with them at meal-times, this Volkstube is the resort of every beggar and wandering pedlar, and the universal tattleshop of the neigh- bourhood.

The further branches of this spinning department are among the most in- teresting of a lady's wirthschaft. The commoner linen is woven in the cot- tages of the peasantry; but the more fanciful and delicate manufactures, the diaper for towels, the damask for table-linen, devolve to a regular weaver, of which each estate maintains one or more; and who sends in his book of patterns for the lady to select grounds, centres, and borders, according to her taste. If she possesses this quality in a higher degree, she may further diversify the work by sketching some flower or arabesque, which the weaver imitates with much ingenuity.

ESTONIAN FARM-ECONOMY.

After this summary of the house and the various pros and cone of its in- ternal economy, you must now accompany me to the numerous buildings Scattered around, all on the same scale of grandeur as itself, where the do- mestic herds pass their long winter in shelter, warmth, and almost darkness. In the first we entered, a noble edifice one hundred and twenty feet long, and supported down the centre by a row of solid pillars, above a thousand sheep were most magnificently lodged, affording, as they congregated round their cribs or quietly stopped eating to gaze upon us, a most novel and striking picture of a vast Northern fold. In another building was a herd of stalled cattle, soms destined for slaughter, others mulch kine, with many a barefooted peasant-girl and half-full machine of milk at their sides. Further on the pigs bad their domicile and the fowls theirs; and in the midst of these buildings rose the Brandtwein's Elias, or brandy-kitchen, where the proCess of distilling prom rye, barley, or potatoes, goes on night and day ; the refuse grains of which contribute to fatten the cattle we have just quitted. It will easily be supposed that the task of calculating and providing food for this multiplication of mouths, all dependent on the help of man, is no light one. Every animal has so many pounds of hay allotted to him per day, and each week's consumption is some- thing which it never entered into the heart of an English farmer to conceive: and if the winter exceed its usual limits—if these poor quadrupeds, which go U p into their annual ark in the month of October, be not released till the be- .ginning of May, a scarcity of food can hardly be hindered. Fresh litter is strewed daily, which never being removed, the cattle stand at least six feet h igher at the close than at the commencement of their captivity. ln this con- sists the main provision of manure for the summer's use.

The peasantry appear to be a good enough kind of bodies,— ignorant, submissive, and content, unless perhaps under the imme- diate pressure of want ; with something of the jovial happiness of slaves, and the superstition of savages. Here is a pendant to Red Ittdian notions on art.

oinzanaes OF A PORTRAIT IN ESTONIA.

One day, to diversify the subject, a tall Estonian peasant was ushered in, bearing a note from a neighbouring family ; wherein it appeared that, in conse- quence of some bantering questions and promises, they had sent the best-look- ing man the estate could boast, to represent the physiognomy and costume of his class. And truly,as fine and gpod-looking a young man stood before us as needed to be seem At first he returned our glance with rather more courage than a peasant here usually ventures to show ; but on being told his errand, blushed like a girl, and proceeded to place himself into the required position with a mar:wise honte which, it must be owned, was at first not limited to him,. self. He wore the regular peasant's costume—his long hair falling on his shoulders; a coat made of undyed black wool down to his heels, with metal buttons and red-leather frogs; and his feet clad in the national passehi or sandals of untanned cow-hide. After the first novelty was over, he stood sensibly and respectfully enough; and being shown his miniature fee-simile, and told that it would go to England, acknowledged it to be vegga Woe (very beautiful.) Half a rouble and a glass of brandy made him happy; and he took his leave in perfect good-humour with himself and us. But a few days after, a disastrous sequel to this adventure reached our ears. under the conviction that be had been subject to the spells of a sorceress, his lady-love cast him off for another ; his fellows taunted and avoided him; while added to this, the in- nocent victim himself was in the utmost terror of mind lest this mysterious delineation of his person should prove the preamble to his being banished either to Siberia or—to England It is to be hoped his personal charms soon repaired the first loss; but I could never hear any thing further of my unfor- tunate sitter.

EMANCIPATION IN ESTONIA.

The act of enfranchisement in Estonia has not been accompanied by the ad- vantages which those who abstractedly reckon the state of independence too high, and that of serfage too low, might expect. To this it may be urged, that the blessing of freedom was bestowed on the Estonian peasant before be was in a condition to understand its import, though truly such a privilege is better given to a people too early than wrested by them too late. It redounds to the credit of these provinces of Estonia, Livonia, and Courland, that they were the first in the empire to coalesce with the late Emperor Alexander by en- franchising their peasantry—an act which took place in 1828 ; and it is quite a pity that our admiration for so noble a deed should be in any way interrupted by the troublesome collateral circumstance of their being pecuniarily the gainers thereby. When the peasants were serfs, their owners were interested in preserving them from absolute want ; and in bad harvests the peasantry be- came, what they are to this day in Russia Proper, a real burden to their lord. Also, whenever the serf was not able to pay his own poll-tax, the seigneur had to make up the deficiency ; but now that the Estonian peasant is a free man, all these responsibilities, which he as little desired as understood to undertake, fall upon his own shoulders ; for though many a humane seigneur still supplies the same help as formerly, yet these are but worthy exceptions. Consequently, a failure in crops, added to the national improvidence, exposes the peasant to hardship and starvation which he never knew in his serf condition. Among the regulations intended as a substitute to these habits of dependence, a law has been instituted compelling each peasant in good seasons to contribute so much corn to the Bauer Klete, or peasant granary ; thus realizing a fund of provision against the winters of famine. But as the Estonian has been placed in a state of freedom before he knew that forethought and prudence were its only safeguards, he seizes every occasion to evade this law ; and if the Herr be not vigilant in enforcing it, the storehouse is found empty when famine has finished every other resource. One characteristic consequence of this eman- cipation was the adoption of family names by the peasants, who hitherto, like the Russian serf, had been designated only by his own and his father's bap- tismal appellatives. This accession of dignity was conferred only a few years back ; when it cost the lord and lady no little trouble and invention to hunt up the requisite number and variety of names for the tenants of their estates. The gentleman took the dictionary, the lady Walter Scott for reference ; with us it would have been the Bible; and homely German words were given, or old Scottish names revived, which may one day perplex a genealogist. The worst of it was, these poor creatures were very difficult to please ; and many a young man who went away happy with his new family distinction, returned the next day with a sheepish look, owning that his lady had put him out of conceit of it, and that he would trouble the Erra (the Estonian corruption of Herr) to provide him with another, not seldom ending by begging leave to adopt the aristocratic, unsullied, sixteen or thirty-two quartered name of the count or baron under whom be served. But, however liberal of his neighbours' names, the Estonian noble is in no hurry to bestow his own : far from running the risk of such vile identity, he does not even allow the peasant the same national appellation which countrymen of the same soil, whether high or low, generally wear alike. The aristocrat is an Esthliinder, the peasant an Esthe. The noble's wife is a Frau, the peasant's a Weld; and any transposition of these terms would be deemed highly insulting.

After Lord LONDON DERRY'S picture of the splendours of the Rus- sian Court, we do not know that our authoress adds much to our im-

pressions, beyond the powers of a keener penetration, a lively wit, and a less trammelled thought, or at all events expression. The real sla- very under the pompous externals, which was hidden from the gaze of

the Ultra Tory, was visible to the keener eye of the woman ; and the corruption of morals, which the Lord passed over as nothing at all,

or things not to be spoken of, glared upon the mind of our au- thoress. With all their outward grandeur, she saw that every tongue was tied, every mind subdued, mutual confidence destroyed, and fortune, rank, liberty, and life itself, dependent upon the de- cision of one will unchecked by law or usage. The very morals of the country rest upon the conduct of the Imperial Family ; but as the Emperor is held to be a person of the strictest morality, and

the Court seems at present no better than a vast brothel, without the excuses of seduction or necessity, it is difficult to see bow matters could be made worse. In CATHERINE'S time there was greater outward decorum — the age was more formal, and the Russian Messalina had better studied kingcraft. All this corrup- tion, too, exists without its frequent accompaniments of wit and intellectual elegance. At St. Petersburg all in the way of great- ness appears cumbrous and mechanical—the products of the tailor, milliner, and jeweller ; without the gayety and independent wit of CHARLES the Second's court, or the magnificence and faded chivalry of Louis the Great.

RUSSIAN COURT CONVERSATION.

Such balls as these I have described, however brilliant and dazzling in rela- tion, are not otherwise than very dull in reality; for here, as in France, society is so perversely constituted that no enjoyment is to be reaped save by infring- ing its rules. A " jeune personne "—in other words, an unmarried woman— is considered a mere cipher in society, danced with seldom, conversed with sel- domes, and under these circumstances looks forward to her marine de conve- nance as the period which, as I have said before, is to commence that which it ought to close. From the day of her marriage she is free—responsible to no one, so that she overstep not the rules of convention for the liberty of her con- duct ; while her husband ie rather piqued than otherwise if her personal charms fail to procure lice the particular attentions of his own sex. "Personae ne lui fait la cora " is the most disparaging thing that can be said of a young wife. It is sad to see the difference in a short season from the retiring girl to one whose expression and manners seem to say that "honesty, coupled to beauty, is to have honey-sauce to sugar." Nor is it easy for an inexperienced young woman, gifted with domestic tastes, or marrying from affection, to stem the torrent of ridicule of those who would pull others down to justify themselves. This social evil is seen in the more glaring colours, from the total absence of Ill rational tastes or literary topics. In other countries it is lamented, ad with justice, that literature and education should be made the things of fashion : how infinitely worse is it when they are condemned by the same law! In ether countries, all fashion, as such, is condemned as bad ; bow infinitely worse is it N, here the bad is the fashion! Here it is absolute mauvais genre to discuss a rational subject—mere pedanterie to be caught upon any topics beyond dressing, dancing, and a "jolie tournure." The superficial accomplish- ments are so superficialized as scarcely to be considered to exist. Russia has no literature, or rather none to attract a frivolous woman ; and political subjects, with all the incidental chit-chat which the observances, anniversaries, Sec., of a constitutional government bring more or less into every private family, it is needless to observe, exist not. What then remains ?—Sad to say, nothing, absolutely nothing, for old and young, man and woman, save the description, discussion, appreciation, or depreciation of toilette—varied by a little cuisine and the witless wit called l'esprit du salon. To own an indifference or an igno- rance on the subject of dress, further than a conventional and feminine com- pliance, would be wilfully to ruin your character equally with the gentlemen as with the ladies of the society; for the former, from some inconceivable mo- tive, will discuss a new bracelet or a new dress with as much relish as if they had hopes of wearing it, and with as great a precision of technical terms as if they had served at a marchand de modes. It may seem almost incredible, but here these externals so entirely occupy every thought, that the highest personage in the land, with the highest in authority under him, will meet and discuss a lady's coiffure, or even a lady's corset, with a gusto and science as incomprehensible in them, to 'say the least, as the emulation of coachman slang in some of our own eccentric nobility. Whether in a state where individuals are judged by every idle word, or rather where every idle word is literally productive of mis- chief, the blandishments of the toilet, from their political innocuousness, are considered safest ground for the detention of mischievous spirits, I must leave ; but very certain it is, that in the high circles of Petersburg it would seem, from the prevailing tone of conversation, that nothing was considered more meritorious than a pretty face and figure, or more interesting than the question how to dress it.

Added to this wearying theme, it is the bad taste of the day to indulge in an indelicacy of language, which some aver to proceed from the example of the court of Prussia, and which renders at times even the trumperies of toilet or jewellery rather a grateful change of subject.

There have been many portraits of the Emperor of Russia, but none better, perhaps, than the following : not deficient in flattery, but NieckLes comes out sterner from our author's pencil.

THE EMPEROR OF RUSSIA AT A MASKED BALL.

The Heritier, the Grand Duke Michael, the Duke de Leuchtenberg, were all seen passing in turn, each led about by a whispering mask—" Mais ob cat done FEmpereur P" "II n'y est pas encore," was the answer ; but scarce was this uttered when a towering plume moved, the crowd fell back, and en- framed in a vacant space stood a figure to which there is no second in Russia, if in the world itself—a figure of the grandest beauty, expression, dimension, and carriage, uniting all the majesties and graces of all the heathen gods, the little god of Love alone perhaps excepted, on its ample anilsymmetrical propor- tions. Had this nobility of person belonged to a common Mougili instead of to the Autocrat of all the Missies, the admiration could not have been less, nor scarcely the feeling of moral awe. It was not the monarch who was so mag- nificent a man, but the man who was so truly imperial. He stood awhile silent and haughty, as if disdaining all the vanity and levity around bins; • when, perceiving my two distinguished companions, he strode grandly towards our box, and, just lifting his plumes with a lofty bow, stooped and kissed the Prin- cess's hand, who in return imprinted a kiss on the Imperial cheek ; and then leaning against the pillar, remained in conversation. The person a the Emperor is that of a colossal man in the full prime of life and health, forty-two years of age, about six feet two inches high, and well fdled-out, without any approach to corpulency; the head magnificently car- ried, a splendid breadth of shoulder and chest, great length and symmetry of limb, with finely-formed hands and feet. His face is strictly Grecian, forehead and nose in one grand line; the eyes finely lined, Lerge, open, and blue, with a calmness, a coldness, a freezing dignity, which can equally quell an insurrec- tion, daunt an assassin, or paralyze a petitioner ; the mouth regular, teeth fine, chin prominent, with dark moustache and small whisker ; but not a sympathy On his face. His mouth sometimes smiled, his eyes never. There was that in his look which no monarch's subject could meet. His eye seeks every one's gaze, but none can confront his.

After a few minutes, his curiosity—the unfailing attribute of a crowned bead—dictated the words, " %to eta ? " (" Who is that ? ") and being satisfied, for he remarks every strange face that enters his capital, he continued alter- nately in Russian and French commenting upon the scene.