near New Holland; eastward to Kuku-choton, a Chinese town situated east of Pekin; northward to the frontiers of Siberia and to Astracan; westward to the city of Moscow, a portion of the globe, in extent, about equal to seventy degrees of latitude, and one hundred degrees of longitude.

In the pathological features of the epidemic, there is nothing more remarkable than the large proportion of deaths, and the rapidity with which its victims fall beneath the attack. Even climates distant and dissimilar to that of Bengal, have not diminished the mortality, as compared with the number of the infected. In Moscow half the sick perished, yet in general the winter commences there in November, and the cholera was not developed until the 28th of September. The early part of the season, however, is said to have been unusually mild; and, as mild winters in cold latitudes are the least preservative of health, this circumstance may partly account for the very deadly effects of the disease.

At present, we have only space further to observe, that the history of this awful visitation forces the conviction upon us, that with the melting of the snows of winter, and the return of summer in Russia, the contagion will revive and spread through Poland, adding the horrors of pestilence to famine and war, and that it will probably also extend over the whole of Europe. In what consecutive order of time and place it may travel hither it is hard to conjecture. The intimate connexion maintained by shipping and the messengers of commerce between England and the large towns of the continental kingdoms, renders this land, perhaps, peculiarly vulnerable to infection. Countries less distant from the immediate seat of the distemper may find, in their infrequent intercourse, complete or partial exemption, or at least a considerable respite.

We call then upon the English Government not to rest the general safety upon the adoption of precarious half-measures in the shape of quarantine precautions. Let competent physicians-not mere travelling companions, or the hungry dependents of men in office-be despatched on the national service, while yet the danger sleeps, to ascertain whether the symptoms and proper manner of treatment still exactly correspond with those of the Indian Cholera, and to investigate the best means of barring its advances to our own shores, should this giant pestilence unhappily rise invigorated from its temporary slumber.

ORIENTALIS.

SCENES IN POLAND.-(No. 1.)

1794-MACEJOWICE AND PRAGA.†

"You will deliver this to his Excellency the Field-Marshal, and wait for the answer."

"But, General

"I have served twenty years, and never uttered a but. No reasoning; I shall wait here."

It was necessary to obey. The fact was that the General wanted a little sleep-and no wonder; for he had never closed an eye since we left Petersburgh. We had travelled at the rate of sixteen miles an hour over Lithuanian and Polish roads, so celebrated for their smoothness. It may be, too, that he was not desirous of obtruding himself in the way of the balls and bullets. It matters not. The right of the Poles again showed their colours, and pushed forward. Their sharpshooters were seen coming out like locusts. While the General was yet speaking, the fusilade began in good earnest; and from the thickets, the hollows, and the ditches alongside of the public roads, the balls came whistling to our hearts' content. At short intervals a brace of bright gleams flashed out, softly shaded with smoke, and down tumbled half a dozen metal caps ‡ never to rise again; while the glorious bass thundered after like the requiem defunctorum. This portentous music continued. For my part my road was not difficult to find; I had merely to follow the roar of the cannon with my fifty cuirassiers through the thickest of the dead and dying, and on through the centre. It was already broken, and the affair over on this side: towards the extreme left, however, on the road to Warsaw, four regiments of infantry were still maintaining their ground.

"Where is he?" demanded I for the second time of a dragoon major, who sat bending forwards in his saddle, his feet firm in the stirrups, and his hand grasping the mane of the horse. He gave no answer, but dropped gently to the ground. The man was dead.

Bravo! Here we are in the midst of a whole regiment of guardcossacks coming up at full gallop, and taking us along with them as the whirlwind does a feather,-where? Heaven knows. I hope not before the Polish squares.

Ztupay! ztupay! Comradi !"§ cried a voice from amidst a cloud of

The battle which decided the fate of Poland in 1794.

The Suburb of Warsaw.

The Russian grenadier's cap of this time was of a singular form, and not unlike the mitre of the Catholic bishops. Instead of the bearskin, it was decorated with a brass escutcheon of the imperial arms in relief.

"Ztupay! Comradi”—the favourite expression of Suwarrow when attacking. "Forward! comrades!"

smoke. I knew it well. "Now or never!" thought I; and, wheeling to the right, we dashed straight through the guard-cossacks, accompanied by millions of curses, and at least a dozen of good byes from their pistols. I was in the presence of the Field-Marshal.

Ztupay! Comradi !" exclaimed he.

"Your Excellency! despatches from Mother's Majesty."

"Ztupay! Comradi! No time to read despatches; glory to our Mother and God. * St. Nicolas is great! Suwarrow fears not the rebels :" and kissing an image of his favourite saint which hung from his neck, he crossed himself with a grimace, gave his horse the spur, and galloped towards the Poles. We followed. The square stood without flinching. Wherever a man dropped, the very staff officers picked up his musket, and leaped into the gap-but, poor fellows! it was a desperate game.

"Ztupay! Comradi!" cried the shrill voice of the Field-Marshal once more, shriller than ever, and the guard-cossacks set on with a tremendous hurrah! The square is broken. Good night, Poland! "Courier!"

"Your Excellency."

His Excellency turned round towards me, and looked for a moment into my face. "Bravo! Comrado-not afraid of powder? Suwarrow fears not the rebels." I had seen that plainly enough, for he had killed three Poles with his own hand; and he now coolly drew his bloody sword along the palm, which he wiped on the sleeves of his uniform. "Your name?" demanded he.

"Captain Count D——y.”

"Who has sent you?"

"General Count R-n?”

"Who sent General Rn ?” "Mother's Majesty." +

"Poh! General R- -n don't like to smell powder. Heh? Suwarrow fears not the rebels. Heh? Swaty Nicolas before Suwarrow, Suwarrow behind Swaty Nicolas, and behind Suwarrow his comrades. Good night, enemies!"

He broke open the autograph letter of the empress, ran over its contents, tore off a piece of the paper, and, stretching out his hand for a pencil which the adjutant held in readiness, he wrote a few lines on the pummel of his saddle.

"You return to Mother," said he looking up, "not General R." "But your Excellency?—"

"Who dares debate with Field Marshal Suwarrow?-what living man ?"

His Excellency's face assumed a certain blood-red hue, which I had

Glory to our Mother and God"-the expression used by Suwarrow. It is scarcely necessary to remark, that there is no exaggeration in the picture of this man. It is drawn to the life.

"Mother,"-thus Suwarrow and the Russians used to call Catherine II.
Saint Nicolas.

heard spoken of as an ominous sign; and I retreated a few steps. The tempest, however, passed away, and he calmly handed the scrap to the adjutant.

"Stay, Captain D——y,” said he; "you like powder; you go, not General R."

I touched my hat, received from the aid-de-camp the scrap enveloped and sealed, galloped across the battle-field towards the burning Macejowice, showed my General the letter, told him the orders, and took my seat in his place after having handed him out of his own carriage, leaving him under the agreeable necessity of providing himself with another.

“And you have left our good Suwarrow before Macejowice," said the Empress?

"The centre of the rebels was forced, and the right wing rolling up. On the left, four regiments still held out, of which I saw one broken. The battle was decided when I quitted the field...."

"You are again the bearer of our despatches, Colonel.”

Three weeks had done more for me than the preceding three years. I was a Colonel at twenty years of age. I started for Poland, the bearer of the august will of her Majesty.

"Make haste, good Dy," admonished the august Mother; and I did make haste. It was exactly six days since I had left St. Petersburgh, and already the Vistula lay before me. I was within fifty wersts of Warsaw.

"All is quiet, milosti officer, since yesterday morning," whispered the black-eyed Jewess, pointing down towards the banks of the Vistula, and handing me a tumbler with gorzalkat, the only beverage I had tasted since leaving Wilna.

My eye was fixed on a regiment of Cossacks, who came trotting up the hollow, laden as if they had plundered a whole country.

"What news?"

"Praga taken," said the dirty Hetman, pointing significantly to his throat. "We must on to Dobry; woe to the rebels !"

Praga taken! mused I, with an involuntary shudder; but it saves ten wersts of my journey. The morning was cold, the ground frozen, the vault of heaven calm and blue. But away far over the borders of the Vistula hovered a wreath of thick heavy mist. Mist? It was the smoke arising from a chaotic mass, from which now and then a pale flame darted upwards. That mass was Praga!—the great fauxbourg of Warsaw, as the geographers say; what it really was, however, it would have been difficult to tell; for Suwarrow had passed through it! The road was strewn with broken ammunition carriages, wheels, cannons, dead and dying horses, in picturesque disorder. The muskets and balls and dead soldiers were untouched even by the Jews. I passed a score of the latter dangling from the door-posts of their brethren, the tavern-keepers, to serve as scare-crows against further

appropriations of imperial property. This must have been something like a battle, thought I. The bridge over the-what is its name ?-is broken down; but they have laid the beams over the frozen bodies of men and horses, which now serve instead of arches. There now Praga should begin; but where is it? I can see nothing of Sapiehas, nothing of Vladimir street. It looks as though all had been blown into the air. Fragments of walls, black-burnt stones, intermingled with thousands of carcasses of man and beast roasted into hideousness; and not a living being to be seen! The sound of my Stepanku's trumpet reechoed fearfully in the empty hollow! Our very horses seemed troubled. Their manes bristled up, their ears and limbs trembled as if terror-stricken, and they gazed upon the objects at their feet shrinking and shivering.

Here begins something like a street, if a street it may be called. The houses doorless, windowless, nay roofless; the ways are choked up with the inhabitants: none living. Aye, truly, Suwarrow! thou art a glorious fellow! right willing to destroy more in one day than United Poland has raised in a thousand years.

There at last again life is seen: it is a picket of Cossacks stationed on the Vistula bridge. Even they are tired; for they have quitted the backs to lie under the bellies of their horses. Here we must cross, and let us cross hastily, for a spectacle is before us which should not be dwelt upon. The wearied Cossacks are still on duty: they are guarding about two thousand prisoners, men, women, and children-lying, sitting, and standing, on the Sigismund-place; some half-naked, some wholly naked, some wounded, others starving, and all freezing to death.

My escort halted. "Here his Excellency keeps head-quarters," said the corporal. I looked up-not a window was unbroken in the whole palace of the Diet. I alighted and entered; I cannot say through the gate, for there was none. The fore-hall, the court-yard, the staircase, were filled with officers of all grades and colours. Before the doorless antichamber stood another group of officers, of Cossacks of the Don, and the Ukraine, and uhlans and dragoons, grenadiers and cuirassiers, sleeping on straw. A large straputz * in the next room, had the honour of being occupied by the adjutants, and some general and staff officers, and in the adjoining cabinet his Excellency was seen stretched on his bed of straw covered with a bearskin.

The adjutant-general went to announce me. "Come in," cried the Field-Marshal.

I entered the room. It had neither door nor windows, but a broken china stove, the pieces of which lay scattered upon the floor, with rubbish and straw.

"From Mother?" cried the Field-Marshal, leaping from his bearskin, donning his hat, and girding on his sword.

"Her Majesty has commanded me”

"Ah! Captain D-y, am I right?

Straw spread on the ground and covered with any thing, so as to render it a substitute for a bed.