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STREETS OF ODESSA—JEWS—HOTELS—PARTIALITY OF THE RUSSIANS FOR ODESSA—HURRICANE, DUST, MUD, CLIMATE, &c.—PUBLIC BUILDINGS.

The day of our release from quarantine, was as full of bustle and annoyances as that of our arrival, the spolio alone excepted. How we regretted the freedom of the East! There the traveller's movements are shackled by no formalities, but he is free from the moment he quits his vessel, to roam about the town as he pleases, without being pestered with the custom-house and police officers, and the employés of all sorts that assail him in lands calling themselves civilised. But it is in Russia especially that he has most reason to pour out his wrathful imprecations on that army of birds of prey that pounce on him with an avidity truly intolerable. I can't tell how many formalities we had to go through from the hour appointed for our leaving the lazaret, until we finally got out of the clutches of the Custom-house, and could breathe freely. But our feelings of vexation, strong as they were, gave way to downright stupefaction, when we entered the town. Was this really that Odessa which had seemed so brilliant when we saw it from the lazaret, and which now presented itself to our eyes under so mean and wretched an aspect? Could we even grace with the name of town the place where we then were and the streets we beheld? It was a great open space without houses, filled with carts, and oxen rolling in the dust, in company with a mob of Russian and Polish peasants, all sleeping together in the sun, in a temperature of more than 90°.

Whirlwinds of dust exactly like waterspouts in all but the material composing them, darkened the air every moment, and swept the ground with incredible fury. Further on, we entered a street wider than our highways in France, and flanked with little houses, one story high, and separated from each other by uncultivated gardens. The population consisting of Jews, whose filth is become proverbial in Russia, completed our disgust, and we knew not which way to turn our eyes to escape the sight of such loathsome objects. However, as we approached the heart of the town the streets began to show shops and houses, and the appearance of the inhabitants grew more diversified. But notwithstanding the carriages and droshkys that passed us rapidly, notwithstanding the footways of cut stone, and the Grecian architecture of the corn stores, we reached the Hotel de la Nouvelle Russie without having been able to reconcile ourselves to the aspect of the town; and there again we encountered fresh disappointments. We had been told by many of our acquaintances in Constantinople that the hotels of Odessa were among the best in Europe; great, therefore, was our surprise at not finding any one of the commonest requisites for travellers in the one at which we stopped. No linen, no bells, no servants to wait on us; it was with difficulty we could get a carafe of water after waiting for it half an hour. Our single apartment looked due south, and all the furniture in it consisted of a bedstead, a chest of drawers, and a few chairs, without a scrap of curtain to mitigate the blazing sunshine that scorched our eyes. And for such accommodation as this we had to pay eight rubles a day. But our amazement reached the highest pitch, when, after giving orders to fit up the bedstead which made so piteous a figure in this agreeable lodging, we were informed by the hotel keeper that every article was charged for separately. "What!" I exclaimed, in great indignation, "do we not pay eight rubles a day?" "Certainly, madame, but accessories are never included in the charge for the room. But if madame don't like, there is no need to have a bed furnished completely. We have generals and countesses that are satisfied with a plain mattress." We had no desire to follow the example of their Excellencies, so we were obliged to submit to our host's terms. It is fair to add, however, that circumstances to a certain extent justified some exorbitance of charge, for the Emperor Nicholas and his family were hourly expected, and the hotels were of course thronged with military men and strangers.

Odessa now lays claim to a respectable rank among the towns of Europe. Its position on the Black Sea, the rapid increase of its population, its commercial wealth, and its brilliant society, all concur to place it next in Russia after the two capitals of the empire. Though but forty years have elapsed since its foundation, it has far outstripped those half-Sclavonic, half-Tartar cities, Kiev the holy, the great Novgorod, and Vladimir, all celebrated in the bloody annals of the tzars, and already old before Moscow and St. Petersburg were yet in existence.

Odessa is not at all like any of the other towns in the empire. In it you hear every language and see all kinds of usages except those of the country. Nevertheless, the Russians prefer it even to St. Petersburg, for they enjoy greater liberty in it, and are relieved from the rigorous etiquette that engrosses three-fourths of their time in the capital. Besides this, Odessa possesses one grand attraction for the Russian and Polish ladies in the freedom of its port, which enables them to indulge their taste for dress and other luxuries without the ruinous expense these entail on them in St. Petersburg. Odessa is their Paris, which they are all bent on visiting at least once in their lives, whatever be the distance they have to travel. The reputation of the town has even passed the Russian frontiers, and people have been so obliging as to bestow on it the flattering name of the Russian Florence; but for what reason I really cannot tell. Odessa possesses neither arts nor artists; even the dilettante class is scarcely known there; the predominant spirit of trade leaves little room for a love of the beautiful, and the commercial men care very little about art. It is true that M. Vital, a distinguished French painter, has endeavoured to establish a drawing-academy under the patronage of Count Voronzof, but the success of his efforts may be doubted.

The infatuated admiration of the Russians for Odessa is carried to the utmost extreme, and they cannot understand how a stranger can fail to share in it. How indeed can any one refuse to be enraptured with a town that possesses an Italian opera, fashionable shops, wide footways, an English club, a boulevard, a statue, two or three paved streets, &c.? Barbarian taste or envy could alone behold all this without admiration. After all, this enthusiasm of the Russians may be easily accounted for: accustomed as they are to their wildernesses of snow and mud, Odessa is for them a real Eldorado comprising all the seductions and pleasures of the world.

If you will believe the Russians, snow is a thing of rare occurrence there, and every winter they wonder in all sincerity at the reappearance of sledges in the streets. But this does not hinder the thermometer from remaining steadily for several months at 25° or 26° R. below zero, and the whole sea from becoming one polished sheet of ice; nor does it dispense with the necessity of having double windows, stoves, and pelisses, just as in St. Petersburg and Moscow. Great, therefore, is the surprise of the traveller, who, on the strength of its flattering sobriquet, expects to find an Italian sun in Odessa, and who meets at every step nothing but frost-bitten faces and sledges. Besides these wintry rigours, there are the hurricanes that continually desolate the whole region, during what is elsewhere called the fine season. And these vicissitudes of the atmosphere are aggravated by another evil still more distressing, the dust, namely, which makes the town almost uninhabitable during a part of the year. Dust is here a real calamity, a fiend-like persecutor, that allows you not a moment's rest. It spreads out in seas and billows that rise with the least breath of wind, and envelop you with increasing fury, until you are stifled and blinded, and incapable of a single movement. The gusts of wind are so violent and sudden as to baffle every precaution. It is only at sunset that one can venture out at last to breathe the sea air on the boulevard, or to walk in the Rue Richelieu, the wide footways of which are then thronged by all the fashion of the place.

Many natural causes combine to keep up this terrible plague. First, the argillaceous soil, the dryness of the air, the force of the wind, and the width of the streets; then the bad paving, the great extent of uncultivated ground still within the town, and the prodigious number of carriages. The local administration has tried all imaginable systems, with the hope of getting rid of the dust, and has even had stones brought from Italy to pave certain streets, but all its efforts have been ineffectual. At last, in a fit of despair, it fell upon the notable device of macadamising the well-paved Rue Italienne and Rue Richelieu. The only result of this operation was, of course, prodigiously to increase the evil. A wood paving, to be laid down by a Frenchman, is now talked of, and it appears that his first attempts have been quite successful.

In order to give some idea of the violence of the hurricanes to which the country is subject, I will mention a phenomenon of which I was myself a witness. After a very hot day in 1840, the air of Odessa gradually darkened about four in the afternoon, until it was impossible to see twenty paces before one. The oppressive feel of the atmosphere, the dead calm, and the portentous colour of the sky, filled every one with deep consternation, and seemed to betoken some fearful catastrophe. For an hour and a half the spectator could watch the progress of this novel eclipse, which as yet was without a precedent in those parts. The thermometer attained the enormous height of 104° F. The obscurity was then complete; presently the most furious tempest imagination can conceive, burst forth, and when the darkness cleared off, there was seen over the sea, what looked like a waterspout of prodigious depth and breadth, suspended at a height of several feet above the water, and moving slowly away until it dispersed at last at a distance of many miles from the shore. The eclipse and the waterspout were nothing else than dust, and that day Odessa was swept cleaner than it will probably ever be again.

During the winter the dust is changed into liquid mud, in which the pedestrian sinks up to mid-leg, and in which he might soon drown himself, if his humour so disposed him. A long pole to take soundings with, would not come amiss to one who had to steer his course between the slimy abysses with which some streets are filled. Formerly, that is to say some fifteen years ago, ladies used to repair to the ball-room in carts, drawn each by a numerous team of oxen. At present the principal streets are paved and lighted, and one may proceed to an evening party in a rather more elegant equipage; but the poor pedestrian, nevertheless, finds it a most difficult task to drag his feet out of the adhesive mud that meets him whichever way he turns; those, therefore, who have no carriages in Odessa, are obliged to live in absolute solitude. The distances are as great as in Paris, and the only vehicle for hire is what is called in Russia a droshky; that is to say, a sort of saddle mounted on four wheels, on which men sit astride, and ladies find it very difficult to seat themselves with decorum. The droshky affords you no protection from either mud, dust, or rain, and at most is only suitable to men of business and Russians, who never go out of doors without their cloaks, even in the height of summer.

Odessa contains no remarkable building. In many private houses and in most of the corn warehouses, a lavish use has been made of the Greek style of architecture, which accords neither with the climate, nor above all with the materials employed. All those columns, pediments, and regular façades, with which the eye is so soon satiated, are in plaster, and they begin to spoil even before the building is finished. The mouldings must be renewed every year, and notwithstanding this care, most of the houses and churches have an air of dilapidation, that makes them resemble ruins rather than palaces and temples. The cathedral itself has nothing to distinguish it but its bulk. One must not look for the rules of architecture, or for elegance of form, or pleasing details in the religious edifices. They are monotonous in character, and shabby in structure and fittings. Their interiors are glaring with pictures and gilding, but all in the spurious taste of the Lower Empire. The oddly-accoutred saints, the biblical scenes so grotesquely travestied, the profusion of tinsel, and the reds, greens, and blues, laid one upon the other, in the coarsest discordance, far too disagreeably shock the sight to inspire any serious and pious thoughts.

Odessa has also some synagogues, a Catholic church, and one or two Protestant places of worship, which from their humble appearance might rather be taken for private houses. It has but one promenade, the Boulevard, which overlooks the whole harbour, and is exposed, from its situation, to frequent landslips. The vicinity of this promenade is the most fashionable quarter. The theatre, the exchange, the mansions of Count Voronzof and the Princess Narishkin; a line of very elegant houses, and the throng of carriages, all bespeak the presence of the aristocracy. Workmen have been employed for the last two or three years in constructing a gigantic staircase, to lead by a very gentle descent from the Boulevard to the sea-beach. This expensive and useless toy, is likely to cost nearly forty-thousand pounds. It is intended to be ornamented with vases and statues; but some considerable fissures already give reason to fear the speedy destruction of this great staircase, which after all can never be of any use, except to the promenaders on the Boulevard.