Will you allow me, as one who knows Russia by heart, to express my intense admiration for the new piece at the Shaftesbury Theatre, in which is given, in my opinion, the most faithful picture of the CZAR’s dominions as yet exhibited to the British Public.  ACT I. is devoted to “a Street near the Banks of the Neva, St. Petersburg,” and here we have a splendid view of the Winter Palace, and what I took to be the Kremlin at Moscow.  On one side is the house of a money-lender, and on the other the shelter afforded to a drosky-driver and his starving family.  The author, whose name must be BUCHANANOFF (though he modestly drops the ultimate syllable), gives as a second title to this portion of his wonderful work, “The Dirge for the Dead.”  It is very appropriate.  A student, whose funds are at the lowest ebb, commits a purposeless murder, and a “pope” who has been on the look-out no doubt for years, seizes the opportunity to rush into the murdered man’s dwelling, and sing over his inanimate body a little thing of his own composition.  Anyone who has been in Russia will immediately recognise this incident as absolutely true to life.  Amongst my own acquaintance I know three priests who did precisely the same thing—­they are called BROWNOFF, JONESKI, and ROBINSONOFF.

Next we have the Palace of the Princess Orenburg, and make the acquaintance of Anna Ivanovna, a young lady who is the sister of the aimless murderer, and owner of untold riches.  We are also introduced to the Head of Police, who, as everyone knows, is a cross between a suburban inspector, a low-class inquiry agent, and a flaneur moving in the best Society.  We find, too, naturally enough, an English attache, whose chief aim is to insult an aged Russian General, whose sobriquet is, “the Hero of Sebastopol.”  Then the aimless murderer reveals his crime, which, of course, escapes detection save at the hands of Prince Zosimoff, a nobleman, who I fancy, from his name, must have discovered a new kind of tooth-powder.

Next we have the “Interior of a Common Lodging House,” the counterpart of which may be found in almost any street in the modern capital of Russia.  There are the religious pictures, the cathedral immediately opposite, with its stained-glass windows and intermittent organ, and the air of sanctity without which no Russian Common Lodging House is complete.  Needless to say that Prince Tooth-powder—­I beg pardon—­and Anna listen while Fedor Ivanovitch again confesses his crime, this time to the daughter of the drosky-driver, for whom he has a sincere regard, and I may add, affection.  Although with a well-timed scream his sister might interrupt the awkward avowal, she prefers to listen to the bitter end.  This reminds me of several cases recorded in the Newgatekoff Calendaroff, a miscellany of Russian crimes.