The royal pair immediately enter, and bow to the representatives of other courts who may be present, and receive those who are honored with a presentation.  No one is permitted to speak to their majesties but in reply to questions which they may ask.  The Emperor Nicholas was very stately and reserved in his manners, and said but little.  The empress, more affable, would present her ungloved hand to her guest, who would receive it and press it with fervor to his lips.

The Emperor Nicholas, during his reign, was supposed to have some ninety millions of the human family subject to his sway.  With a standing army of a million of men, two hundred thousand of whom were cavalry, he possessed power unequaled by that of any other single kingdom on the globe.  In the recent struggle at Sevastopol all the energies of England, France and Turkey were expended against Russia alone, and yet it was long doubtful whose banners would be victorious.

It is estimated that the territory of Russia now comprises one seventh of the habitable globe, extending from the Baltic Sea across the whole breadth of Europe and of Asia to Behring’s Straits, and from the eternal ices of the north pole, almost down to the sunny shores of the Mediterranean.  As the previous narrative has shown, for many ages this gigantic power has been steadily advancing towards Constantinople.  The Russian flag now girdles the Euxine Sea, and notwithstanding the recent check at Sevastopol, Russia is pressing on with resistless strides towards the possession of the Hellespont.  A brief sketch of the geography of those realms will give one a more vivid idea of the nature of that conflict, which now, under the title of the eastern or Turkish question, engrosses the attention of Europe.

The strait which connects the Mediterranean Sea with the Sea of Marmora was originally called the Hellespont, from the fabulous legend of a young lady, named Helle, falling into it in attempting to escape from a cruel mother-in-law.  At the mouth of the Hellespont there are four strong Turkish forts, two on the European and two on the Asiatic side.  These forts are called the Dardanelles, and hence, from them, the straits frequently receive the name of the Dardanelles.  This strait is thirty-three miles long, occasionally expanding in width to five miles, and again being crowded by the approaching hills into a narrow channel less than half a mile in breadth.  Through the serpentine navigation of these straits, with fortresses frowning upon every headland, one ascends to the Sea of Marmora, a vast inland body of water one hundred and eighty miles in length and sixty miles in breadth.  Crossing this sea to the northern shore, you enter the beautiful straits of the Bosporus.  Just at the point where the Bosporus enters the Sea of Marmora, upon the western shore of the straits, sits enthroned upon the hills, in peerless beauty, the imperial city of Constantine with its majestic domes, arrowy minarets and palaces of snow-white marble glittering like a fairy vision beneath the light of an oriental sun.