given by Count Frederick Skarbek in his Pamietniki (Memoirs).  According to this most trustworthy of procurable witnesses (why he is the most trustworthy will be seen presently), Nicholas Chopin’s migration to Poland came about in this way.  A Frenchman had established in Warsaw a manufactory of tobacco, which, as the taking of snuff was then becoming more and more the fashion, began to flourish in so high a degree that he felt the need of assistance.  He proposed, therefore, to his countryman, Nicholas Chopin, to come to him and take in hand the book-keeping, a proposal which was readily accepted.

The first impression of the young Lorrainer on entering the land of his dreams cannot have been altogether of a pleasant nature.  For in the summer of 1812, when, we are told, the condition of the people had been infinitely ameliorated by the Prussian and Russian governments, M. de Pradt, Napoleon’s ambassador, found the nation in a state of semi-barbarity, agriculture in its infancy, the soil parched like a desert, the animals stunted, the people, although of good stature, in a state of extreme poverty, the towns built of wood, the houses filled with vermin, and the food revolting.  This picture will not escape the suspicion of being overdrawn.  But J.G.  Seume, who was by no means over-squeamish, and whom experience had taught the meaning of “to rough it,” asserts, in speaking of Poland in 1805, that, Warsaw and a few other places excepted, the dunghill was in most houses literally and without exaggeration the cleanest spot, and the only one where one could stand without loathing.  But if the general aspect of things left much to be desired from a utilitarian point of view, its strangeness and picturesqueness would not fail to compensate an imaginative youth for the want of order and comfort.  The strong contrast of wealth and poverty, of luxury and distress, that gave to the whole country so melancholy an appearance, was, as it were, focussed in its capital.  Mr. Coxe, who visited Warsaw not long before Nicholas Chopin’s arrival there, says:—­

The streets are spacious, but ill-paved; the churches and public buildings large and magnificent, the palaces of the nobility are numerous and splendid; but the greatest part of the houses, especially the suburbs, are mean and ill- constructed wooden hovels.

What, however, struck a stranger most, was the throngs of humanity that enlivened the streets and squares of Warsaw, the capital of a nation composed of a medley of Poles, Lithuanians, Red and White Russians, Germans, Muscovites, Jews, and Wallachians, and the residence of a numerous temporary and permanent foreign population.  How our friend from quiet Nancy—­ which long ago had been deserted by royalty and its train, and where literary luminaries, such as Voltaire, Madame du Chatelet, Saint Lambert, &c., had ceased to make their fitful appearances—­ must have opened his eyes when this varied spectacle unfolded itself before him.