Russia in 1839 -Empire of the Czar: A Journey Through Eternal Russia

AND THE ARCHITECTURE OF THE COUNTRY. 131

visit them during winter: six feet of snow conceals all this dreariness, but in summer we see the country. Explore the territory of Petersburg and the neighbouring provinces, and you will find, I am told, for hundreds of leagues, nothing but ponds and morasses, stunted firs and dark-leaved birch. To this sombre vegetation the white shroud of winter is assuredly preferable. Every where the same plains and bushes seem to compose the same landscape ; at least, until the traveller approaches Finland and Sweden. There he finds a succession of little granite rocks covered with pines, which change the appearance of the soil, though without giving much variety to the landscape. It will be easily believed that the gloom of such a country is scarcely lessened by the lines of columns which men have raised on its even and naked surface. The proper bases of Greek peristyles are mountains: there is here no harmony between the inventions of man and the gifts of nature; in short, a taste for edifices without taste has presided over the building of St. Petersburg.

But, however shocked our perceptions of the beau tiful may be by the foolish imitations which spoil its appearance, it is impossible to contemplate without a species of admiration, an immense city which has sprung from the sea at the bidding of one man, and which has to defend itself against a periodical inundation of ice, and a perpetual one of water.

The Kronstadt steam-boat dropped her anchor before the English quay opposite the Custom-house, and not far from the famous square where the statue of Peter the Great stands mounted on its rock.

I would gladly spare my reader the detail of the G б