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

FETE IN ГАЕК OF PETERHOFF.25

sand carriages, thirty thousand pedestrians, and an innumerable quantity of boats leave Petersburg to proceed to, and form encampments around, Peterhoff.

It is the only day on which I have seen a real crowd in Russia. A bivouac of citizens in a country altogether military, is a rarity. Not that the army was wanting at the fete, for a body of guards and the corps of cadets were both cantonned round the residence of the sovereign. All the multitude of officers, soldiers, tradesmen, serfs, lords and masters wandered together among the woods, where night was chased away by two hundred and fifty thousand lamps. Such was the number named to me; and though I do not know whether it was correct or not, I do know that the mass of fire shed an artificial light far exceeding in clearness that of the northern day. In Russia, the emperor easts the sun into the shade. At this period, of the summer, the nights recommence and rapidly increase in length; so that, without the illumination, it would have been dark for several hours under the avenues in the park of Peterhoff.

It is said, also, that in thirty-five minutes all the lamps of the illuminations in the park were lighted by eighteen hundred men. Opposite the front of the palace, and proceeding from it in a straight line towards the sea, is a canal, the surface of whose waters was so covered with the reflection of the lights upon its borders, as to produce a perspective that was magical: it might have been taken for a sheet of fire. Ariosto would perhaps have had imagination brilliant enough to describe all the wonders of this illumination : to the various groups of lamps, which

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