lar enterprises. Ten thousand lives
were sacrificed among the laborers annually while the work was going
on, owing to its unhealthy nature; but still the autocratic designer
held to his purpose, until finally a respectable but not
unobjectionable foundation may be said to have been achieved upon
this Finland marsh. Yet there are those who reason that all was
foreseen by the energetic founder; that he had a grand and definite
object in view of which he never lost sight; and moreover that the
object which he aimed at has been fully attained. The city is
necessarily isolated, the environs being nearly unavailable for
habitations, indeed incapable of being much improved for any
desirable purpose. Like Madrid, it derives its importance from the
fact that it is the capital,--not from its location, though it has a
maritime relation which the Spanish metropolis cannot boast. The
great interest of the city to the author was its brief but almost
magical history, and the genius of him who founded it, of whom Motley
said that he was the only monarch who ever descended from a throne to
fit himself properly to ascend it. In population and its number of
houses St. Petersburg is exceeded by several European cities; but its
area is immense.

St. Isaac's Cathedral was begun in 1819 and completed in 1858, being
undoubtedly the finest structure of its class in Northern Europe. So
far as its architecture is concerned, its audacious simplicity
amounts to originality. It stands upon the great square known as
Isaac's Place, where a Christian church formerly stood as early as
the time of Peter. Its name is derived from a saint of the Greek
liturgy,--St. Isaac the Delmatian,--and is altogether distinct from
the patriarch of that name in the Old Testament. As the Milan
Cathedral represents a whole quarry of marble, this church may be
said to be a mountain of granite and bronze. Nor is it surprising
that it occupied forty years in the process of building; its
completion was only a question of necessary time, never one of
pecuniary means. Whatever is undertaken in this country is carried
to its end, regardless of the cost. The golden cross on the dome is
three hundred and thirty-six feet from the ground, the form of the
structure being that of a Greek cross with four equal sides,
surmounted by a central dome, which is covered with copper overlaid
with gold. Two hundred pounds of the precious metal, we were told,
were required to complete the oper