ndor of the residence, the
atmosphere soon becomes close and characterized by an unpleasant odor,
suggesting its diminished vitality; for which reason pastilles are
burned, or _eau de Cologne_ reduced to vapor in a heated censer,
whenever visits are anticipated. It was a question with me, whether or
not the advantage of a thoroughly equable temperature was
counterbalanced by the lack of circulation. The physical depression we
all felt seemed to result chiefly from the absence of daylight.

One winter picture remains clearly outlined upon my memory. In the
beginning of December we happened once to drive across the Admiralty
Square in the early evening twilight,--three o'clock in the afternoon.
The temperature was about 10 deg. below zero, the sky a low roof of moveless
clouds, which seemed to be frozen in their places. The pillars of St.
Isaac's Cathedral--splendid monoliths of granite, sixty feet high--had
precipitated the moisture of the air, and stood, silvered with rime from
base to capital. The Column of Alexander, the bronze statue of Peter,
with his horse poised in air on the edge of the rock, and the trees on
the long esplanade in front of the Admiralty, were all similarly coated,
every twig rising as rigid as iron in the dark air. Only the huge golden
hemisphere of the Cathedral dome, and the tall, pointed golden spire of
the Admiralty, rose above the gloom, and half shone with a muffled,
sullen glare. A few people, swaddled from head to foot, passed rapidly
to and fro, or a droschky, drawn by a frosted horse, sped away to the
entrance of the Nevskoi Prospekt. Even these appeared rather like wintry
phantoms than creatures filled with warm blood and breathing the breath
of life. The vast spaces of the capital, the magnitude of its principal
edifices, and the display of gold and colors strengthened the general
aspect of unreality, by introducing so many inharmonious elements into
the picture. A bleak moor, with the light of a single cottage-window
shining across it, would have been less cold, dead, and desolate.

The temperature, I may here mention, was never very severe. There were
three days when the mercury fluctuated between 15 deg. and 20 deg. below
zero, five days when it reached 10 deg. below, and perhaps twenty when it
fell to zero, or a degree or two on either side. The mean of the five
winter months was certainly not lower than +12 deg. Quite as much rain
fell as snow. After two or three days of sharp co