places direct from the
Crusades. The Cossacks of the Don, the Ukraine, and the Ural managed
their little brown or black horses (each regiment having its own color)
so wonderfully, that, as we looked down upon them, each line resembled a
giant caterpillar, moving sidewise with its thousand legs creeping as
one. These novel and picturesque elements constituted the principal
charm of the spectacle.

The passing away of winter was signalized by an increase of daylight
rather than a decrease of cold. The rivers were still locked, the
ice-hills frequented, the landscape dull and dead; but by the beginning
of February we could detect signs of the returning sun. When the sky was
clear, (a thing of rarest occurrence,) there was _white_ light at
noonday, instead of the mournful yellow or orange gloom of the previous
two months. After the change had fairly set in, it proceeded more and
more rapidly, until our sunshine was increased at the rate of seven or
eight minutes per day. When the vernal equinox came, and we could sit
down to dinner at sunset, the spell of death seemed to be at last
broken. The fashionable drive, of an afternoon, changed from the Nevskoi
Prospekt to the Palace Quay on the Neva; the Summer Garden was cleared
of snow, and its statues one by one unboxed; in fine days we could walk
there, and there coax back the faded color to a child's face. There,
too, walked Alexander II., one of the crowd, leading his little daughter
by the hand; and thither, in a plain little _caleche_, drove the
Empress, with her youngest baby on her lap.

But when the first ten days of April had passed and there was still no
sign of spring, we began to grow impatient. How often I watched the
hedges around the Michailoffsky Palace, knowing that the buds would
there first swell! How we longed for a shimmer of green under the brown
grass, an alder tassel, a flush of yellow on the willow wands, a sight
of rushing green water! One day, a week or so later, we were engaged to
dine on Vassili Ostrow. I had been busily occupied until late in the
afternoon, and when we drove out upon the square, I glanced, as usual,
towards Peter the Great. Lo! behind him flashed and glittered the free,
the rejoicing Neva! Here and there floated a cake of sullen ice, but the
great river had bared his breast to the sun, which welcomed him after
six months of absence. The upper pontoon-bridges were already spanned
and crowded with travel, but the lower one, carried