or
any other European capital which I have visited has sufficient
pretensions to enter into comparison with it in respect to beauty and
grandeur. Many of the streets are miles in length, as straight as an
arrow and adorned with the most superb edifices. The so-called Nevsky
Prospect, a street which runs from the Admiralty to the Monastery of St.
Alexander Nevsky, is nearly three miles in length and for the greatest
part of the way floored with small blocks of wood shaped octagonally.
The broad and rapid Neva runs through the centre of this Queen of cities,
and on either side is a noble quay, from which you have a full view of
the river and of what is passing on its bosom. But I will not be diffuse
in the description of objects which have been so often described, but
devote the following lines which my paper will contain to more important
matters.

The lower orders of the Russians are very willing to receive Scriptural
information, and very willing to purchase it if offered to them at a
price which comes within their means. I will give an interesting example
of this. A young man of the name of Nobbs, in the employ of Mr. Leake,
an English farmer residing a few _versts_ from Petersburg, is in the
habit on his return from the latter place, whither he is frequently sent
by his master, to carry with him a satchel filled with Russian New
Testaments and religious tracts, with which he is supplied by an
excellent English lady who dwells there. He says that before he has
reached home, he has invariably disposed of his whole cargo to the
surrounding peasantry; and such is the hunger and thirst which they
display for the word of salvation that his stock has always been
insufficient to answer all the demands made, after it was known what
merchandise he brought with him. There remain at present three hundred
copies unsold of the modern Russian New Testament at the shop which has
the disposal of the works of the late Russian Bible Society; these
copies, all of which are damaged from having been immersed during the
inundation of 1824, might all be disposed of in one day, provided proper
individuals were employed to hawk them about in the environs of this
capital. There are twenty thousand copies on hand of the Sclavonian
Bible, which being in a language and character differing materially from
the modern Russ character and language, and only understood by the
learned, is unfit for general circulation, and the copies will probab