furnishes a ready means of commanding the capital, and furnishes a
refuge for the government in case of an insurrection. Like the
fortifications of Paris, it is designed not so much to defend as to
control the city.

St. Petersburg is certainly the most imposing city, and Russia is the most
imposing nation in the world--at first sight. But the imposing aspect of
both is to a great extent an _imposition_. The city tries to pass itself
off for granite, when a great proportion is of wood or brick, covered with
paint and stucco, which peels off in masses before the frosts of every
winter, and needs a whole army of plasterers and painters every spring to
put it in presentable order. You pass what appears a Grecian temple, and
lo, it is only a screen of painted boards. A one-storied house assumes the
airs of a loftier building, in virtue of a front of another story bolted
and braced to its roof. And much even that is real is sadly out of place.
Long lines of balconies and pillars and porticoes, which would be
appropriate to Greece or Italy, are for the greater part of the year piled
with snow-drifts. St. Petersburg and Russian civilization are both of a
growth too hasty, and too much controlled from without, instead of
proceeding from a law of inward development, to be enduring.

The capital to be seen to advantage must be viewed during the few weeks of
early summer; or in the opening winter, when the snow forms a pavement
better than art can produce, and when the cold has built a continuous
bridge over the Neva, without having as yet become severe enough to drive
every body from the streets.

The Neva is the main artery through which pours the life-blood of St.
Petersburg. But the life-current is checked from the time when the ice is
too far weakened by the returning sun to be passable, and not yet
sufficiently broken up to float down to the Gulf. At that time all
intercourse between portions of the city on its opposite batiks is
suspended. Every body is anxious for the breaking-up of the ice. Luxuries
from more genial climes are waiting in the Baltic for the river to be
navigable. No sooner is the ice so far cleared as to afford a practicable
passage for a boat, than the glad news is announced by the artillery of
the citadel, and, no matter what the hour, the commandant and his suite
hurry into a gondola and push over to the Imperial palace, directly
opposite. The commandant fills a large goblet with the icy fluid, and
p