erman bureaucracy. But there is at least one profound
difference. Though Berlin is said by geographers to be built on the
Spree, we might live a long time in the city without noticing
the sluggish little stream on which the name of a river has been
undeservedly conferred. St. Petersburg, on the contrary, is built on
a magnificent river, which forms the main feature of the place. By its
breadth, and by the enormous volume of its clear, blue, cold water,
the Neva is certainly one of the noblest rivers of Europe. A few miles
before reaching the Gulf of Finland it breaks up into several streams
and forms a delta. It is here that St. Petersburg stands.

Like the river, everything in St. Petersburg is on a colossal scale. The
streets, the squares, the palaces, the public buildings, the churches,
whatever may be their defects, have at least the attribute of greatness,
and seem to have been designed for the countless generations to come,
rather than for the practical wants of the present inhabitants. In this
respect the city well represents the Empire of which it is the capital.
Even the private houses are built in enormous blocks and divided into
many separate apartments. Those built for the working classes sometimes
contain, I am assured, more than a thousand inhabitants. How many cubic
feet of air is allowed to each person, I do not know; not so many, I
fear, as is recommended by the most advanced sanitary authorities.

For a detailed description of the city I must refer the reader to the
guide books. Among its numerous monuments, of which the Russians are
justly proud, I confess that the one which interested me most was
neither St. Isaac's Cathedral, with its majestic gilded dome, its
colossal monolithic columns of red granite, and its gaudy interior; nor
the Hermitage, with its magnificent collection of Dutch pictures; nor
the gloomy, frowning fortress of St. Peter and St. Paul, containing
the tombs of the Emperors. These and other "sights" may deserve all the
praise which enthusiastic tourists have lavished upon them, but what
made a far deeper impression on me was the little wooden house in which
Peter the Great lived whilst his future capital was being built. In its
style and arrangement it looks more like the hut of a navvy than the
residence of a Tsar, but it was quite in keeping with the character of
the illustrious man who occupied it. Peter could and did occasionally
work like a navvy without feeling that his Imper