onlight. With
its streets of palaces, its lively green roofs, sky-blue cupolas dotted
with stars, gilt spires, columns, statues, and obelisks, it is a place
not soon to be forgotten. If I might venture to suggest a fault, it is
that all looks too perfectly new. Antiquity gives added interest to
beauty,-- at least such is the opinion of a rat. That which looks as
if it had risen but yesterday, appears as though it might fall
to-morrow.

"Would you believe it," said Wisky, "a great part of this splendid city
is built upon piles! The foundation alone of yonder great church cost a
million of rubles! There is a constant fight going on here between water
and the efforts of man. To look at the fine buildings around us, you
would say that man had secured the victory. He has thrown over the river
a variety of bridges, stone, suspension, and pontoon, that can be taken
to pieces at pleasure, to connect the numerous islands together, and has
raised the most stately edifices on a trembling bog! But the water is
not conquered after all! I have known houses burst asunder from the
foundations giving way. I have seen a palace separated from the very
steps that led up to its door. And in spring, when the snow melts which
has been collecting for months, the horses can scarcely flounder along
through the rivers of mud in the streets!"

"Does the water ever rise very high?" inquired Whiskerandos. This was no
idle question on his part; he made it as a practical rat, who knew what
it was to live in a cellar, and had no desire to be drowned.

"Ah, my dear brother!" replied the Russian rat, "many stories are still
told of the fearful inundation which happened in 1824. Impelled by a
furious west wind, the waters then rose to a fearful height, streamed
through the streets, floated the carriages, made boats of the carts,
nay, lifted some wooden houses right from the ground, and sent them
floating about, with all their inhabitants in them, like so many
men-of-war! Horses were drowned, and so, alas! were rats in terrible
numbers. The trees in the squares were crowded with men, clinging to
them like bees when they cluster! It is said that thousands of poor
human beings perished, and that the inundation cost the city more than a
hundred millions of rubles!"

"Well, St. Petersburg is a splendid place!" cried I; "but after all,
the merry banks of the Thames, and dear dingy old London for me!"

CHAPTER XVI.

A RUSSIAN KITCHEN.

Under the