The dust in summer is intolerable, as in most Russian towns, and owing to the same reasons : the immense width of the streets, and the vast, open, unpaved squares or places that every where abound, leaving the wind to exercise its power without control. If in some of our closely built European cities the want of open spaces is felt as an evil, the Russian cities, and St. Petersburg in particular, may be said to have gone into the other extreme. The unnecessary space allowed for their streets makes it almost impossible to light them at night, or to obtain shade in them by day. During summer no lamps are necessary, the streets being then nearly as light at midnight as in London at noon, and the long days that prevail one half of the year are perhaps in part answerable for the imperfect manner in which the streets are hghted during the long winter-nights. The small oil-lamps, then lighted, are large enough to be seen themselves, but not to make other objects visible. They are placed at the sides of the street, whence their rays are scarcely able to reach the centre. They diffuse light only to a distance of about four paces, and when seen from a more remote point look only like little stars. The broad long streets on a clear night look pretty enough with their double rows of httle stars, but these serve more for ornament than use. In the Nevskoi Prospekt, indeed, there is no lack of illumination, the shops being for the most part brilliantly hghted up, but in some streets even the glimmering oil-lamps are wanting, and in such a neighbom'hood the poor wanderer is grateful for the little light that may escape from some social sitting-room, of which the shutters have been charitably left unclosed.
Notwithstanding this gloomy darkness the streets are not wanting in life, though it is often not without positive danger that a pedestrian can venture from one side to the other. Sledges are eveiy moment seen to emerge from obscurity and to plunge again as rapidly into impenetrable gloom. Huge shadows seem to be pursuing each other over the snow, the incessant cry of the drivers, " Padye^ padye ! beregissa r serving them as a mutual warning. The skill and care of these drivers are really deserving of great praise ; for accidents, after all, are of rare occurrence. The quiet character of the Russians is shown by the great rarity of murders and acts of violence during these long dark winter-nights. Not that anecdotes are wanting of the rogueries of isvoshtshiks, butshniks, and platniks ; but the darkness is so pitchy, that that alone is enough to conjure up all sorts of stories ; and I believe that if a city with 500,000 Italians or Spaniards, or even London or Paris, were left for eight long arctic nights enveloped in a St. Petersburgian obscurity, on the ninth day there would be found so many perforated walls, and so many killed and wounded people in the streets, that the town would look as though it had been occupied by a foreign enemy after a battle.
Three ineffectual attempts have been made to Hght the city with gas. The first was during Alexander's reign ; when, just as all the arrangements were complete, the buildings caught fire, and the plan was abandoned for some years. The second attempt was made after the accession of the present emperor. The high and ungainly building intended for the gasometer was injudiciously placed near the Winter Palace, and formed so prominent a deformity, that the emperor was glad in 1838 to buy up the whole of the premises belonging to the company, for the purpose of having them pulled down. The company then went to work again, and in the autumn of 1839, when people were beginning to look forward to a light winter, the whole illumination was opened and closed on the same day by a frightful explosion, by which the gasometer was destroyed, a number of people killed, and the money of the shareholders lost. Since then the attempt has not been renewed.