A STRANGER accustomed to the crowds and bustle of London or Paris, is struck on his arrival at St. Petersburg by the emptiness of the streets. He finds vast open spaces in which at times he beholds nothing but a solitary droshky, that wends its way along hke a boat drifting on the open sea. He sees spacious streets bordered by rows of mute palaces with only here and there a human figure hovering about, Hke a lurking freebooter among a waste of rocks. The vastness of the plan on which the city has been laid out, shows that its founders speculated on a distant future. Rapidly as the population has been increasing, it is still insufficient to fill the frame allotted to it, or to give to the streets that life and movement which we look for in the capital of a great empire. On the occasion, indeed, of great pubHc festivals and rejoicings, and at all times in the Nevskoi Prospekt and about the Admiralty, the movement is very considerable, but this only tends to leave the throng and bustle of the other quarters of the town far below the average.
The population of St. Petersburg is the most varied and motley that mind can imagine. To begin mth the military. We have the Caucasian guards, the Tartar guards, the Finland guards, besides a fourth and fifth division of the guards for the various tribes of Cossacks. Of these nations, the elite are thus always retained as hostages in the capital, and their several uniforms are alone sufficient to present a never-changing picture to the eye of an observer. Here may be seen a Cossack trotting over one of the Platz Parads with his lance in rest, as though in his imagination he were still pursuing a cloud of flying Frenchmen. Further on, perchance a Circassian cavalier, in his shirt of mail, and harnessed from head to foot, is going through his warlike exercises. The Moslem from the Taurus may be seen gravely moving through the throng, while the well-drilled Russian soldiers defile in long columns through the streets. Of all the endless variety of uniforms that belong to the great Russian army, a few specimens are always to be seen in the capital. There are the Pavlov guards, the Semeonov guards, and the Pavlogradski guards ; the Sum hussars, and the Tshuguyev hussars ; then there are chasseurs a cheval, and sharpshooters on foot ; then there are cuu'assiers, and grenadiers, and pioneers, and engineers ; horse artillery, and foot artillery; to say nothing of dragoons, lancers, and those mihtary plebeians, the troops of the line. All these, in their various uniforms, marching to parade, returning to their barracks, mountnig giiard, and passing through the other multifarious duties of a garrison life, are in themselves enough to give life and diversity to the streets.
If then we turn to the more pacific part of the population, devoted to the less brilliant, but certainly not less useful, pursuit of commerce, we find every nation of Europe, and almost every nation of Aii^ia, represented in the streets of St. Petersburg. Spaniards and Italians, Englisli and French, Greeks and Scandinavians may be seen mingling togetlier; nor will the silken garments of the Persian and the Bokliarian be wanting to the picture, nor the dangling tail of the Cliinese, nor the pearly teeth of the Arabian.
The injima plebs bears an outside as motley as the more aristocratic portion of the community. The German Bauer may be seen lounging among the noisy bearded Russians ; the slim Pole elbows the diminutive Finlander ; and Esthonians, Lettes and Jews are running up against each other, while the Mussulman studiously avoids all contact with the Jew. Yankee sailors and dwarfish Kamtshadales, Caucasians, Moors, and Mongalians, all sects, races, and colours contribute to make up the populace of the Russian capital.