St. Petersburg: Panorama, Streets, Architecture and Public Life

Nor is it merely the change of weather that alters the physiognomy of the streets. The various sects that make up the population of the town give often a peculiar character to the day. On Friday, the holiday of the Moslems, the turbaned Turk, the black-bearded Persian, and the Tartar, with his shorn head, take their leisure in the streets. On Saturday, the black silk caftans of the Jews come abroad in great numbers ; and on the Sunday the Christians of all denominations come forth to their pious exercises or tlieir vai'ious diversions. The different sects of the Christians again tend to vary the scene. To-day the Lutherans celebrate their yearly day of penance, and German burghers, with their wives and children, and with their neat black gilt-edged hymn-books under their arms, sally forth on their pilgrimage to the church ; to-morrow the Catholics are summoned to some feast or other of the immaculate Virgin, and Poles and Lithuanians, Frenchmen, and Austrians, hurry to their stately temples. The next day are heard the thousand bells of the Greek Kolokolniks, and the wives and daughters of the Russian merchants come humming and fluttering about the streets in their gaudy plumages of green, blue, yellow, and red. But the great days are the public holidays, the emperor's days as they are called, when all the modes and fashions current, from Paris to Pekin, are certain to be paraded to the public gaze. It has often been remarked that there are few cities where one sees so many handsome men as in St. Petersburg. This is partly owing to the prevalence of uniforms, which certainly set off the person to advantage, partly also to the fact that all the handsomest men in the provinces are constantly in demand as recruits for the various regiments of the guards. Something must also be attributed to the constant efforts of the Russians to give themselves the most agreeable forms. In no other town are there so few cripples and deformed people ; and this is not owing merely to their being less tolerated here than elsewhere, but also, it is said, to the fact, that the Slavonian race is less apt than any other to produce deformed children. On the other hand, at every step you meet men whose exterior you cannot but admire, and a moment's reflection must fill you with regret that there should be so few fair eyes to contemplate so many handsome specimens of manhood. St. Petersburg is unfortunately a city of men, the male sex being in a majority of at least 100,000, and the women by no means equally distinguished for their charms. The climate seems to be unfavourable to the development of female beauty ; the tender plants quickly fade in so rude an atmosphere, and as they are so few in numbers, they are all the more in demand for the ballroom and the soiree, and are the more quickly used up by the friction of dissipation. Whether this be the cause, or whether the Russian women are naturally less handsome, comparatively, than the men, certain it is, that a fresh, handsome-looking girl is but rarely to be seen at St. Petersburg. The German ladies from the Baltic provinces form the exception ; and it is from Finland, Livonia, Esthonia, and Courland, that the gay circles of the capital receive their chief supply of beauty. To this it may be owing that the Russians have so high an opinion of German beauty that they rarely withhold from a Nyemka (German woman) the epithet oi krassivaya, or beautiful. The ladies at St. Petersburg, though in such great demand on account of their scarcity, are liable, from the same cause, to many inconveniences. For instance, it is impossible for them to walk in the streets, even in broad daylight, without a male escort.