The best hour for walking on the Prospekt is from 12 till 2, when the ladies go shopping, and the men go to look at the fair purchasers. Towards two or three o'clock, the purchases have been made, the parade is over, the merchants are leaving the exchange, the world of promenaders wend their way to the English quay, and the real promenade for the day begins, the imperial family usually mingling with the rest of the loungers. This magnificent quay, constructed, like all the quays of St. Petersburg, of huge blocks of granite, i-uns along the Neva from the New to the Old Admiralty, and was built during the reign of the Empress Catherine, who caused the canals and rivers of her capital, to the length of not less than 24 English miles, to be enclosed in granite. As in all water constructions, the colossal part of the work is not that which meets the eye. The mighty scaffolding on which the quay rests, stands deeply imbedded in the marshy soil below. Handsome steps, every here and there, lead down to the river ; and for carriages large broad descents have been constructed, and tliese in winter are usually decorated with all sorts of fanciful columns and other ornaments, cut out of the ice. The houses along the English quay are deservedly called palaces. They were originally, for the most part, built by Englishmen, but are now, nearly all of them, the property of wealthy Russians.
The favouiite walk in Hamburg is called the Juiigfcr)sticg, or Maiden's Walk ; the Enghsh quay in St. Petersburg ought to be called the Princes' Walk, for there dally the elite of the Russian empire may be seen wearing away the granite with their princely and noble foet. The carriages usually stop at the Now Admiralty, where their noble owners descend, and honour the quay by walking up and down it some two or three times. There are no shops ; and as the English quay is not a convenient thoroughfare, the promenaders are seldom disturbed by the presence of any chance passengers. The Emperor and tlie imperial family are a centre to the groups that come to salute them and to be saluted by them. This forms a kind of connexion for the promenaders, and gives a oneness to the assembled company. The Emperor walks up and down upon an apparent footing of equality with his subjects around him ; though these, in point of fact, stand about in the same relation to him, that a child's doll does to the Colossus of Rhodes. The Englishman buttons up his hatred of despotism in his great coat, and scarcely condescends to touch his hat when he meets the " Giant of the North ;" while to the Russian by his side, a submissive demeanour has by habit become a positive source of enjoyment, till he feels a real affection for those to whom the law gives the right of ordering him about. The elegant of the French embassy, whose connexions with Paris ensure to him at all times the earliest information relative to the variations of the mode, is observed with as much interest by the native petit maitre^ as au insect would be observed by a naturalist ; and be assured that the observations of to-day will be studiously turned to account by the observant student, when to-morrow he proceeds to the important avocations of his toilet. The baron or the reichsgraf from Germany, who can tell you his ancestors from before the times of the Hohenstaufens, and who delights to think that his great-grandchildren after him will he registered in the Gotha Almanac, walks here side by side with the Russian trader, who, like an ignis fatuus, has suddenly sprung from some fen or other, and whose name in a few years will disappear and leave no trace behind it, either in the annals of history or the columns of an almanac. The master of some vast estate, in the Ural mountains or on the arid Steppes, where thousands of souls must labour away for his exclusive profit, walks along the quay with as little pretension as the poor shopman, who can scarcely be said to have a property in his own soul, imbodied as it is in the gay garments, which he has such evident delight in displaying to an admiring world.