The world cannot present a more singular, or, in its way, a more magnificent spectacle, than the display of carriages in the Prospekt on a fine winter's day. The street is covered by a smooth hard surface of snow, over which the equipages rush silently along, the snorting of the steeds, and the admonishing ejaculations of the drivers, being the only sounds that are heard. There is something quite intoxicating in driving up and down through the wild bounding sea of equipages. The palaces on both sides are gaily arrayed by the beams of the sun; the street, though broad, is filled to overflowing; the equipages are of all kinds and dimensions; here a modest isvoshtshik dashes along with a spruce clerk or a smart chambermaid behind him; there a splendid coach and four, filled with ladies, moves more leisurely along, and seems, compared to our humble sledges, a man-of-war sailing proudly among a fleet of cock-boats. Coaches and two announce the less ostentatious merchant. Handsome single-horse vehicles, meanwhile, are flying like lightning through the crowd, and " Shivdye^ shivdye!" (Faster, faster!) is the constant cry of the well-starred magnificoes within. These are the generals and ministers hurrying to their offices and various appointments, and parading their diamonds in so modest an equipage, in imitation of the emperor, while their wives are using up the breath of fouv steeds at least. Nay, the emperor himself, enveloped in his cloak, but unobserved by none, may pierce the throng, for his affairs are numberless in all quarters of the town. Gossudar!) flies from mouth to mouth, and almost at the same moment the apparition has passed away. Padyee, padyeCj padyee! cry the little postilions, in a sharp and sustained note. A stranger, though he forget all else of Russian that he learned at St. Petersburg, will not forget the padyee^ Idviyee, prdviyee, and beregissa^ with which the charioteers steer their course through so arduous a navigation: and if there be nothing else which he has learned to love in Russia, he will at least love the recollection of his sledge-promenades, and will remember, with some kindness, his dexterous and willing isvoshtshik.
In the year 1836, and in the month of December, a man threw a piece of apple-peel out of his little air window in Moscow. The peel of the apple did not reach the street, but happening to strike against the ledge of the window, froze fast to it, and remained icebound on its way from the window to the street, till it was set free by a thaw somewhere in the month of February, and was enabled to complete the journey on which it had set out SIX weeks and three days previously. This may afi\)rd a tolerable notion of the severity and j)erseverance of a Moscovite winter.
Such a thing could not have occurred in St. Petersburg, for in the marshy delta of the Neva the temperature is more variable than in central Russia. 1 he icy winds that blow from Siberia are in some measure tempered by the influence of tiie Baltic. Rainy west.winds, freezing northeasters, thick fogs, and cheerful frosty days, are succeeding each otiier constantly, and keep up a struggle for mastery throughout the whole of the six months' winter. A man is as little secure against rain and mud in January, as against frost and snow in April. In Moscow, on the contrary, the sky was never known to drop a single tear of rain in December ; and neither among the records of the city, nor the traditions of its inhabitants, will you trace one instance of a pair of boots having been spotted with mud in January.