At twenty degrees of cold there are few St. Petersburg mothers who would allow their children to go into the open air. Ladies ventm'e abroad only in close carriages, of which every aperture is closed by slips of fur. There are families at this season who will spend weeks without once tasting a mouthful of fresh air, and, at last, when the cold has reached its extreme point, none are to be seen in the streets but the poorest classes, unless it be foreigners, people in business, or officers. As to these last, the parades and mountings of guard are never interrupted by any degree of cold, and while the frost is hard enough to cripple a stag, generals and colonels of the guard may be seen in their glittering uniforms moving as nimbly and as unconcernedly about the windy Admiralty-square, as though they were promenading a ball-room. Not a particle of a cloak must be seen about them ; not a whisper of complaint must be heard. The emperor's presence forbids both, for he exposes himself unhesitatingly to wind, snow, hail, and rain, and expects from his officers the same disregard of the inclemencies of the season.
The Russian stoves are in their way the most complete things that can be imagined. They are built up with glazed tiles, and such are the multitudinous passages, ascending and descending, that before the heat emitted by the fire has found its way into the chimney, it has often a distance of a hundred feet in length to pass through. Tlie huge mass of stone which composes the stove is a long time before it gets warm ; but, once warm, it retains the heat for a whole day. Almost the only wood used in St. Petersburg as fuel is the wood of the birch tree. It is the cheaj^est to be had in the neighbourhood, and its embers are more lasting than those of the pine or fir. Now, the embers are to a Russian stove of the greatest iniportance, for it is from the embers, and not from the (lame, that the stove is expected to derive its heat. So long as the wood continues in a blaze, wliatever (juantity may have been put in, the stove never gets thoroughly warm ; it is only when by means of the yitshkay (a small plate of iron,) the passage from the stove into the chimney has been hermetically, closed, that the heat begins to be sensibly felt in the room. The Russian, stove -heaters are extremely dexterous in all the details of their occupation. Tongues and shovels are unknown to them. Their only instrument is a long iron poker with a hook at the end of it. With this they keep stirring up the fiery mass, break up the embers, and pull forward the fragments of wood that are still burning, in order, by exposing them to the current of air, to accelerate their conversion. In every great house there is -at least one servant whose exclusive duty it is to look after the stoves, and to collect and prepare the requisite fuel. In order that the family may havo a warm room to take their cofFee in, in the morning, it is necessary that the stove-heater should begin his labours at an early hour of the night. In. general he builds up a pile of logs within each stove the evening before, that the wood may be well dried, and then he sets fire to it early in the morning. The stoves usually open upon long passages, which are thus as effectually heated as the rooms themselves.
If the yuslika be closed before the wood be completely burnt into embers, a poisonous gas is emitted by the coals, and fatal consequences may ensue to those who are exposed to its influence. Such accidents do occasionally happen, and it is nothing uncommon in St. Petersburg to hear of people who have been suffocated by the fumes of their stoves ; but when the immense number of those stoves is taken into consideration, and that every floor and every part of the house have to be warmed for at least six months of the year, it must be admitted that accidents occur but rarely, and that the stove-heaters must display an admirable degree of judgment in thus always selecting the right moment for closing the yuslika. In autumn the houses are usually damp, and in consequence cool, but in December or January, after the stoves have all been in play for some months, every corner of a Russian house becomes thoroughly dry. and then behind the double windows and the threefold doors, there prevails throughout the day an equable, agreeable, and mild temperature of from 14° to lo°.
The erecting of one of these Russian stoves is a work of art, to which it is not every man who is equal. Much consideration and no little judgment are required in suiting the locality of the stove to the distribution of the apartments. The most distinguished artists in this line are almost invariably natives of what is called Great Russia, and throughout the empire it is to them almost exclusively that an office is assigned of such importance in a Russian establishment.