Even without including the peasants who offer provisions for sale, there are probably not much less than 10,000 merchants and dealers of different degrees assembled in the gostinnoi dvor of St. Petersburg, and its dependent buildings. Of these people, few have their household establishments in the vicinity of the market, yet all have the wants of hunger to satisfy in the course of the day, and it may therefore be easily imagined, that a host of serviceable traders have attached themselves to the establishment for the mere convenience of the merchants. Among the streets and lanes of the baaaar there are constantly circulating, retailers of tea with their large steaming copper urns ; quass sellers ; together witb dealers iu bread sausages, cheese, &e. ; and all these people receive constant encouragement from the ever hungry kupsni. Careworn looks are as little seen in this market, as grumbhng tones are heard ; for a Russian seldom gives houseroom to care or melancholy, and yet more rarely gives utterance to a complaint. Nor indeed has he occasion ; for in this rising country, Slava Bogu! (God be thanked !) be the merchandize ever so bad, trade goes on nevertheless. In other countries, a merchant relies upon the goodness of his merchandize for custom; the Russian speculator, I firmly believe, calculates that the worse his wares, the sooner will his customers want to renew their stock.
The Russian is by nature a light-hearted creature, and by no means given to reflection. You will seldom see the gostinnoi dvor merchant engaged with writings or calculations. If not occupied by a customer, or busy in his endeavours to attract one, you will mostly find him romping, playing, or jesting with his brother traders. In fine weather, draughts is their favourite game ; and for greater convenience, the chequered field is often painted on the tables or benches that stand before their booths. They eagerly thrust their heads together, examine the position of the pieces with the air of connoisseurs, bet on one player or the other, and seem completely absorbed in the game, until a purchaser makes his appearance, when the group is broken up in a moment, and each endeavours, with an infinity of bowings and assurances, to gain for his own shop the honour of the stranger's custom. In winter, they often warm themselves in the roomy passages of the bazaar, with a game at football, or crowd together round the steaming samovar, and sip down cans full of hot tea. Sometimes they amuse themselves with their nightingales and other singing birds, of which they have always a great number about them ; and sometimes — well, sometimes they fold their caftans leisurely about them, stretch forth their arms, and indidge themselves in — a yawn ; but they never neglect, every now and then, to step before their Bog, or saint, and, with a devout inclination of the body, to pray to liim for success in trade.
With the exception of furs, many of which are of excellent quality, there are in the gostinnoi dvor, properly so called, few but the iron and wax shops where the articles are thoroughly Russian. Most of the merchandise consists of bad imitations of foreign fabrics. As the goods, so the customers. Both are Europeanised, for there is little in the Frenchified soubrettes, the lackies in livery, the employes in uniform, and the foreign teachers, to remind one of Russian nationality ; but a little farther on, when you enter the gates of the Apraxin Ruinock and the Tshukin Dvor, you come to bazaars where sellers, buyers, and wares are all equally and entirely Russian ; and here, in the very centre of the palaces and plate glass of St. Petersburg, in this capital of princes and magnates, there unfolds itself to your view, a motley dirty populace, precisely similar to ■what may be supposed to have thronged the fairs of Novgorod in the middle ages, or may stiU be seen m the bazaars of any of the provincial cities of Russia.