Passing these, we arrive at some hardware and clock shops, though the latter have formed their chief lodgment in the gostinnoi dvor, where the clocks are marshalled on shelves, in due order and in long lines, from the treble of the shrill-toned dwarf to the capacious bulk and voluminous voice of the double bass. " In long lines," I repeat it, for every thing with the Russians is long. Long are the lines of houses in their streets, long are the lines of their soldiers, longoh, how long ! — are their regiments of verst-posts anglice, mile-stones) ; their buildings are long and drawn out ; and long, very long, are their caravans of waggons on the road. Breadth, depth, and elevation, indeed, are wanting. Therefore it is that every thing among them is \vithout substance or durabihty ; nothing is close, compact, solid or exalted ; every thing is long, flat, smooth ; the whole country is stiff and sharp-cornered, and has the air of havmg passed through the hands of the drill-sergeant.
Last of all come the venders of wax candles, which are exhibited for sale in all forms and sizes. Some are tliick enough to be placed as pillars in the fa9ade of a temple, while others are almost as thin as spun silk. These are the merchants whose trade is, apparently, among the best in St. Petersburg. Their dealings augment in proportion as the Greek-Russian Church extends her dimensions. The nations that in later times have been baptized in the Russian name, all require a constant supply of wax, of which their new faith teaches them to burn away vast quantities for the good of their souls. The recent transition of the Lithuanian Church to the national faith ; the numberless proselytes whom the Russians are constantly gaining over ; the churches built and building in all the new colonies, ui Siberia, in the steppes, and in the capital itself ; all these lead to a constant demand for wax candles of the genuine ecclesiastical mould. The wax, mostly purified with great care, arrives at Moscow in cakes of two poods in weight. There it is bleached, for in St Petersbui-g there are no wax bleachers, the Finnish sun being itself too well bleached to have much effect in bleaching anything else. The wax tapers themselves are often covered with ornaments. Some are gilt, others are spun round with gold, and silver thread, and others again have small pieces of coloured glass let into them, to cheat the eye with the semblance of precious stones .
Having passed the wax lights, we arrive at the spacious hay market (Sennaia Ploshtshod), with its stately church. This place is remarkable as the only spot in which a barricade was ever erected in St. Petersburg, in consequence of a popular insurrection. This was in 1832, when the cholera raged here, and when the mobility of the capital, who make the hay market their daUy lounge, were seized with the notion that prevailed in so many other great cities of Em-ope, that not God but the doctors had brought the pestilence among them. The physicians were supposed to be poisoning the people ; and these, excited by their own absurd suspicions, broke out one morning into open insurrection. The frantic mob of graybeards ran wildly about the neighbouring streets^ seized upon the cholera carts, made the patients get out, set the horses loose, and, after breakingthe vehicles, threw the fragments into the Fontanka, and then fortified tlie market-place by erecting barricades of hay-waggons at the several onti-ances. The insurgents passed the night behind their intronclnnonts, resolved, on the following morning, to deal with the doctors as they had dealt with the carts. Early in the morning, accordingly, the great cholera iiospital was attacked and taken by storm. The pliysicians, mostly Germans, were thrown from the windows and torn to pieces by the mob, and the patients were conveyed to their homes, that they might bo freed from the clutches of their .suj)posed tormenters. Shortly afterwards the emperor arrived from Zarskoye Sclo, and immediately repaired to the market in an open carriage, unattended by any military escort. The barricades disappeared at his approach. His carriage drew up at the entrance of the church, where he prayed and crossed himself, and then addressed to the multitude a few words, wliich were duly chronicled at the time in most of the newspapers of Europe. He bade the people kneel down and pray to God to forgive them their sins ; and all that lately so tumultuous multitude knelt down at the command of their sovereign, and unresistingly allowed the police to come among them, and quietly convey the ringleaders of the riot to prison.