Madame de Stael, when she beheld Moscow from \q elevation of the Kremhn, turned to her companions and exclaimed, " Voila Rome Tatar e^ The Russians themselves like to compare their city to that world-subduer of antiquity ; and many as are the peculiarities that distinguish the one from the other, it is not to be denied that there are points wherein they assimilate, and amonir them is that of extreme toleration in the matter of religion. With whatever tenacity the Russians, like the Romans, may cling to the religion of their forefathers, they yet wilHngly admit other gods by the side of their own, and either because they think, like the Romans, that it can do no harm to reverence other invisible powers, or because, to give the matter a more Christianlike expression, as they well say, " Vso adin Bog''' (There is one God over all), they will even bow down as reverentially in foreign churches as in their own.
The capital of the Russians contains places of worship for all confessions. In the finest street in St. Petersburg, the Nevskoi Prospekt, there are Armenian, Greek, Protestant, Roman Catholic, United and Disunited, Sunnite and Schiite places of prayer in most familiar neighbourhood ; and the street has, therefore, not inaptly received the sobriquet of Toleration-street.
St. Petersburg, like Berlin, is a child of our days ; a birth that first saw the light imder the sun of a philosophical age. In opposition to Moscow, as Berlin in opposition to Vienna, St. Petersburg has neither so many nor such distinguished churches as Moscow, although the major part are built in a pleasing and tasteful style : in the modern Russian, which is a mixture of the Grecian, Byzantine, old Russian, and new European architecture, the Byzantine, which was brought from Constantinople with Christianity, being the most prominent. A building in the form of a cross ; in the midst, a large cupola, and at the four ends, four small, narrow-pointed cupolas, the points surmounted by crosses ; a grand entrance, adorned with many columns, and three side entrances without columns, such is the exterior form of the greater part of the Russian churches, including the thirty churches of St. Petersburg, — about onetenth of the number dispersed through the streets of Moscow the Holy. In the former, the interiors are lighter, brighter, more simple, more elegant ; in the latter, more overloaded with ornament, darker, more varied in colour, more grotesque. The handsomest church in St. Petersburg is Isaac's church. The exterior is finished. It wants only the last decoration for the interior, the trophies and the pictures of saints. This church stands in the largest and most open place in the city, in the midst of its finest buildings and monuments : the Winter Palace, the Admiralty, the War-office, Alexander's pillar, and the rock of Peter the Great ; and will, when it has laid aside its mantle of scaffolding, show itself worthy of such neighbours. On the spot where it stands, they have been at work upon a place of worship for the last century. A wooden church was followed by a church of brick; a church of marble was then attempted, which failed, and was finished in brick. This half-and-half building vanished in its turn, and , under Nicholas the First, the present magnificent building was erected, which will scarcely find so splendid a successor. It is entirely composed of granite blocks and polished marble. To make a firm foundation, a whole forest of piles was sunk in the swampy soil. From the level of the upper part of Peter's place, rise three broad flights of steps, which separately served the fabidous giants of the Finnish mythology for seats. They are formed from masses of granite rock brought from Finland. These steps lead from the four sides of the building to the four chief entrances, each of which has a superb peristyle. The pillars of these peristyles are sixty feet high, and have a diameter of seven feet.