There is always a great desire shown to avoid architectural disfigurement. A Grecian temple, or some other fanciful decoration, when more closely examined, often turns out to be nothing but a set of painted boards, intended to mask some object not likely to please the eye. Sometimes, to give a more stately look to a one-floored house, the owner will place upon the loof the complete facade of an additional story, which, on nearer inspection, is found to be nothing but a mere wall with sham windows, the whole being fastened to the rest of the house with massive iron bars. Simulated floors of this kind may sometimes have been the work of the police, who occasionally order double-floored houses to be built in certain streets for the sake of uniformity ; but the same thing may be met with in all parts of Russia and Poland, and seems perfectly suited to the character of the Slavonian nations, who are always more ready to promise than perform. Even the scaffblding around a house undergoing repair must be closed up with boards, and these boards are painted over with doors and windows, to cheat the eye into a belief that they compose the fiont of a bona fide house. To see the profusion of pillars and porticoes expended on most of the St. Petersburg houses, a stranger might imagine himself in Greece or Italy ; but you look in vain for the peripatetics that should wander along these stately halls, or for the epicureans that ought to be sunning themselves there. Drifts of snow and piercing north winds howl among these Ausonian retreats dm'ing the greater part of the year, and make them as little suited for voluptuous loungers, as the stately balconies that are every where seen empty and deserted.
A Russian is easily tempted to make changes in his house, and the consequence is, that an abundance of building and unbuilding is at all times going on in St. Petersburg. A single dinner or a ball often causes a house to put on a new face. To augment the suite of rooms, a hole will perhaps be broken in a wall, and some additional apartments thus be gained, or a temporary room will be built over the balcony. The house of a genuine Russian rarely remains fourteen days without undergoing some change. Caprice or ennui will seldom allow him to sleep a fortnight in the same chamber ; the dining-room and the nursery will every now and then be made to change places, the drawing-room will be converted into a dormitory, and the school-room into a gaily decorated temple for Terpsichore. The Russians are essentially a nomadic race. The wealthier among them seldom spend a year without wandering to the extremity of their vast empire ; and where circumstances deny them this enjoyment, they will find means to indulge their moving propensities, though it be only within the walls of their own houses. The police, also, is responsible for some of the modifications which the houses of St Petersburg are constantly undergoing ; for the police is exceedingly fickle in its tastes and partialities. Sometimes it prohibits this or that form of window ; sometimes it orders that all dooi'S shall be of a certain description of wood ; sometimes it will allow of trapdoors to cellars ; and sometimes it will order them all to be removed at a day's notice.
The pavement of St. Petersburg, owing to the marshy nature of the soil, requires constant repair, and is, therefore, one of the most expensive that can be imagined. It is scarcely possible to obtain for it a firm foundation, whatever amount of rubbish or sand may have previously been laid down. The moisture pierces through every where. I saw a ridingschool, the bottom of which had been vaulted like a cellar, and, upon the solid masonry, sand and rubbish had been laid to the depth of two yards, and yet the horses were constantly wading through mud.