Some people maintain that the Russian eagle has long brooded over the project of such an inscription, and that the embryo is already formed in the egg. Only the date of the year is yet wanting. The memorial in the worst taste is that to Field-marshal Romanzoff, for his victories over the Turks, with the inscription " Romantzowa pobaedam" (To the victories of Romanzoff). The Russian language is capable of the conciseness of the Latin. This monument is composed of half-a-dozen different-coloured stones, and is ornamented with patches of metal besides. The obelisk itself is of black granite. It stands in a socket of red marble, whose base is of another colour, in addition to which there are several strata of white marble ; and the whole bears on its extreme point a golden ball, with an eagle hovering over it. In vain we ask what harmony the artist could find in all these various colours and materials. Fortimately this artisti-cal abortion will not last long. There are already several rents and splits in it, and so many pieces broken from all comers, that it looks as if it had stood for centuries. It ^vill soon sink under its own weight. The eight Egyptian Sphinxes, which he not far from this monument before the Academy of Art, seem to look deridingly on the unimposing obelisk. In defiance of the thousand years of warlike tumult — in defiance of the countless burning suns, of the endless series of days and nights that have passed over their heads — they look as youthful as if newly born ; their skin as smooth and polished as when they came from the chisel.
If ever a Russian conmiander deserved a monument it was Suvaroff, who, as is weU known, was a man of genius and an original, but who was also, what is not so well known, a wit and a good-hearted man. He has got the feeblest and worst of all. Certainly if Suvaroff could see his own statue he would make many an epigram upon it. It is a bronze statue, on foot, 'ielding a sword in the right-hand and holding a shield in the left, in defence over a few crowns — those of the Pope, Naples, and Sardinia. The crowns he at his feet, on the pedestal of the statue. The position of the figiire is that of a fencing-master, who has just quietly drawn, and is about to show his pupil a thrust. The costume is Roman, and the whole so small that it is quite lost on the field of Mars, where it stands. The daily drumming and clash of arms that Suvaroff must listen to here are the only things about the place that can be pleasing to him.
What have people elsewhere, that St. Petersburg should not have ? Egypt had its obelisks. St. Petersburg has hers also. Paris and Rome are adorned with columns and triumphant arches ; so is St. Petersburg ; there are two triumphant arches there already. They span the two roads which connect the city with her most important territories ; the one, the road to Riga, leading to the West of Europe, the other, the Moscow road, leading to the heart of the empire. The former was raised by the city in honour of the Emperor Alexander when he returned in triumph from Paris, the latter was built by the Emperor Nicholas. The first is called ' Triumphalnaya Vorota," or, by the people who know nothing about triumphs, " Triugolnaya" (The three-angled gate). It is built after the Roman model, but overladen with inscriptions and a multitude of statues in niches, of old Russian warriors. On the platform of the gate the goddess of victory, in a car drawm by four horses, gallops to meet the advancing emperor, and bestow on him a laurel crown. On the return of the emperor, it was only in plaster and wood, and was afterwards executed in stone and metal. The car has really but four horses, and not five, like the quadriga of Mars on the Hotel de I'Etat Major. They say that four horses would not have sufficiently filled the space, and therefore a fifth was added, to give greater size and effect to the mass.
Thus, every fine monument in St. Petersburg, with peculiar beauties, has also peculiar faults. One of its mythological groups has, contrary to every rule of art, a horse too much ; the second is faulty in design, the third is broken up and spoiled in the execution, the fourth has a huge split, and another in scarcely the fortieth year of its existence threatens to become a heap of ruins and rubbish. What will remain for posterity ? These are our modem cities ! In the time of her glory, Rome boasted other moimments than these ! Her stately ruins prove it after a lapse of two thousand years.
At no time are the streets of St. Petersburg wanting in soldiers and military processions ; but most uninterruptedly and diligently is the rush and roll of drums and flag, and the steady tramp of the military in the streets of that jToirt of the city called by the Russians Liteinaya, which the troops must pass through on entering the city from the Vxborg side,