Over Sunday bridge, and which moreover contains a number of military institutions ; the barraclvs and stables for the artillery, and the two arsenals, the new, and the old. The old arsenal, an enormous building, was erected by Count Orloff at his own cost, and presented to the Empress Catherine. The new one was built by the Emperor Alexander, in a very magnificent style. Both are filled with glittering weapons, trophies, old military engines, and antiquities of importance in Russian history. A short account of them will not be uninteresting to the reader, particularly as this subject has been much neglected in the different works on St. Petersburg, which is the more remarkable as every thing here is open to every body.
The endless ranges of apartments in both arsenals are adorned with comitless numbers of trophies formed of different weapons, innumerable flags, and instruments of miu-der, elegantly arranged into garlands, tapestries, and chamber arabesques, as if they were flowers and fruit, children of Pomona and Flora, and not the work of the Cyclops, the implements of Mars and the Furies. Man loves to sport poetically with the serious. Among all nations the military dress is variegated, gay, glittering, and adorned. Wliile our citizens go about their peaceful employments in sadcoIomed garments, oiu warriors go to battle shining in all the colours of the rainbow. One would think black were a more fitting colour, the better to remind them of the melancholy nature of their trade ; to diminish their thirst for slaughter, to which the outward pomp of their business seems almost to invite. Their weapons should not be displayed in elegant ornamental compositions in arsenals, but kept piled up in the vaults of their churches ; perhaps wars would then be less frequent, and arms not be taken up lightly, but only in the name of God and our native land.
Among the trophies, there stands in one of the halls in the new arsenal a large Russian eagle, whose neck, body, and legs are composed of gunilints ; the pinions of swords ; every feather on the bieast and belly is a dagger ; every tail feather a yataghan ; the eyes, the muzzles of two black pistols ; the gullet, the bore of a cannon ; a terrible " noli me tangere,'' a proper symbol of the Russian state, which has soared to its present height on the pinions of swords and bayonets. Woe to those who meet the lightning of that eagle's eyes, or the thunder of that terrible throat! Woe to those who rumple his sharp pinions, and whom his sabre claws shall tear. In another hall is a statue of Catheririe in white marble, throned in a royal chair, and surrounded by all the emblems of imperial power. The statue was erected by Orloff in her hfetime, and presented T\qth the building. Her horse, a white one stuffed, stands near her ; it should rather have been copied in marble ; such a bridled and saddled ghost makes too unmajestic a figure here. The saddle is not a lady's side-saddle, but an ordinary man s saddle ; Catherine must therefore have sat on horseback like one of her generals.
Some of the historical souveniis and antiquities are highly interesting ;
Such patriotic gifts are not rare among the wealthy subjects of the Russian emperors. We often hear, Coimt — — has given a milUon to raise a corps of cadets ;
that Prince has built a barrack at his own expense ; or that the merchant has given to some public library a hundred thousand rubles. In the year 1812, magnificent offerings of this kind were made ; but even in times of peace, not only legacies are left to the state, but, what is more remarkable, donations inter vivos, are made.