Besides the English and Germans, who are in possession of the maritime commerce of St. Petersburg, every nation in Eui'ope has its consul and representatives. London excepted, there is perhaps no other city in Europe in which all other nations have so great a commercial interest as in St. Petervsburg. No Russian, either in St. Petersburg or any other part of the empire, engages in maritime trade ; he has neither the knovi^ledge nor the connections necessary thereto, still less the true commercial spirit of enterprize. The narrow un-ideal nature of the Russian cannot free itself from its false estimation of the value of money, nor rise to an elevated view of the wants and nature of the times. Money is not, in his eyes, an instrument for the increase of credit and extension of the sphere of operation ; the shining metal itself is the one and only object ; he can rarely prevail on himself to part with the money once clutched, or incur voluntarily a small loss to ward off a greater. The Russian merchant must in every commercial undertaking grasp an immediate profit, be it ever so small, and will certainly never imitate that American owner of a steamboat, who carried passengers in his vessel for a year together for nothing, in order to drive his rivals out of the field. He does not understand the German saying, " Gain time and gain all," still less the Entrlish merchant's proverb, " Time is money ;" but rather, Uke the Arabian merchant described by Burkhardt, the Russian wdll let years pass away in the hope of avoiding a temporary loss, without once calculating how much the delay eats into his capital by keeping it idle. In spite, however, of their false commercial system, the great mass of the worshippers in the temple of the Russian Plutus are wealthy ; and, with all their fondness for money, no people bear commercial losses so easily as the Russians. Such a thing as suicide in consequence of failm-e in trade is never heard of among them, an occurrence but too common among us. This seeming contradiction is to be explained partly by the light temperament of the Russian, and partly by the fact that no Russian merchant considers his honour as a merchant, or his credit as a citizen, at all affected by his failure, simply because such things have no existence for him. ' Bay s'nim" (God be with it), he says to his faithless treasure, and begins anew the erection of his card edifice.
The centre on which the Exchange of St. Petersburg moves, the sun that makes the weather, the spring that gives life and motion to all, is an offshoot of that remarkable race, from which for so many centuries the hierarchy of Mammon have had their origin. Baron S , who in St.
Petersburg electrifies the nervus rerum, is the Rothschild of Russia, without whose co-operation scarcely any great undertaking can have a beginning. The learned in these matters estimate the value of the hght absorbed by this diamond at from 40 to 50 milHons. His capital employed in commerce by sea amounts to not less than 30 to 35 millions yearly. Immense sums have been expended by him in the purchase of estates in all parts of Russia, from the capital to the Black sea. His small bright eye, compact Napoleon figure, and old green great-coat, are to be seen daily in the centre of that system round which revolve the lesser planets in the shape of English, German, and French merchants.
Tliis commercial body of St. Petersburg is certainly the most numerous society of respectable and well-informed persons to be met with in Russia, without an order or a knightly cross on their breasts. Except tlie silver tokens worn by the sworn brokers, and some medals a good pound in weight, carried round the necks of some native merchants, nothing is to be seen but plain coats of black or gi'cen ; and the contrast between this unpretending unlrformlty of appearance, and the gorgeous uniforms of the Russian generals and courtiers, of the academicians and professors, whose gold-embroidered coats glitter with more testimonials of their abundant and superabundant merits than there are Alphas and Betas in Orion, is singular enough, whether pleasing or displeasing depends upon taste.