The Uttleboys work at high frames, first at leaves and flowers in one colour; then they advance to shaded and veined leaves with several colours, then to stars, arabesques, and so on. Their work is one of the most tedious in the world. The drawings are placed directly behind perpendicular threads, and while the outline of the picture is traced with a black coal, it is transferred to the threads and the limits of the different tints marked out. Every three or four weeks, papers are fastened over the web, and as it is finished it is rolled up, that it may not be injured during the tedious process of manufacture. We saw several magnificent pictures finished. Among others, Peter the Great and his consort, like oil paintings in gold frames ; on Catherine's, which was valued at fiOOO rubles, were the words, " Natshatoye sobershayet," (The Begun — she completed). The workmanship of the precious stones in the crown and sceptre of the empress was perfect ; it was wonderful to see how exactly the soft lustrious gleam of the pearls, the splendour of the gold, and the fire of the precious stones, were represented in coloured threads. Here and there, for the high lights, silk had been introduced, and then again to render the soft vanishing of the tints, the wool was scraped, and a downy velvet-lilie surface given to the web. It is certain that with this kind of pictorial representation, effects may be produced beyond the power of the brush, either in oil or watercolours. This was particularly remarkable in a great picture representing the well-known incident of Peter the Great overtaken by a storm on the lake of Ladoga, and bidding the terrified steersman, " trust in God and him." The force of the dark colours, the fullness of light and shade, the tone and power of the whole, are astonishing. Another picture was a copy of one in the Hermitage, " Alexander the Great in the tent of Darius's mother ;" and a smaller one after Gerard Dow, displayed the capabilities of this art ip the cabinet and miniature style. In these, sUk, flax, and wool were employed ; the brightness of the silk, the neutral effects of the flax, and the power of the wool, all rendered then' several services. This woven painting, if not so enduring, is much richer than mosaic, which it resembles more nearly than it does any thing else.
The Petersburgers carry the use of looking-glasses to a high pitch of luxury. The houses and their colossal w indows, that make them look like crystal palaces, have been before mentioned. In garden pavilions, a whole wall is sometimes composed of g4ass, behind which the ladies sit like so many Princesses Snow-drop in the fairy tale. In private houses the bare walls are likewise covered with enormous looking-glasses instead of pictures, as with us : presenting at every turn the pictui'e most admired by many, — that of their own persons. The greater part, or rather all these glasses, come from the imperial manufactory, which is also a manufactory for cutting and blowing glass. It is situate \Nith its extensive supplemeritary buildings, and villages for the workmen belonging to it, in the neighbourhood of the Alexander Nevsky cloister. In the magazines of the factory there are stores of looking-glasses of various magnitudes, such as are hardly to be met with elsewhere ; among them, not as any thing unusual, but as glasses for ordinary sale, are some eight feet wide, fifteen feet long, and an inch and a half tliick. Venus and Diana, with their retinue, had they not the clear brooks and smooth lakes of Greece, might envy the St. Petersburg beauties. The manufactor' itself, however, as well as its productions,
19 to be looked upon more as an article of luxury than as tlie milch cow that a manufactory ought to be, for so many failures occur among these gigantic fragilities, that the profit on them can be but small. More is probably gained on the smaller articles, such as the very curiously cut glass eggs, wliich are used as Easter presents, and the " Nargiles" (water vases), through which the Eastern sm.oker loves to cool the fumes of his tobacco. Of these the Persians sometimes purchase to the amount of 50,000 rubles, and more. These fragile wares have (by the way) to be transported hy land from five to six hmidred (German) miles, which could not take place any where but in transport-loving Russia.