The most important manufactory on the Viborg side is conducted by a German, who related many interesting anecdotes of the various nations who had representatives among his 1000 workm.en. He made use of the Finns wherever much patience and little movement was required, where knots and entanglement required a gentle finger ; but tlie Russians, who are apt to untie knots after the fashion of Alexander the Great, were mostly employed where speed and activity were wanting. He further told us that nearly half of his workmen were employed in giving to clot^ia, Manchester cottons, &c., a brighter and more showy outside, without which the Russians and people of Asia do not value them. The finest goods are subjected to rough handling for this purpose, and hterally go through fire and water, to the great injury, one would think, of their intrinsic worth.
Within the last ten years, establishments for making mathematical instruments have been founded by German mechanicians. I saw the workshop of one, where sixteen journeymen were employed ; four were placed there as apprentices by the crown. It is worthy of remark, that many parts of the instruments were worked in platina, which metal the Russians need not be sparing of, and which will one day obtain a decided preference for their instruments.
For the fasliionable world, one of the gTandest establishments to be seen any where is the so-called English magazine. It was begun many years ago by some English people, and hence its name, though neither the proprietors nor all the goods are any longer English. One apartment is devoted to jewellery of all kinds, and of a splendour and abundance rarely seen in a royal collection. Another contains every possible requisite of the toilette^ for wliich an active correspondence is kept up with Paris, London, and Vienna, to obtain the newest and best from those centres of fashion. As it is decreed by the world of fashion, that nothing is good or wearable but what is bought here, all sorts of things are sold, the rarest and the commonest ; from diamonds of the first water, downi to shoe-blacking, which last article is so elegantly put up, that the wealthiest prince need not disdain to put it in his pocket.
A great part of these wares are now made in St. Petersburg. The proprietors keep a multitude of foreign artists and workmen in their pay, who work for them alone, and thus the credit of the magazine is maintained, and the things pass for foreign, though the public very well know that not half the things labelled as from Paris or London ever saw either Paris or London.
The prices of the goods sold in this shop are enormous, and would appear ridiculous in any other city. Here, w^here money is but little valued, many a one is glad enough to be rid of his useless bank-notes in exchange for some pretty thing that pleases his fancy for a time at least, and when the shopkeeper assm'es his patrons that he has sold eveiy thing at the lowest possible price, and only so low because they are constant customers, they are goodnatured enough to believe him. When we consider, however, that the people behind the counter are gentlemen who can answer in every language in Europe ; that the magazine pays 1000 rubles rent for every window, and that every bronze lamp that remains half a year unsold may be said to cost 100 rubles merely for warehouseroom, the prices demanded vill appear less extravagant.
The furniture magazine of Gamb, a very celebrated one of its kind, was founded by a simple Swabian carpenter of that name, but, as in Russia, eveiy workshop easily becomes a manufactory ; his three sons, who aie only his successors, elegant young St. Petersburgeis, carry on the business wholesale, and keep fifty or sixty cabinet-makers constantly employed, besides many sculptors, carvers in wood, painters, and designers. In their magazine, goods are displayed to the value of millions ; some of the i"oonis, a thing particularly desirable in Russia, are filled with portable household furniture of every description for the use of travellers. Here are complete beds, bedsteads, and every thingelse packed in chests four-and-a-half feet long-, three-quarters of a foot wide, and four inches high ; a tent with cliairs, tables, and every accommodation for sitting, lying, dining, or sleeping, all packed up in one chest. The proprietors have naturally become inventive in this branch ; for the spoiled children of fortune are continually leaving luxurious St. Petersburg for the steppes of the Pontus, for the inhospitable Caucasus, or the Siberian deserts, and are glad to be able to take with them some of the accustomed conveniences of civilized life packed up among their luggage.