The fruit-gardens of St. Petersbm'g are in Stettin or the Crimea ; their apples come from a distance of two hmidred miles over a stormy sea, or of three hundred over the icy steppes. Thoii' meat is fattened on the shores of the Black Sea, for only a tenth part of the consumption stated above is supplied from any other district. The salt is partly Calmuck, partly Swedish and Norwegian. The butter comes from Esthonia and Finland ; and so on with the most ordinary articles. Those of luxury here, as every where else, are, of course, the product of foreign lands.
A St. Petersburg meal is served on so large a scale, that a native of that city must thmk himself in a land of famine in Hamburg, Vienna, or on the much-praised Rhine. The prologue to a dinner consists of so many appetizing dainties, that one may easily mistake it for the dinner itself ; as an innocent peasant might mistake the richly-decorated drop-scene for the play. A Russian grand dinner is like a piece of music, of which long after the chords have announced the approaching end, a multitude of tlu'ills and cadences flourish as it were into a new part, till at last it comes to a close in a profusion of fruits and sweetmeats, and the performers separate. At a real Russian banquet the dessert is as distinct from the dinner as the preliminary whet, and is taken in another room. Liqueurs are taken before dinner to excite the appetite, and after dinner to assist digestion.
For the rest, it is with the St. Petersburg dinners as with many other tilings in St. Petersburg, little real enjoyment, with a profusion of the means of enjoyment. The whole affair is carried on much too quickly. The dishes, which are cut up at the sideboard by the carver, and carried round, succeed each other with great rapidity. With every dish the suitable wine is offered by the servants in ready-filled glasses, till a perfect forest of them is gathered round each plate; but the epicure in wines misses the bottle from which he might help himself at pleasure to what he hked best. All these customs are genant ; still more so that which fetters the guest to his place duiing the whole banquet. It is considered an unheard-of violation of propriety to rise from one's seat, even in the smallest family circle. The guests sit down in pleno at a sign from the host, and rise after the last dish also in pleno; and no one may venture, as in England, to linger in jest or conversation over the bottle. When a toast is given, at which no speech or even sportive remark is ever made, every one rises silently, bows, touches his neighbour's glass with his own, and quickly reseats himself. To go up to any one in particular, to touch glasses, would be deemed the silliest proceeding in the world. A man eats at a Russian dinner as if he were tethered to a manger.
Every spring, when the ice melts in the Gulf of Cronstadt, and the market behind the Exchange is opened with its gaily-coloured wares of macaws and paroquets, and its abundance of rarities and delicacies, alive and dead, from the same ships that have brought out the new fashions and new books from London, Paris, and Lubeck, many young ladies may be seen landing with torn veils and ruffled head-gear. These are the lovely and unlovely Swiss, German, French, and English women destined to offici-ate in Russia as priestesses of Minerva, in fanning the flame of mental cultivation. Exhausted by sea-sickness, saddened by home-sickness, frightened by the bearded Russians who greet their eyes in Cronstadt, and pierced through and through by the chill breath of a St. Petersburg May, they issue from their cabins, pale, timid, and slow, anxiety and white fear upon their lips, and despair in their eyes.
The manner in which Russia greets her newly-arrived guests is not the most friendly ; and if it be true that a first impression of men or of countries is the most decisive and important, mercifid Heaven ! what evil prognostics must not this reception call forth ? No stranger ever landed in Russia whose first thought as he disembarked was not of his return. Not a guest would the country retain, it is my opinion, if, as soon as he stepped on shore, he could find an opportunity to go back again.
Unwillingly the fair strangers leave the ship, the last piece of their native land that has followed them to this strange region, and huny to hide themselves and their sorrows in the first hotel on Vassili Ostroff, till their friends, or the family to which they are recommended, come to seek and bring them forth to the light of day.