flooring-. What in Vienna and Paris is a firm rooky footing", is in St. Petersburg a bottomless morass. The swampy natmc of the soil oozes through the pavement and woodwork in spring and autumn ; and although millions on millions are lavished yearly for paving the streets and mending the roads, bridges and canals for draining foundations and the like, yet the site of the city is so little soHd and secure, that behind every garden -wall the soil is still a wild, marshy, uneven swamp, as when the Titans of yore beheld it. In our towns, at least in the suburbs, every house stands in the midst of trees, vines, and shrubs, and bloom and perfume grace every neglected corner ; but at St. Petersburg every garden stands in the midst of a morass ; and where the spade has not been at work, the ugly bog still stares you in the face. With us (I mean at Vienna, Dresden, Hamburg, Frankfort, indeed about almost aU German cities) Nature herself half forms a garden : there are hills, valleys, flowery meadows, a variety of trees, or at least a firm soil to tread on, and an endurable canopy of sky ; and to make a garden, we have often nothing to do but to lay out the walks. At St. Petersburg there is not one of these things ! The firm ground must be made by art ; the gravel w^alks must be founded by the hand of the carpenter. If meadows are wanted, the turf must be laid down sod by sod ; if hiUs, the earth must be thrown up ; if a valley, it must be dug. Those who desire warmth must heat their stoves ; those who wish for a sky must paint one in their drawing-rooms.
It is only between four walls we can enjoy calm weather, or any of the beauties of Nature in St. Petersburg : bright colours are to be seen only on walls. The pastures and meadows are dirty, gray, and yellow ; no friendly green presents itself any where but on the roofs of the houses. The sky is misty and watery ; the stars glitter from the blue cupolas of the churches, but none twinkle any where else. The paler the sun's face, the more resplendent are the summits of the towers ; the fainter the moonhght, the brighter shine the gorgeous palaces. Heavens ! what cost, what toil and trouble had Peter the Great spared the St. Petersburgers, past, present, and to come, had he followed up his first idea of building his new capital on the shores of the Black Sea ! So many foreign ambassadors would not then wonder at the rapidity with which they grow old — and there would be prettier girls. St. Petersburg would have acacias, laurels, and pomegranates, instead of birches, firs, and cranberries; and so many millions would not pass half their lives in considering how they and their families are to be kept warm.
The only thing that was of use to the St. Petersburgers when they set about the embellishment and planting of their environs, was the beautiful clear, deep Neva, with its many branches, to which may be added the group of hills, called the Duderhoff" mountains, and the coast of the gulf of Finland. All those who seek the rural landscape have taken refuge either in the islands, on those hills, or along that coast.
In the whole Delta of the Neva there are more than forty islands, great and small. Some of these islands, although all belong to the precincts of the city, are still perfectly desert, inundated by the sea and the Neva, visited only by seals or by wolves, who come over the ice.