A St. Petersburg friend may take you to brealtfast at Talon's, or to a promenade on the English quay, but if he be prudent he will content himself with that, and not propose a walk to the St. Petersburg villages. The villages that smTOund our capitals are the prettiest that can be conceived ; the Hamburg villages on the Elbe, those on the Maine by Frankfort, even the turnip -planted hamlets of our Sandy Jerusalem, are charming, full of rural beauty, and abounding in subjects for the sketch-book of the artist. The " villages" so much tallied of in St. Petersburg are five in number. Great and Little Okhta. Bolshaya Derevnya, Malaya Derevnya, and Tshornaya Retshka. They lie in long endless (every thing in St. Petersburg is without end) lines on the Neva, the two firstnamed opposite the upper, and the two latter opposite the lower part of the city. Tlie houses of these villages are of fir-tree logs roughly put together, and planted in regular rows hke a regiment of soldiers. From the houses, hardly one of which has the ornament even of a tree, the long cabbage and cucumber plantations stretch into the country on the land side, and a road along the banks of the river is lined on holidays with carriages driving up and down as they do in the avenues on the Garden Islands.
Those persons whose revenues are too moderate for a Gothic or Chinese Datsha, engage a summer residence in some of these deal houses, and enjoy there as much rm-al happiness as tea-drinking, card-playing, and hard driving can aiford them. One cannot but admire the modesty of their demands in this respect !
At Novaya Derevnya is the new estabhshment of Struve for mineral waters, a magnificent house, with elegant saloons, and promenades under cover. It stands in the midst of a bare swamp, nearly fom- (English) miles from the centre of the town. In summer this is a favourite resort of the ffisliionable world of the islands ; an unprejudiced person finds it iUfficult to comprehend why so useful an establishment was formed in such a place. Those who drive out and back again every day to enjoy this mock Carlsbad might have gone to the real one for the same expense of time and money. The gardens of Stroganoff and Besborodko — the former is open to the public — have also made considerable inroads into the territories of the divinities of swamp and mud. Altogether the possessions of St. Petersburg in garden land may be reckoned at 25 millions of square yards.
The villages of Great and Little Okhta are remarkable as the site of St.
Petersburg's predecessor, the old Swedish fortress of Nyenschanz, at a still earlier period called Landscrona, or, in Russian, Venetz Semh (the crown of the land). For the possession of this little fortress and trading town, the Swedes and Russians (not the Muscovites, but the republicans of Novgorod), disputed as early as the thirteenth century. It was generally held by Sweden, and through its mediation a peaceful commercial intercourse was sometimes kept up between the two countries. The last traces of this fortress have now vanished and are forgotten.
Peter the Great — every chapter that treats of Russia must begin with Peter the Great, for not only St. Petersburg, but every twig and branch of Russian public or social life, the history of cities, roads, canals, public institutions, the annals of gardens, buildings, manufactories, mines, and mills, all begin with Peter the Great. Peter the Great then did what no ruler ever did before him, he built his capital on hostile ground. Perhaps he thought like the officer, who, to animate his soldiers to the charge, threw his own standard into the midst of the enemy : let our dearest treasure be in the hands of an enemy, and we shall fight the more zealously to make it ours again. Often, while the building of the city was going on, he had to exchange the chisel and mallet for the sword, and drive back the enemy from the very gates of his infant capital. On one of these suburb battle-fields, he buUt in the year 1711, without the city and close to the sea, the castle and garden of Catherinenhoff, as a memorial of a victory obtained over the Swedes. At first it was only the summer residence of his consort Catherine, and of the grand-duchesses Anne and Elizabeth. Their wooden palace stands yet, but the gardens are greatly extended. For a' long time these and the " Summer Garden " were the only pleasure resorts of the kind for the citizens, and still, probably from habit, these gardens are visited on the first of May. On that day all St. Petersburg is in motion ; the poor on foot, the young exquisites on horseback, the ladies in their carriages, all flock to Catherinenhoff to hail the coming of the fine season, even though it be held expedient, as it generally is, to go well wrapped up in bearskins.