The coffee-houses of St. Petersburg are of small importance. Wlien a man is sure of being received by his friends, morning, noon, and night, in the most obliging way in the world, he has little inclination to visit coffee-houses, where he must pay for every thing, and after all, is never so comfortable as in the house of a wealthy friend. So long as the inhabitants of St. Petersburg are so extremely hospitable, the taverns and coffee-houses are not likely to prosper greatly. In Paris and London there are people enough who spend half their time in such places ; in St. Petersburg thev are frequented only by imconnected foreigners, or by officers perhaps who give each other the rendezvous there. They meet there to go afterwards together to the house of a mutual friend, and consume only as much as a sense of propriety obliges them to consume ; or they run in before dinner, to read the papers, and collect as much news as they can for their dinner party. Even this trifling want has been enough in St. Petersburg to call into hfe some very elegant establishments. The most celebrated is Beranger's, who has several shops for the sale of confectionary in the principal streets of the capital. His headquarters are in the Prospekt. Compared to the Parisian houses, however, they are small and lifeless, but furnished with taste and elegance, and provided with the best English, French, and German newspapers.
One of the most peculiar and handsomest streets in St. Petersburg is the Bolshoi Prospekt on Vassili Ostroff. It is very wide, and has gardens in front of all the houses on either side. Tlie houses, tenanted mostly by German professors, academicians, and merchants, and by some Russians, are agreeably hidden behind the trees of the gardens. In the midst runs the broad road for carriages and equestrians, and an elevated trottoir of wood for the pedestrians. A footpath through the garden leads to the liouse door, but the principal entrance is in the courtyard, round which the dwelhnghouse is built, and at every second garden is a drive for carriages to enter the said courtyard. In turning off from the main street into one of these coiirtyards we might fancy ourselves entering a detached farm-house, or a nobleman's seat. This peculiar and pretty arrangement is owing to the manner in which the street was first laid out by Peter the Great. lie had made broad canals on each side ; but as in time these canals were found inconvenient, they were filled up, and gardens planted in their stead.