ST. PETERSBURG. 81 



armies or fleets can do, by the tender bonds of sympathy 

 and pitying love ! 



I need not say that I wandered through the busy 

 streets, paused before the Admiralty, admiring the noble 

 Alexander column, and the long vista of the Nevski 

 Prospect, and stood beside the statue of Peter the Great, 

 whose chief interest to me was the memory of its picture 

 at the corner of an old school atlas ; and I drove (that 

 cannot be forgotten !) to the monastery of St. Alexander 

 Nevski, and also through the wild islands, the finest 

 park I have ever seen near a great city, rejoicing in the 

 woods and in the flashing streams of the noble Nevas that 

 sweep through the Delta. 



We visited all or several of the islands Kammenoi, 

 Yelaginskoi, Yelagin, Krestorski, Yassali Ostroff, Pe- 

 trosky, Aptekarskoi, &c., pausing, as the wont is in the 

 evening, to see the glorious sunset from the nearest point 

 to the Baltic ; and I wandered through the best sight of 

 all to study Eussia and mankind, the Bazaars, the Gos- 

 tinnoi Dvor, the Appraxin Rinok, and Tshukin Dvor 

 those worlds of everything bought or sold in Russia by 

 tens of thousands of dealers ; and I paced down the 

 Nevski Prospect more than once ; and I visited the 

 museum, and actually saw, not only the skeleton, but 

 the skin and hair of a brute, known to all schoolboys aa 

 the Siberian mammoth, which trod the earth, ate, slept, 

 giew old and stupid, and finally died, before Adam was 

 born ! 



Is the reader wearied of this catalogue ? 



