96 



ST PIEHHE 



SAINT-PIERRE 



As a manufacturing centre St Petersburg hag 

 not the importance of Moscow, the total yearly 

 production of ito factories (cottons, varioiiB tex- 

 tiles, metals, leather, sugar, guns, porcelain 

 goods, \-c.) not exceeding 20,000,000. There are 

 many large factories in the nnoaadiag country, 

 but the industrial establishments of the capital 

 itself are chiefly small, with an average of ten 

 workers each. In addition to the four main lines 

 of railway already mentioned, St Petersburg has 

 three local lines which connect it with Lake 

 Ladoga and suburban towns. The opening of the 

 new deep-water dock in 1895 adds considerably to 

 ite facilities as a port for ships of large tonnage. 

 The trade of St Petersburg is very considerame. 

 Every year no less than 12,000 to 13,000 boate 

 and nearly as many rafts, loaded with corn, hemp, 

 flax, linseed, leather, fuel-wood, and building 

 materials, representing a total of nearly 3,000,000 

 tons, reach St Petersburg vid the Neva. At the 

 same time about 1,280,000 tons of various goods, 

 including 500,000 tons of corn, come in by rail, 

 chiefly from the upper Volga. The exports of corn 

 alone from St Petersburg attained 862,000 tons in 

 1888, that is, one-third of the total export of corn 

 from the Baltic ports, and one-fifth of the total 

 export from Russia. Large quantities of hemp, 

 flax, linseed, leather, crude petroleum, &c. must 

 be added to the above the total value of the 

 exports being from 8,000,000 to 10,000,000 ; the 

 imports, chiefly of coal, machinery, groceries, and 

 manufactured goods, reach about the same value. 

 The port is visited every year by about 1800 

 ships. 



The great number and variety of scientific, 

 literary, artistic, and technical institutions, and of 

 institutions for higher education, which are con- 

 centrated in the capital, as well as the development 

 of the press, render life at St Petersburg especially 

 attractive, the more so as the provincial towns of 

 Russia decidedly suffer from a lack of such. Even 

 Moscow, which down to 1848 was the intellectual 

 centre of Russia, has largely fallen from that 

 position. The St Petersburg University, and the 

 numerous academies, medical, technological, en- 

 gineering, naval, military, &c., as well as the 

 Ladies' University, number several thousands of 

 students, both male and female. The scientific 

 societies are very numerous : the Academy of 

 Sciences and its branches are well known to Euro- 

 pean scientists. Great facilities for work in all 

 branches of art are afforded by the Academy of 

 Arts ; and St Petersburg is on the whole a very 

 musical city, with an excellent conservatoire. The 

 public libraries are numerous. Besides the Imperial 

 Public Library ( 1 ,200,000 volumes and 40,000 MSS. ), 

 there are the" libraries of the Academy of Sciences, 

 the University, the Council of State, as well as 

 those of the scientific societies, some of which arc 

 very rich in their special branches. There are 

 In. sides rich museums of art in the Hermitage 

 (Flemish, Russian, and early Italian schools well 

 represented, and priceless collections of Greek and 

 Scythian antiquities), in the Academy of Art, ami 

 in several private collections; while the scientific 

 museums of the Academy of Sciences, the Mining 

 Institute, the Asiatic Museum, &c. enjoy a hi^h 

 repute in the scientific world. The press is repre- 

 sented by nearly 120 periodicals, and the greatest 

 part of the Russian publishing trade is concentrated 

 at St Petersburg. 



Ht Pierre, the largest town, though not the 

 capital, of the island of Martinique (q.v.), in the 

 West Indies, has a good harbour (defended by a 

 furt). a cathedral, a college, a botanical garden, 

 and 28,000 inhabitants. It was founded in 1665, 

 and was the birthplace of Josephine, consort of 



Nil] Mil eon I. 



SI Pierre. See REUNION, and Migi KLON. 

 Saint-Pierre, JACQUES-HENRI BEKNAKUIN 



[>E, the author of Pnitl ml Virginia, wax Ixirn at 

 Havre, 19th January 1737. His parenU were 

 amiable but foolish people with alwmd pretcnioii 

 to lamily, and the education of the abnormally 

 imaginative IMIV was ill regulated from the begin- 

 ning. He found his ideals in the Lives of the 

 Saints and Robinson Crusoe, made a voyage to 

 Maitinique in one of his uncle's ships, and returned 

 to pursue irregular studies at Caen and Itoucn. 

 He dreamed of a missionary's life, but was sent to 

 Paris to become an engineer, and found him-clt .'it 

 twenty-three on his father's second marriage com 

 pelled to shift for himself. He served some time 

 in the Engineers, but quarrelled with hi.- duets 

 and was dismissed, and next year was sent to 

 Malta only to suffer the same experience. UN 

 head was turned by the writings of Rousseau, and 

 lie made public employment impossible for him by 

 the innumerable Utopian memoirs ard criticisms 

 on matters of administration with which he deluged 

 the bureaus of the ministers. Buoyed no by 

 dreams of a new state to be founded on the shores 

 of the Sea of Aral, he travelled on nothing to 

 Russia, and returned in dejection to Warsaw, 

 where in his three months' stay occurred the ro- 

 mance which grew into that legend of the love of a 

 princess which he ended by believing in himself. 

 Next followed further wanderings to Vienna, 

 Dresden, and Berlin, and a government expedition 

 to Madagascar, which he alwndoned at the lie de 

 France, to spend there almost three years of melan- 

 choly and observation. In June 1771 he returned 

 to Paris, his head full of ideas, yet he hesitated 

 awhile before be recognised his true vocation. II i* 

 Voyage d i'lle de Fnnirr appealed early in 1773, 

 and at first attracted little attention. Yet it 

 gave a distinctly new element to literature in 

 that close portrafture of nature that apprehension 

 of the mysterious correspondence lietwecn the 

 spectacle and the spectator, which nowadays adds 

 the personal accent to descriptions of landscape. 

 As he himself said of the contemporary descriptions, 

 'la physionomie n'y eat pas, and indeed e\eii 

 Rousseau's Confessions and ntrrrirs (bath later) 

 give us sensations rather than images. 



A close friend of Rousseau in his last years, Saint- 

 Pierre became misanthropic and half-ora/y through 

 poverty and lack of sympathy, and wearied out 

 his few friends with his importunities. His htudet 

 de In .\,itn,-r (3 vols. 1784) showed the strong 

 influence of Rousseau in its scntimentalism, its 

 inspired folly, and the ridiculous length to which 

 it carries tile use of final causes, lie proves the 

 existence of God from poetic reasons: everything 

 in nature point* to Him, for God made nature for 

 man, and man for Himself. Nature makes men 

 good; society corrupts them 'plus la societe est 

 iiolicee, plus'les maux y sont multiplies et cruels.' 

 Hence the value of ignorance the mother of all 

 mystery especially to women. In his Elysium 

 are no capitalists nor nobles, but monuments to 

 the inventors of useful arta, and such especial 

 benefactors of the race as Nicot, who introduced 

 tobacco into Europe. Not to speak of more essen- 

 tial faults, the hook contains much wild physical 

 science, as his theories of the tides and elongation 

 of the poles. The new work was received with 

 immense applause, and a fourth volume followed 

 in 1788, containing the immortal 1'nnl it Fir- 

 ginie, ite author's one work of genius. Hiiinlioldt 

 owns the wonderful truth with which it realises 

 the splendours of tropical vegetation, but it i 

 an exquisite idyll of love growing op unconsciously 

 in two natural hearts that the Ixxik possesses a 

 perennial charm even for such critics as Sainte* 

 lieuve and Gautier. Daphnit and CMoe suggested 



