aloud from an unpopular Russian poet. An offence against the last rule resulted in exclusion from the assemblies. Catherine herself set the example of urbanity and affable grace. Of course the reader will see that some of her rules were for the purpose of educating her semi-savage nobles; others were intended as hints to her foreign guests. Nothing was wanting for the entertainment of the company. The palace was decorated in French style, and was replete with all the minutiae of elegance that Madame de Pompadour

had made so fashionable. Porcelain of the finest description was manufactured expressly for Catherine at the Sèvres manufactory. But when the architects and gilders and furnishers had done their work, Catherine perceived that her palace still lacked a very important refining influence, and that was pictures.

But, from Finland to the Crimea, there was not a picture in Russia worth having, and Catherine meant to have only the masterpieces of great painters. She set her emissaries to work in all the capitals of Europe, regardless of expense, and with such success, that when she died, in 1796, she left at the Hermitage 1,383 valuable paintings.

Her successors have added to the museum as opportunity offered. In 1814, Alexander I. bought thirty-eight paintings, previously in the gallery of Josephine at Malmaison. In 1819, Nicholas became the possessor of the collection of Queen Hortense. Entire cabinets and museums have thus from time to time been bought up to enrich the Hermitage.

It would be foreign to our purpose to take the reader in detail through the rooms and galleries of the Hermitage. There are now in the collection about 1,740 pictures, selected from about 4,000, of which the remainder are in the various palaces. Of the Italian schools there are 333 pictures; of the Spanish, 115; of the Flemish, Dutch, and German, 914; of the English, 8; of the French, 172; of the Russian, 65. The great masters are well represented, Murillo by 20 pictures, Rubens by 60, Teniers by 40, and so on.

On the Court Quay stands the Marble Palace, or Orloff Palace, erected by Catherine, between 1770 and 1783, as a residence for Prince Gregory Orloff. It is a sombre building of massive granite (in spite of its name); the roof of sheet-copper is supported by iron beams, and gilded copper is used for the window-frames. The Taurida Palace was another construction of Catherine's, presented by her to Field-Marshal Potemkin after the conquest of the Crimea. He made it renowned by his magnificent entertainments. It was inhabited for a time by Louisa the Beautiful, Queen of Prussia, so beloved by her people, who visited Napoleon at Tilsit, and strove in vain to procure favourable terms for her bleeding country. It was afterwards inhabited by Khozra Mirza, the Persian envoy; and lastly, in 1830, by Oscar, the Crown Prince of Sweden. The Emperor Paul turned the palace into a barrack for his guards; but it became once more a royal residence under his successor. It is now a sort of Russian Hampton Court, inhabited by superannuated ladies of the Imperial Court. The Anatchkoff Palace, the residence of the Heir Presumptive; the Summer Palace, on the island of Iclagin, and one or two others, call for no special remark.

There is one royal residence in St. Petersburg which, though decidedly not a palace, is well worthy of notice. Peter the Great's cottage was the first house built by him on the banks of the Neva, in 1703. "There is one sight," says D. Mackenzie Wallace, "which must have a deep interest for those who are sensitive to the influence of historical association. I mean the little wooden house in which Peter the Great lived while his future capital was being built. In its style and arrangement it looks more like the hut of a navvy than the residence of a Czar, but it was quite in keeping with the character of the illustrious man who occupied it. Peter could, and did occasionally, work like a navvy, without feeling that his imperial dignity was thereby diminished. When he determined to build a new capital on a Finnish marsh, inhabited chiefly by wild fowl, he did not content himself with exercising his autocratic power in a comfortable arm-chair. Like the old Greek gods, he went down from his Olympus, and took his place in the ranks of ordinary mortals, superintending his work with his own eyes, and taking part in it with his own hands. If he was as arbitrary and oppressive as any of the pyramid-building Pharaohs, he could at least say in self-justification that he did not spare himself any more than his people, but exposed himself freely to the discomforts and dangers under which thousands of his fellow-labourers succumbed."

The cottage stands not far from the citadel already described, and is a diminutive dwelling-place, measuring some fifty-five feet by twenty. The accommodation consists of two.

roma and a közben. The room in which Peter dined and slept is now a chapel. Here zealous devotees gather to elite the miraenions image of the Saviour which accompanied Peter in a ha hatte, and alled him at Poltava, when the hitherto victoricas star of Charles XII went down in disaster and disgrace. Numerous relies of the great Czar are exhibited in this humble abode, which is serapalously preserved. Close by stands a wooden church, founded by Peter in 1763-the oldest sacred edifice in the capital. In it is a bell brought from Abo, in Finland, in 1713, and also many interesting small objects connected with, or made by, Peter the Great.

The city of St. Petersburg is rich in mocuments erected to the glory of its sovereigns and its great generals. Of these, the most celebrated is the equestrian statue of Peter the Great on the shores of the Neva, opposite St. Isaac's Cathedral. It was erected by Catherine II, and is the work of Etienne Maurice Falconet, one of the cleverest sculptors of France in the eighteenth century. The head, however, which is considered a striking likeness of the Czar Peter, was modelled by Marie Callot, who afterwards became Falconet's wife. The whole bronze group was produced at a single casting, but nevertheless, the preparation and completion of the monument represent the patient labour of seventeen years. The Emperor, in Roman costume, sits erect, with head well raised, gazing across the river, and with his right arm stretched out, "in such a way," says M. le Maistre, “that it is difficult to say whether it is an attitude of menace or protection." The horse, reined back upon the edge of a precipice, prances in the air. Beneath its hind feet it tramples a serpent, emblematic of the difficulties overcome by Peter's resolute will. The hind legs and tail of the horse, and the serpent, form a solid basis, containing 10,000 pounds of metal; the group in all weighs sixteen tons, but by skilfully varying and adjusting the thickness of the metal from a quarter of an inch to an inch, the centre of gravity has been thrown back so far as to securely balance the whole group.

The pedestal is an enormous block of granite, weighing 1,500 tons. This stupendous mass of rock was discovered by Falconet in a morass near Lakhta, about four miles from St. Petersburg. According to one tradition, Peter the Great had once stood upon it to watch a naval victory over the Swedes. The morass was drained, and a road cut through the forest and carried over the marshy ground. Along this road, under the arrangement of Count Carburi, the Police Master of St. Petersburg, the rock was transported to the city. Five hundred men and a large number of horses were engaged for five weeks in hauling the vast mass over cannon-balls rolling in an iron tramway, with the aid of ropes, pulleys, and windlasses. The rock originally measured 45 feet in length by 30 feet in height and 25 feet in width, but it was damaged and reduced in the course of preparation for the site it was destined to occupy. It now measures 43 feet in length, 14 feet in height, and 20 feet in width. The height of the statue is nearly 18 feet. The entire cost of the monument was 500,000 silver roubles, or £80,000, an immense sum for those days, and equal to a vast deal more at the present day.

In the open space near the Winter Palace stands the triumphal column to Alexander I., the "Restorer of Peace," raised by the Emperor Nicholas in 1832. The shaft is a single block of red granite 81 feet in height, exclusive of pedestal and capital-the largest monolith erected in modern times. It is the work of M. Montferrand, the architect