Our journey virtually terminated with our joining the railway, for though still some 2500 miles from London, we had no more hardships to look forward to, no toilsome days, or sleepless nights, no hard fare, and no struggles with the elements. It was hard to realise the superlative comfort of a railway carriage in our shaken and shattered condition. It seemed too good to be true. The varied incidents of our four months of travel crowded on the memory, and we soon dropped into a delicious sleep amid confused visions of drunken yemschiks, broken wheels, diabolical roads, icebergs, and ferry-boats, with deserts and strings of camels dimly shadowed in the back ground. In the grey of the morning, we found ourselves in Moscow the Holy, and were soon comfortably settled in M. Billet's hotel. Our progress towards civilised comfort culminated here, and the luxury of bed and board at M. Billet's seemed a full compensation for the miseries of the road.
To do justice to the delights of Moscow would require a higher inspiration than I am blessed with, and all I could say about the Kremlin, its palaces and churches, the theatres, operas, &c., has been much better said already. The few days spent there seemed very short. Should I ever be tempted to revisit the fine old city, however, I hope the municipal council will have made some arrangement for lighting the streets with gas. In this respect they are sadly behind the age; and in a gay population like that of Moscow, which lives mostly at night, it is surprising that illumination has not before now been demanded by the popular voice. The portable gas which is carted about the streets in hogsheads, is a wretched makeshift. The sudden exhaustion of the supply of light frequently causes a theatrical performance to be interrupted until another hogshead of gas is procured; and during the interregnum young Russia delights in electrifying the audience by yelling and whistling, as if they would bring the house down.
A large building on the outskirts of Moscow was pointed out to us as the foundling hospital, a great institution in Russia, one of whose chief uses seems to be to rear ballet-girls, and most efficiently does it perform its functions.
From Moscow to Petersburg by railway is a monotonous and uninteresting journey, especially in winter. The country is flat and bare; here and there a patch of winter wheat struggled through the thin covering of snow, but the general aspect in the month of December was that of a desert. The only town of note on the line is Tver, on the Volga, where the railway crosses that river. In the construction of the line, the convenience of the various small towns has not been consulted. It was a purely imperial project to connect Moscow with Petersburg. It is said that when the engineers, who were engaged in the construction of the line, applied to the Emperor to know what curves they should make so as to pass through the most populous towns, he laid a ruler on the map, drew a straight line from Petersburg to Moscow, and bade them follow it.
Railways, like all other public works in Russia, have been constructed at enormous expense, from the peculations of the officials who had to do with them. It is related of the Emperor Nicholas, that when he had failed to impress certain Persian ambassadors with the magnificence of his capital, he turned in despair to Prince Menschikoff, and asked him whether there was nothing that would astonish them. The prince suggested that they might be shown the accounts of the Moscow railway.
We were not so favourably impressed with Petersburg, as a place of residence, as we had been with Moscow. It is a magnificent city, no doubt; its quays, bridges, "perspectives," palaces, and squares present a faultless exterior, and leave an impression of grandeur on the memory that makes other things small by comparison. But the chill of officialism rests on the place; it was created out of a swamp by the fiat of an emperor, and the imperial will is all-pervading still; you cannot shake off the idea. Looking down the "Nevsky," you take in at a glance miles of street laid out with mathematical accuracy, and the effect is very striking; you admire the magnificent Nicholas bridge that spans the Neva, a work that made the fortune of others besides the architect; in short, you admire everything separately and collectively about the capital, but the reflection always crops up that this fine city and the glory of it exists by the will of the emperor. Moscow is antiquated; its streets are not so straight, nor so wide, nor so regular; its buildings are not so imposing; but it is a natural and spontaneous growth; there is a more homely and comfortable air about it than Petersburg; and it was not built for the admiration of the world, but because people wanted houses to live in. Petersburg lacks the historical interest that invests the old capital, and it will be long before it displaces the holy city in the affections of the Russians, who one and all have a kind of superstitious reverence for Moscow. The Czars also hold the old city in high esteem, and are said to regard the Kremlin as the focus and ultimate asylum of their power.
The season was late in Petersburg. Up to the middle of December the little snow that fell melted. The temperature varied from a little above to a little below the freezing point. Some days the Neva brought down masses of floating ice from Lake Ladoga, and on other days the river was quite clear. I fear the pork-butchers of the interior were premature in sending in their supplies of frozen pigs, for they seemed very likely to get thawed in the mild atmosphere of Petersburg. The sky was constantly overcast, and the few hours of daylight were consequently cut short at both ends. Everything conspired to throw a gloom over the place, and the people were longing for their snow roads and their sledges, their races and games on the Neva, and the pleasures of their winter season. The "Court" was at Tsarskoe-selo, writing despatches, while the Polish insurrection, the proposed congress of Paris, and the financial difficulties of the government, supplied food for gossip to all circles in the city. The reply of the Emperor to the invitation of his "good brother," as published in the Journal, excited universal admiration. And as for the currency crisis, everyone had some nostrum of his own which would infallibly put things right, but none of them seemed to touch the essential point, the supply of bullion.
Great activity prevailed in the government dockyards, where a number of iron-clads were being built. One of these building yards was close to Miss Benson's, where I lived, and we got the full benefit of the clanging of hammers, from a very early hour in the morning, till the latest hour at night at which we happened to be awake. I believe they worked day and night, as if busily preparing for war. Some vessels had been hurried out of England unfinished, and enormous quantities of iron-plating, and other materials, had been imported from England for vessels to be constructed in Russia. The yards we were shown through were all under the superintendence of English firms, and Englishmen occupy responsible positions in the admiralty. The number of iron-cased frigates in progress at Petersburg and Kronstadt, is sufficient to account for the abstraction of bullion from the government treasury in such amounts as to derange the paper currency of the country.
But the financial disturbance is of some years' standing, although it has gradually been getting worse. It dates from the Crimean war, which drained the resources of Russia, both in men and treasure, to an extent which the government has been reluctant to admit. The difficulty was met at the time by the increased issue of paper-money, which government has never been able to redeem. The crisis was not much felt until the Polish insurrection again taxed the energies of the government, while it was still languishing under the effects of the Crimean war, and unprepared for this fresh demand on its resources. This was probably the real reason why the government was so slow to meet the emergency in Poland with adequate means. More paper-money had to be issued, unrepresented by bullion, and unconvertible. The paper currency became depreciated twelve to fifteen per cent. below its ostensible value, and in the uncertainty that prevailed as to the future, business was for a time brought almost to a stand. All the financiers of Russia have been labouring to restore the equilibrium, but as yet their best laid schemes have failed, for none of them has discovered the means of replenishing the bank treasury.