“It was difficult to believe we were in Europe on emerging from the station and seeing the endless droskies—sledges on wheels—drawn up, with their extraordinary-looking drivers, in long blue dressing-gowns (wadded like feather-beds, so as to make the wearer look like a huge pillow), with a girdle, and low cap. Then the gigantic streets, each about as broad as St. James’s Square, and the huge squares, in which the palaces, however vast, are so disproportioned to the immensity of space, that their architectural features are lost. Then the utter desolation, one carriage and two or three foot-passengers in the apparently boundless vistas. Altogether, St. Petersburg is quite the ugliest place I ever saw, even the Neva, huge as it is, so black and grim, and the smoke of the steamers giving the worst aspects of London. But yesterday evening we had a delightful drive of four hours on the islands in the Neva, which answer here to the Park, and are exquisitely varied—lovely winding alleys, bosquets of flowering trees, green meadows, little lakes, rushing brooks, every variety of cottage and villa and garden and bridge, at least twenty miles of them. Coming back, we stopped at the fortress-church to see the royal tombs—stately marble sarcophagi in groups; first Peter the Great and his family, then two groups of intermediate sovereigns, then the present family, surrounded (inside the church) by a grove of palms and laden with flowers. Close by is Peter the Great’s cottage, and the tiny early church in which he worshipped, and, at the former, the famous ‘icon’ which he carried in his wars, before which crowds of people were incessantly prostrating and kissing the pavement.”
“Sept. 4.—We returned last night from Finland, of which I am glad to have visited a specimen, though there is not much to see, except gloomy little lakes, flat country, hundreds of miles of monotonous forests of young firs and birch, and little wooden villages. All is very much like an inferior Sweden, and the people understand Swedish, and have the Swedish characteristics of honesty and civility, which, at so short a distance off, make them an extraordinary contrast to the Russians. Our journey was amusingly varied by endless changes of rail, steamer, walk, char-a-banc, as the country allowed. At Imatra, our destination, a lake tumbles into a river by curious rapids.”
