Here are numerous conservatories, comprising a great variety of camellias, heaths and ferns and several very large palm-houses, containing some very fine specimens. We then visited the Church of St. Peter and St. Paul, which we found undergoing extensive repairs. In this church are deposited the remains of Peter the Great and all his imperial successors, the preceding Emperors having been buried at Moscow. The very great simplicity and absence of all ornament form a striking but most becoming contrast to the usual display in many other churches. The coffins, being placed in walls, are covered with a plain stone sarcophagus. On some the pall is embroidered in golden letters, on others nothing but the initial. From the roof are suspended numerous tattered banners, and on one side are hung the keys of Paris and other French fortresses. Hitherto we had taken advantage of the fine weather in driving about the city, visiting the islands and the public gardens, but this favour not being continued we turned our attention to the palaces, of which, Murray says, no other modern city can boast an equal number. The Winter Palace, the most splendid and largest royal residence in the world, is 700 feet in length, three storeys high, and nearly square, and is said to have 6,000 persons under its roof during the Emperor's residence in the capital. Among the extensive suite of apartments, galleries and halls filled with marbles, precious stones, vases, and pictures may be mentioned, first, the hall of St. George, where the Emperor gives audience to foreign ambassadors. It is 140 feet by 60 feet, on the splendour of which the Russians most pride themselves. The Empress's drawing-room is considered to be a perfect gem of taste. Beyond this is the Salle Blanche, or White Saloon, a very chaste and most elegant apartment, its decorations and marble columns all in pure white relieved only in gilding, the dimensions being nearly the same as the hall. Then the Diamond room, containing the crown and jewels of the Imperial family. Here diamonds, rubies and emeralds are ranged round the room in small cases, of such dazzling beauty that it is almost bewildering to look at them. The crown of the Emperor is adorned with diamonds of an extraordinary size, and the Imperial sceptre contains the largest in the world, the Kohinoor excepted; it was purchased by the Empress Catherine for 450,000 roubles, or L75,000 sterling. In addition to the splendid apartments just described there is also a small room occupied by the late Emperor Nicholas containing a very small hard bed on which he died, this being almost the only room he occupied in that grand building. This room is held in great respect, and everything remains in the same state in which he left it. His mind was bent on other objects than mere splendour.