But the deadening influence of the whole Russian system was evident. Persons who clamor for governmental control of American railways should visit Germany, and above all Russia, to see how such control results. In Germany its defects are evident enough; people are made to travel in carriages which our main lines would not think of using, and with a lack of conveniences which with us would provoke a revolt; but the most amazing thing about this administration in Russia is to see how, after all this vast expenditure, the whole atmosphere of the country seems to paralyze energy. During my stay at St. Petersburg I traveled over the line between that city and Berlin six or eight times, and though there was usually but one express-train a day, I never saw more than twenty or thirty through passengers. When one bears in mind the fact that this road is the main artery connecting one hundred and twenty millions of people at one end with over two hundred millions at the other, this seems amazing; but still more so when one considers that in the United States, with a population of, say, eighty millions in all, we have five great trunk-lines across the continent, each running large express-trains several times a day. There was apparently little change as regards enterprise in Russia, whatever there might be as regarded facilities for travel. St. Petersburg had grown, of course. There were new streets in the suburbs, and where the old admiralty wharves had stood,--for the space of perhaps an eighth of a mile along the Neva,--fine buildings had been erected. But these were the only evident changes, the renowned Nevskii Prospekt remaining as formerly--a long line of stuccoed houses on either side, almost all poor in architecture; and the street itself the same unkempt, shabby, commonplace thoroughfare as of old. No new bridge had been built across the Neva for forty years. There was still but one permanent structure spanning the river, and the great stream of travel and traffic between the two parts of the city was dependent mainly on the bridges of boats, which, at the breaking of the ice in the spring, had sometimes to be withdrawn during many days. A change had indeed been brought by the emancipation of the serfs, but there was little outward sign of it. The muzhik remained, to all appearance, what he was before: in fact, as our train drew into St. Petersburg, the peasants, with their sheepskin caftans, cropped hair, and stupid faces, brought back the old impressions so vividly that I seemed not to have been absent a week. The old atmosphere of repression was evident everywhere. I had begun my experience of it under Nicholas I, had seen a more liberal policy under Alexander II, but now found a recurrence of reaction, and everywhere a pressure which deadened all efforts at initiating a better condition of things.