Perfect order is kept. The train is already at the platform, ready to start, and I am shown without delay into my compartment. There are a great many officials, all of them in striking uniforms. In fact, there are nearly as many railway employes as travellers, and together they form incoherent groups of Oriental brightness. The train winds through colourless and uninteresting suburbs for some time. Here and there we have a glimpse of the white Neva, arched by beautiful bridges and skirted with magnificent palaces. We pass near many small villages full of summer-houses, all built of wood. Each house is painted in different colours, and has its own pretty garden. There are some red, some green, and some blue, making a polychromatic mosaic on the green fields. They are all summer residences of the official or semi-official world, who are obliged to pass the summer near town. Indeed, the great charm of St. Petersburg consists in its neighbourhood. These attractive retreats, or, as they are called, _Datshas_, are on the riverside or on the seashore, or hidden in a quiet neighbourhood like the magnificent Imperial residences, Tsarskoe Selo, Pavlovsk, and Gatschina. But among them all, Peterhof is the most famous--the Versailles of the North. I think Peterhof undoubtedly deserves the first place. There is not only splendour, but there is real beauty too. Art and nature contribute to make it one of the loveliest spots on earth. There is, in fact, only one royal residence, I think, that can compare with it, and that is the castle of Pena on the high peaks overlooking the ocean near Lisbon. To get an idea of Peterhof we must imagine a luxuriant forest overshadowing the blue waters of the Baltic. Buried in the woods are summer-houses, gardens, fountains, Greek temples, and triumphal arches. The palace itself stands on a hill that has been cut into terraces--terraces that are surrounded by balustrades and ornamented by statues and flower-vases. Then as a centre there is a magnificent cascade looking like a crystal staircase leading up to a golden palace; it spreads out its waters into a silver carpet covering the pathway and flowing in a broad canal to the sea, bordered by an avenue of rippling fountains.