No sooner is the stranger established than he must take an interpreter, and make the best of his way to the police office, to get a permit of residence. This he obtains after an interrogation from a very civil functionary, to whom must be paid a proportionate fee. But this permit is good only for the capital and its immediate vicinity. If the Russians are slow to welcome the coming, they are none the more ready to speed the parting guest. Mr. Smith and his friend Brown must not leave the capital till they have published an advertisement announcing their intention in three successive numbers of the Gazette, an operation which consumes a space of from a week to ten days. These preliminaries duly attended to, we were at liberty to commence our examination of St. Petersburg. The traveler who first sees the city under a summer sun is always struck with amazement. Its public places are so vast, its monuments so numerous and imposing, its quays so magnificent, and its edifices, public and private, so enormous, and constructed apparently of materials so massive and enduring, that he is ready to pronounce it the most magnificent city upon earth. A century and a half ago the low marshy shores of the Neva, and the islands formed by the branches into which it separates just before it empties itself into the Gulf of Finland were inhabited only by a few scattered Finnish fishermen. But commanding the entrance to Lake Ladoga, it was a military position of some importance, and the Swedes had long maintained there a fortress, the possession of which had been often unavailingly contested by the Russians, up to 1703, when Peter the Great made himself master of it. He determined to found upon this desolate spot the future capital of his vast empire, and at once commenced the task, without waiting for peace to confirm the possession of the site. He assembled a vast number of the peasantry from every quarter of his empire, and pushed forward the work with the energy of an iron will armed with absolute power. The surrounding country, ravaged by long years of war, could furnish no supplies for these enormous masses, and the convoys which brought them across Lake Ladoga were frequently detained by contrary winds. Ill fed and worse lodged, laboring in the cold and wet, multitudes yielded to the hardships, and the foundations of the new metropolis were laid at the cost of a hundred thousand lives, sacrificed in less than six months.