The students had seen the Winter Palace and Hermitage, which are connected by galleries, when they rode through the streets the day before. The grand entrance is on the Neva, but there is another opening into the square in front of the Etat Major. The exterior, except in size, is hardly as imposing as many other European palaces, though the building has the reputation of being one of the most elegant on the continent. It is four hundred and fifty-five feet long by three hundred and fifty wide, and eighty feet high. In winter it accommodates six thousand persons, forming the emperor's household. On the site of the palace was the estate of the high admiral of Peter the Great, who bequeathed it to Peter II. The Empress Anne commenced a palace on the spot, which was completed in the reign of Catharine II., but it was destroyed by fire in 1837. In two years more the present vast structure was completed. The entrance from the Neva side is by a magnificent staircase of marble. The students went in at the entrance on the square, and walked through all the apartments which visitors are permitted to enter, and all of them were magnificent. The White Hall, as its name indicates, is of clear white, adorned with gold, and is the room in which the court balls and other festivities are held. St. George's Hall, which is one hundred and forty feet long by sixty wide, is the apartment in which the ambassadors are received; and there is another throne room, in which the emperor meets the diplomats on New Year's Day. There were hundreds of other rooms, all of them hung with pictures, which are mostly portraits of persons noted in Russian history, and battle-pieces in which the armies of the czars have been victorious. In the Romanoff Gallery are the pictures of all the sovereigns of this line, from Michael down to the present time. In this hall is a tablet, covered with a curtain, on which are inscribed the ten rules that Catharine II. enforced at the meetings of her friends. The visitor was enjoined to leave his rank, and his right of precedence, outside the door; to be gay, and sit, stand, or walk, as he pleased, without regard to any one; to talk gently, and argue without excitement; to eat what was good, and drink moderately, so that each might find his legs when he wanted to use them; that all should join in any innocent game when one proposed it, and tell no tales out of school. The penalty of a violation of these rules was the drinking of a glass of cold water, and the reading of a page of a poet who appears to have been the Martin Farquhar Tupper of Russia. If any one broke three of the rules in the same evening, he was condemned to commit six lines of this poet to memory; and the one who told tales out of school was not again admitted.