There are four railway stations on the south side of St. Petersburg, the Peterhoff, the Warsaw, the Czarskoé Sélo, and the Moscow, though the latter is at the bend of the Nevski Prospect. Czarskoé Sélo, fifteen miles from the city, is the principal summer residence of the emperor. The railway to this place was the first one built in Russia. A ride of forty minutes brought the party to their destination. The grounds of the palace, which are entered by a gateway with two towers, covered with Egyptian figures and hieroglyphics, are eighteen miles in circumference. They are kept in the nicest order by six hundred old soldiers, who are pensioned off in this way. Not a dry leaf, a cigar stump, or any unclean thing is permitted to remain in the walks, for the veterans capture it as an invader, and put it out of sight. The front of the palace is seven hundred and eighty feet long. Peter the Great erected a building here, but the present edifice was built during the reign of Elizabeth, and was embellished by Catharine II. Originally, every statue, pedestal, capital of a column, and all the ornaments, were gilded, the gold for which was worth over two millions of dollars. In a short time the gilding was badly injured by the weather. The contractors employed in repairing the building offered Catharine half a million silver rubles for the gold leaf which remained on the ornaments, to whom she replied, "I am not accustomed to sell my old clothes." The front of the palace is now gaudily painted with white, green, and yellow, the only gilding being on the dome and cupolas of the church. Parts of the interior, however, are very lavishly gilded, as the chapel, the ceiling of which is one sheet of gold. One small apartment has strips of lapis lazuli inlaid upon the walls, and the floor is of ebony, ornamented with mother-of-pearl. In another room the walls are panelled with amber, wrought into a variety of designs. The amber was presented to Catharine by Frederick the Great, and their initials and arms are blended in the panels; that of the Czarina being an E, for her Russian name was _Ekaterina_. There seems to be enough of this costly material to make mouth-pieces for all the pipes in Christendom. Catharine's sleeping apartment has pillars of purple glass, and the walls are decorated with porcelain. The bed-clothes are those under which she slept the last time she dwelt in the palace. The banqueting-rooms and the ball-rooms are profusely gilded, and, as may be seen in several of the palaces of Europe, especially those of Poland, Russia, and Sweden, there is a Chinese room, in which everything is fitted up in "Celestial" style. The rooms of Alexander I. are kept just as he left them when he started for Taganrog, where he died. In his cabinet is his writing-desk, all in confusion, with blotted paper, and quill pens, stained with ink, as though he had but just used them. Next to this is his bed-room, which is plain enough for an ordinary farmer.