In the city of St. Petersburg resides an old Englishman whose name is Russel. He has an understanding with the hotel men that whenever a guide is wanted by travellers, he is to be sent for, and at our intimation he made his appearance, and very respectfully offered his services to make us familiar with the lions of the town. Mr. Russel is a venerable man in years, having completed his threescore and ten some time since. Half a century of these years he has dwelt in this capital of the Russian empire, and toiled in this interesting service of expounding its wonders to the visitors from other countries. Mr. Russel has become so familiar with the objects of interest in his adopted city, that he imagines his strangers to be equally familiar with them, and in no need of being enlightened. He is so far gone in the loss of his faculties, if he ever had any great quantity to lose, that a question must be proposed to him often and in many forms, before he comprehends it, and when he answers, you are not sure that he understood you, or that he knows any thing about the matter. He never speaks except when he is spoken to, unless to tell you something you knew before, or that was not worth knowing. He would pass the most important and interesting buildings or monuments or historic places in the city, and not mention them, unless you asked him,—“What’s that?” Yet he was very English. He dropped the H invariably. He exaspirated his vowels most unmercifully. Pointing to the tombs of the kings and royal family, he said: “That’s the _hare_ to the throne; that’s his _haunt_, and there’s his _huncle_.” In a picture-gallery we came to Danae, and he was kind enough to say, “That’s a woman, I believe,” and there was not much room for doubt on the subject; and in a group of mythological sculpture he remarked for our information, “That’s Jupiter,—these is all gods.” This was the intelligent man who was to make us acquainted with the city of St. Petersburg. If you are to be told only what he could tell me, it would not be worth while to read any further. But we have eyes and ears of our own, and already the barbaric splendor of this northern capital is breaking upon us. You shall have our first impressions and our last, for we have made two visits here, and have become familiar with the city, if not in love with it. It is not a city to go into raptures over. Perhaps it will become beautiful one day. But nothing in it is finished. Streets with palaces on them are still disfigured with insignificant and miserable dwellings. Palaces are not completed. Wealth has been lavished, but nothing is done. It resembles our own capital in this, that its public buildings are far apart, and the city is not half built up.