But before us rises a red granite column, the grandeur and beauty of which instantly fix the eye. A single stone, eighty-four feet high and fifty feet in circumference,—the loftiest single shaft of modern times, only less in height than Pompey’s Pillar,—stands in the midst of the square, surmounted by an angel and the cross. The pedestal bears a brief inscription, but it tells the whole story,—“Grateful Russia to Alexander I.” Originally this stone was cut out of the mountain, 104 feet long, and the order was to make the loftiest monolith in the world; but from fear that it was too long to stand firmly on its base, which was fourteen feet in diameter, it was shortened to its present length. With incredible labor it was erected upon a pedestal twenty-five feet high, and there, polished, it stands, perhaps the most splendid shaft that now presses upon the earth. It seemed to grow as I gazed upon it. And daily as I caught sight of it from other parts of the city, or as I drove into the magnificent area of which it is the central figure, its simple majesty and exceeding beauty impressed me more and more. What vast labor it cost to bring this block from the mountains of Finland, and plant it perpendicularly on the banks of the Neva, in the heart of the city! In the Admiralty Square is a more famous statue, and one of which we have heard from childhood; pictures of it had made it so familiar that it seemed an old acquaintance,—PETER THE GREAT, the founder of the city, its inventor and builder, is on horseback, riding up a rock, to the verge of which he has come, when he reins in his steed and sits looking upon the river and the city he has raised upon its banks. The horse is rearing, and the immense weight rests upon his hinder legs and the tail, which touches a huge serpent, coiled at the horse’s feet. This is deservedly reckoned one of the finest equestrian statues, and it honors the most extraordinary man of his age.