The Hermitage is a palace near to the other, in which are the Russian galleries of art. If it was surprising to find in Madrid the most valuable collection of paintings in Europe, it was not less astonishing to find in Russia such magnificent pictures and so large a number of those that deserve admiration. For many years past the government has been spending large sums of money in the purchase of pictures. It has had and has its agents in Italy, and in every picture mart in Europe, ready to pay any price for “an old master.” And it has shown its good sense in this, that when it cannot compass the original, it gets the best possible copy, and hangs it on its walls, with its story fairly told. This is the true way to cultivate the taste, and instruct the intellect of the nation in art. Catharine the Great built a pavilion on the end of the Winter Palace, to which she might retire from the cares of State, and here she drew around her the wits of the age. She called it the Hermitage, and that it might be a real refuge, into which royalty and its stiltedness could not intrude, she made a curious code of laws to govern the company that she here assembled. The Hermitage is now the Royal Museum, and its grandeur and extent are unequalled. It is 515 feet long and 375 feet wide. The roof of this vast hall is supported by sixteen columns, each one a single block of granite from Finland, with Corinthian capitals of Carara marble. Successive stories on the same scale are filled with statues and pictures, and curious works of art, in which the genius and skill of all schools and nations are represented. Even to mention them would take up more of your time than would be proper for me to consume, and I let them pass unnoticed. I was even more interested in Peter the Great’s gallery, where his turning-lathes and other tools that he used with his own hands are preserved; and what is even more remarkable, the instruments that he manufactured for himself, from a telescope to a walking-stick. His iron staff that he carried about with him would not be credited as genuine, were it not that a wooden rod tells of his gigantic stature, and thus makes it quite probable that he could walk with a rod of iron. Art-culture in Russia has advanced to a far higher point than we would expect to find. The painting and sculpture of Russia in the Paris exhibition astonished the outside world, and the galleries in the Hermitage devoted to native art are marvellously illustrated with splendid achievements of the chisel and pencil.