The Palace of the Hermitage is a place of great interest, and contains various beautiful vases in malachite, lapis lazuli, jasper, &c., of great value. There is one enormous vase, I forget of what stone: it is of an oval shape, and measures twenty feet in diameter. These objects are the work of criminals, and are brought from the Ural Mountains and Siberia. The apartments are very fine; the floors are particularly worthy of attention, being curiously and most elaborately inlaid. The gallery of paintings is good; those by Sneyder are excellent. I saw here Brulof’s ‘Last Days of Pompeii,’ but it certainly did not answer the expectations I had formed of it from the immense praise previously bestowed upon it by my friends. The Russians used to boast that he was the first artist in Europe, but everything in Russia is “the first,” according to their own account. Among the pictures here shown, the English stranger will see with regret the splendid collection once at Strawberry Hill, which were unhappily allowed to leave the shores of Britain: there are also some good statues and a few antiquities that are interesting. The Museum in St. Petersburg is very small; it contains some badly-stuffed birds and animals, and very little besides, nor would it be worth the trouble of visiting were it not for the celebrated remains of the mammoth which are preserved in it. Some portions of the skin and hair are shown; the former is like discoloured board, the latter resembles enormous bristles.