This city is really, for a city, the most beautiful and original that there is; the environs are pleasant, not pretty, not unsightly; but the view from above out of the Kremlin, over this circle of houses with green roofs, gardens, churches, towers of the most extraordinary shape and color, most of them green or red or light blue, generally crowned on top by a colossal golden bulb, usually five or more on one church, and surely one thousand towers! Anything more strangely beautiful than all this, lighted by slanting sunset rays, cannot be seen. [Illustration: CORONATION OF KING WILLIAM I AT KÖNIGSBERG. From the Painting by Adolph von Menzel.] The weather is clear again, and I should stay here some days longer if rumors of a big battle in Italy were not going about, which may result in lots of diplomatic work, so that I must get back to my post. The house in which I am writing is wonderful enough, really; one of the few that have outlived 1812--old, thick walls, as in Schönhausen, Oriental architecture, Moorish, large rooms, almost entirely occupied by the chancery officers, who administer, or maladminister, Jussupow's estates. He, his wife, and I have the one livable wing in the midst of them. Lots of love. Your most faithful v.B. Petersburg, July 2, '59. _My Dear Heart_,--I received your letter of the 25th yesterday, and you will probably get tomorrow the one that I sent to Stettin on Wednesday with the Dowager Czarina. My homesick heart follows its course with yearning thoughts; it was such charming clear weather and fresh winds when we escorted her Highness on board in Peterhof that I should have liked to leap on the ship, in uniform and without baggage, and go along with her. Since then the heat has grown worse, about the temperature of a freely watered palm-house, and my lack of summer materials is making itself decidedly felt. I go about in the rooms in my shirt alone, as the dear blue dressing-gown is too narrow, even now at six o'clock in the morning. A courier wakened me half an hour ago, with his war and peace, and I cannot sleep any more now, although I did not get to bed until towards two. Our politics are drifting more and more into the Austrian wake, and as soon as we have fired a shot on the Rhine then it's all over with the war between Italy and Austria, and, instead of that, a war between France and Prussia will take the stage, in which Austria, after we have taken the burden from her shoulders, will stand by us or will not stand by us, just as her own interests dictate. She will certainly not suffer us to play a gloriously victorious rôle. It is quite remarkable that in such crises Catholic ministers always hold the reins of our destiny--Radowitz once before, now Hohenzollern, who just now has the predominant influence, and is in favor of war. I look very darkly into the future; our troops are not better than the Austrian, because they only serve half as