The earthly dower of Maria Theresa was certainly the richest ever granted to any female sovereign of the world. “A strong mind and feeling heart, royalty and beauty, long life and prosperity, a happy marriage, a numerous family, illustrious children, her people’s love, and the admiration of the universe.” CATHERINE II. A.D. 1729-1796. “Here’s to the flaunting, extravagant queen.”—SHERIDAN. IN mighty Russia, that land of violent extremes, that land of lavish wealth and utter poverty,—whose frightful climate conquered the otherwise invincible Napoleon, and with its keen frosts snapped the pillars of his throne; where millions tremble before a despot whose will is fettered by no constitution; whose prisons are the ice realms of Siberia, whither so many trains of wretched captives have passed to linger hopelessly in living tombs; whose smouldering fires of discontent and hatred, fanned by the ardent breath of Nihilism, are constantly breaking out into rebellion and assassination,—in that land of splendor and of barbarism, behold St. Petersburg, the city of the Czars, founded by Peter the Great in 1703, and risen out of the desolate marshes of Ladoga to be the worthy capital of a great empire. [Illustration: CATHARINE II. OF RUSSIA.] St. Petersburg, the city of palaces, with its royal and princely residences, adorned with Doric, Ionic and Corinthian columns surmounted by massive friezes, entablatures, and sculptures; with its Grecian and Gothic temples, its great squares, its splendid, spacious streets, its monuments, its warehouses and docks, its gardens and boulevards, Cronstadt with its frowning bastions and painted spires, and in the midst, giving to all an air of space, of freedom, and dignity, the Neva, thronged by craft of all kinds and sizes, from the tiny gondola to the man-of-war, and from the mighty merchant ship to the rude barge laden with timber or with grain,—presents a scene of opulence and magnificence which makes it difficult to realize that the foundations of this great metropolis were placed in the quaking bogs of Lake Ladoga. Upon the bank of the Neva, midway between the Senate House and the Admiralty, stands that most famous of the monuments of St. Petersburg,—the equestrian statue of Peter the Great. A splendid statue, this, of bronze and of colossal size. Peter, astride a mighty charger, reins back his steed upon the brink of a precipice, and stretches forth his sceptre, while he seems to survey with proud triumph the wonderful growth of the city of which he is the “creator,” and of which he might exclaim, as did Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon, “Is not this great Petersburg, that I have built by the might of my power, and for the honor of my majesty!” Little did Peter think, when he laid aside the sceptre of his empire, that five women would reign after him in almost direct succession, and that the last, the greatest of them all, would rear to him this costly monument upon the borders of the Neva.