of hard frosts had followed, but no snow, while ordinarily in November house-roofs were covered a foot deep in snow, which lasted into May. It would be, therefore, no difficult task to set fire to the city in various quarters, a thing not usually so possible in the winter in St. Petersburg as in Moscow, built as it was entirely of wooden houses. With fire breaking out in ten or twelve places simultaneously the panic would be complete. The Feast of St. Michael was at that time still celebrated in the Isaacsplatz. In one night, in the vast, usually empty space, a perfect town had been erected, with entire streets of booths, the principal booth being the People's Theatre. And what a theatre it was! in which marionettes acted like real people and fought in real battles! And then the troops of artists of all kinds, whose patron is not Apollo, but Pan, who amuse the people, and are not at the beck and call of the rich and learned, but are to be seen at fairs and in holiday places, and who do not think it beneath their dignity to come down among the crowd to collect kopecs after the performance. Then there are the people's favorites, the Bajazzos, who are not so ambitious as to work for posterity, but are perfectly content if they can earn to-day their yesterday's score at the inn, playing the while, so the populace think, every whit as well as Talma or Macready. They eat tow, draw whole bundles of rags out of their noses, swallow red-hot coals and sharp swords, and can scratch their ears with their toes, which is more than either Sullivan or Kean, or even Dimitriefsky, more celebrated than either, can do. In one booth is shown the "real original sea-maiden with a fish's tail, who lives on live fish, and can only say 'Papa,' 'Mama.'" In another the big drum is being beaten to call attention to the elephants walking on a tight rope; next door to them are to be seen men of the woods, with four hands and tusk-like teeth. The giantess is also on view, under whose arm the tallest man can stand, although she wears no high heels to her shoes, and, when desired, shows that the calves of her legs are not wadded. The showman of a panorama describes, in singing voice to an astonished public, great battles, eruptions of Vesuvius, storms at sea, and ghastly tales of murders, the faithful representation of all which is to be seen in his booth for the sum of two kopecs. Then, how endless are the amusements hidden by no jealous tent! Here a group of cornet-players, each playing a different note, and so forming a melody; there a set of gypsies dancing and singing; windmill-like swings swishing through the air with their delighted occupants; while crowds in their holiday best glide over the smooth ice in sledges or on skates. High above all these earthly delights is to be seen a rope slung across between the tower of St. Isaac's Cathedral to the balcony of the Admiralty, upon which a tight-rope dancer is to wheel his little son in a wheelbarrow.