The season was late in Petersburg. Up to the middle of December the little snow that fell melted. The temperature varied from a little above to a little below the freezing point. Some days the Neva brought down masses of floating ice from Lake Ladoga, and on other days the river was quite clear. I fear the pork-butchers of the interior were premature in sending in their supplies of frozen pigs, for they seemed very likely to get thawed in the mild atmosphere of Petersburg. The sky was constantly overcast, and the few hours of daylight were consequently cut short at both ends. Everything conspired to throw a gloom over the place, and the people were longing for their snow roads and their sledges, their races and games on the Neva, and the pleasures of their winter season. The "Court" was at Tsarskoe-selo, writing despatches, while the Polish insurrection, the proposed congress of Paris, and the financial difficulties of the government, supplied food for gossip to all circles in the city. The reply of the Emperor to the invitation of his "good brother," as published in the _Journal_, excited universal admiration. And as for the currency crisis, everyone had some nostrum of his own which would infallibly put things right, but none of them seemed to touch the essential point, the supply of bullion. Great activity prevailed in the government dockyards, where a number of iron-clads were being built. One of these building yards was close to Miss Benson's, where I lived, and we got the full benefit of the clanging of hammers, from a very early hour in the morning, till the latest hour at night at which we happened to be awake. I believe they worked day and night, as if busily preparing for war. Some vessels had been hurried out of England unfinished, and enormous quantities of iron-plating, and other materials, had been imported from England for vessels to be constructed in Russia. The yards we were shown through were all under the superintendence of English firms, and Englishmen occupy responsible positions in the admiralty. The number of iron-cased frigates in progress at Petersburg and Kronstadt, is sufficient to account for the abstraction of bullion from the government treasury in such amounts as to derange the paper currency of the country.