But the streets are wide, and the walls painted white or light yellow; and from one street opens another, and another, and another—all wide, and white, and light yellow. And then, here and there, there are columned façades, and churches, and domes, and tapering spires—all white too, that are not gilded, or painted a sparkling green. And canals sweep away to the right and left almost at every turning, not straight and Dutch-like, but bending gracefully, and losing themselves among the houses. And there is one vast and glorious river, as wide as the Thames at London, and a hundred times more beautiful, which rolls through the whole; and, beyond it, from which ever side you look, you see a kindred mass of houses and palaces, white and yellow, and columned façades, and churches, and domes, and spires, gilded and green. The left bank of this river is a wall of granite, with a parapet and trottoir of the same material, extending for several miles; and this forms one of the most magnificent promenades in Europe. The houses on either side look like palaces, for all are white, and many have columns; and there are also absolute _de facto_ palaces; for instance, the Admiralty, the Winter Palace, and the Marble Palace, on one side, and the Academy of Arts, on the other. The water in the middle is stirring with boats, leaping and sweeping through the stream, with lofty, old-fashioned sterns, painted and gilded within and without. Among the streets, there is one averaging the width of Oxford Street in London, sometimes less, sometimes a little more. It is lined with trees, and shops with painted shutters, and churches of half a dozen different creeds. Its shops, indeed, are not so splendid as ours, nor are their windows larger than those of private houses: but the walls are white and clean, sometimes columned, sometimes pillastered, sometimes basso-relievoed: in fact, if you can imagine such a thing as a street of _gin-palaces_ just after the painting season—and that is a bold word—you may form an idea scarcely exaggerated of the Nevski Prospekt. But no analogy taken from London can convey an idea of the—grandeur, I may venture to say, presented by the vistas opening from the main street. Here there are no lanes, no alleys, no _impasses_, no nestling-places constructed of filth and rubbish for the poor. These lateral streets are all parts of the main street, only diverging at right angles. The houses are the same in form and color; they appear to be inhabited by the same classes of society; and the view is terminated, ever and anon, by domes and spires. The whole, in short, is one splendid picture, various in its forms, but consistent in its character. Such were my first impressions—thus thrown down at random, without waiting to look for words, and hardly caring about ideas,—the first sudden impressions flashed upon my mind by the physical aspect of St. Petersburg.