I have said in a former volume of this work, that I have the custom—like other idlers, I suppose—of wandering about during the first day of my visit to a foreign city, without apparent aim or purpose; without knowing, or desiring to know, the geography of the place; and without asking a single question. Now this is precisely the sort of view which should be taken of the new city of the Tsars, by one who prefers the poetry of life to its dull and hackneyed prose. St. Petersburg is a picture rather than a reality—grand, beautiful, and noble, at a little distance, but nothing more than a surface of paint and varnish when you look closer. Or, {516} rather, to amend the comparison, it is like the scene of a theatre, which you must not by any means look behind, if you would not destroy the illusion. It will be said, that such is the case with all cities, with all objects that derive their existence from the puny sons of men: but this is one of those misnamed truisms which are considered worthy of all acceptation for no other reason than that they come from the tongue, or through a neighboring organ, with the twang of religion or morality. _London_ does not lose but gain by inspection; although on inspection it is found to be an enormous heap of dirty, paltry, miserable brick houses, which, but for the constant repairs of the inhabitants, would in a few years become a mass of such pitiful ruins as the owls themselves would disdain to inhabit. Those narrow, winding, dingy streets—those endless lines of brick boxes, without taste, without beauty, without dignity, without any thing that belongs to architecture, inspire us with growing wonder and admiration. The genius, the industry, the commerce, of a whole continent seem concentrated in this single spot; and the effect is uninterrupted by any of the lighter arts that serve as the mere ornaments and amusements of life. An earnestness of purpose is the predominating character of the scene—a force of determination which seizes, and fixes, and grapples with a single specific object, to the exclusion of every other. The pursuit of wealth acquires a character of sublimity as we gaze; and Mammon rises in majesty from the very deformity of the stupendous temple of common-place in which he is worshipped.