_Venice_ does not lose but gain by inspection; although on inspection it is found to be but the outlines of a great city, filled up with meanness, and dirt, and famine. We enter her ruined palaces with a catching of the breath, and a trembling of the heart; and when we see her inhabitants crouching in rags and hunger in their marble halls, we do but breathe the harder, and tremble the more. The effect is _increased_ by the contrast; for Venice is a tale of the past, a city of the dead. The Rialto is still crowded with the shapes of history and romance; the Giant's Steps still echo to the ducal tread; and mingling with the slaves and wantons who meet on the Sunday evenings to laugh at the rattle of their chains in the Piazza di San Marco, we see gliding, scornful and sad, the merchant-kings of the Adriatic. St. Petersburg, on the other band, has no moral character to give dignity to common-place, or haunt tombs and ruins like a spirit. It is a city of imitation, constructed, in our own day, on what were thought to be the best models; and hence the severity with which its public buildings have been criticised by all travellers, except those who dote upon gilding and green paint, and are enthusiasts in plaster and whitewash. As a _picture_ of a city, notwithstanding, superficially viewed—an _idea_ of a great congregating place of the human kind, without reference to national character, or history, or individuality of any kind—St. Petersburg, in my opinion, is absolutely unrivalled. It would be difficult, even for the talented artist whose productions grace these sketches, to convey an adequate idea of the scale on which this city is laid out; and yet, without doing so, we do nothing. This is the grand distinctive feature of the place. Economy of room was the principal necessity in the construction of the other great European cities; for, above all things, they were to be protected from the enemy by stone walls. But, before St. Petersburg was built, a change had taken place in the art and customs of war, and permanent armies had become in some measure a substitute for permanent fortifications. Another cause of prodigality was the little value of the land; but, above all these, should be mentioned, the far-seeing, and far-thinking ambition of the builders. Conquest was the ruling passion of the Tsars from the beginning; and in founding a new capital, they appear to have destined it to be the capital of half the world.