Russian Rambles

There is an alarm of fire somewhere. A section of the fire department passes, that imposing but amusing procession of hand-engine, three water-barrels, pennons, and fine horses trained in the haute ecole, which does splendid work with apparently inadequate means. An officer in gray lambskin cap flashes by, drawn by a pair of fine trotters. 'Vot on sam!' mutters our izvostchik,-There he is himself! It is General Gresser [1] the prefect of the capital, who maintains perfect order, and demonstrates the possibilities of keeping streets always clean in an impossible climate. The pounding of those huge trotters' hoofs is so absolutely distinctive-as distinctive as the unique gray cap-that we can recognize it as they pass, cry like the izvostchik, 'Vot on sam!' and fly to the window with the certainty that it will be 'he himself.'

Court carriages with lackeys in crimson and gold, ambassadors' sledges with cock-plumed chasseurs and cockaded coachmen, the latter wearing their chevrons on their backs; rude wooden sledges, whose sides are made of knotted ropes, filled with superfluous snow; grand ducal troikas with clinking harnesses studded with metal plaques and flying tassels, the outer horses coquetting, as usual, beside the staid trot of the shaft-horse,-all mingle in the endless procession which flows on up the Nevsky Prospekt through the Bolshaya Morskaya,-Great Sea Street,-and out upon the Neva quays, and back again, to see and be seen, until long after the sun has set on the short days, at six minutes to three. A plain sledge approaches. The officer who occupies it is dressed like an ordinary general, and there are thousands of generals! As he drives quietly along, police and sentries give him the salute of the ordinary general; so do those who recognize him by his face or his Kazak orderly. It is the Emperor out for his afternoon exercise. If we meet him near the gate of the Anitchkoff Palace, we may find him sitting placidly beside us, while our sledge and other sledges in the line are stopped for a moment to allow him to enter.

Here is another sledge, also differing in no respect from the equipages of other people, save that the lackey on the low knife-board behind wears a peculiar livery of dark green, pale blue, and gold (or with white in place of the green at Easter-tide). The lady whose large dark eyes are visible between her sable cap and the superb black fox shawl of her crimson velvet cloak is the Empress. The lady beside her is one of her ladies-in-waiting. Attendants, guards, are absolutely lacking, as in the case of the Emperor.

Here, indeed, is the place to enjoy winter. The dry, feathery snow descends, but no one heeds it. We turn up our coat collars and drive on. Umbrellas are unknown abominations. The permanent marquises, of light iron-work, which are attached to most of the entrances, are serviceable only to those who use closed carriages, and in the rainy autumn.

Just opposite the centre of this thronged promenade, well set back from the street, stands the Cathedral of the Kazan Virgin. Outside, on the quay of the tortuous Katherine Canal, made a navigable water-way under the second Katherine, but lacking, through its narrowness, the picturesque features of the Fontanka, flocks of pigeons are fed daily from the adjoining grain shops. In the curve of the great colonnade, copied, like the exterior of the church itself, from that of St. Peter at Rome, bronze statues, heroic in size, of generals Kutuzoff and Barclay de Tolly, by the Russian sculptor Orlovsky, stand on guard.

Hither the Emperor and Empress come 'to salute the Virgin,' on their safe return from a journey. Hither are brought imperial brides in gorgeous state procession-when they are of the Greek faith-on their way to the altar in the Winter Palace. We can never step into this temple without finding some deeply interesting and characteristically Russian event in progress. After we have run the inevitable gauntlet of monks, nuns, and other beggars at the entrance, we may happen upon a baptism, just beyond, the naked, new-born infant sputtering gently after his thrice-repeated dip in the candle-decked font, with the priest's hand covering his eyes, ears, mouth, and nostrils, and now undergoing the ceremony of anointment or confirmation. Or we may come upon a bridal couple, in front of the solid silver balustrade; or the exquisite liturgy, exquisitely chanted by the fine choir in their vestments of scarlet, blue, and silver, with the seraphic wings upon their shoulders, and intoned, with a finish of art unknown in other lands, by priests robed in rich brocade. Or it may be that a popular sermon by a well-known orator has attracted a throng of listeners among the lofty pillars of gray Finland granite, hung with battle-flags and the keys of conquered towns. What we shall assuredly find is votaries ascending the steps to salute with devotion the benignant brown- faced Byzantine Virgin and Christ-Child, incrusted with superb jewels, or kneeling in 'ground reverences,' with brow laid to the marble pavement, before the ikonostas, or rood-screen, of solid silver. Our Lady of Kazan has been the most popular of wonder-working Virgins ever since she was brought from Kazan to Moscow, in 1579, and transported to Petersburg, in 1721 (although her present cathedral dates only from 1811), and the scene here on Easter-night is second only to that at St. Isaac's when the porticoes are thronged by the lower classes waiting to have their flower and candle decked cakes and cream blessed at the close of the Easter matins.

One of the few individual dwelling-houses which linger on the Nevsky Prospekt, and which presents us with a fine specimen of the rococo style which Rastrelli so persistently served up at the close of the eighteenth century, is that of the Counts Stroganoff, at the lower quay of the Moika. The Moika (literally, Washing) River is the last of the semicircular, concentric canals which intersect the Nevsky and its two radiating companion Prospekts, and impart to that portion of the city which is situated on the (comparative) mainland a resemblance to an outspread fan, whose palm-piece is formed by the Admiralty on the Neva quay.

The stately pile, and the pompous air of the big, gold-laced Swiss lounging at the entrance on the Nevsky, remind us that the Stroganoff family has been a power in Russian history since the middle of the sixteenth century.

It was a mere handful of their Kazaks, led by Yermak Timofeevitch, who conquered Siberia, in 1581, under Ivan the Terrible, while engaged in repelling the incursions of the Tatars and wild Siberian tribes on the fortified towns which the Stroganoffs had been authorized to erect on the vast territory at the western foot of the Ural Mountains, conveyed to them by the ancient Tzars. Later on, when Alexei Mikhailovitch, the father of Peter the Great, established a new code, grading punishments and fines by classes, the highest money tax assessed for insult and injury was fifty rubles; but the Stroganoffs were empowered to exact one hundred rubles.

Opposite the Stroganoff house, on the upper Moika quay, rises the large, reddish-yellow Club of the Nobility, representing still another fashion in architecture, which was very popular during the last century for palaces and grand mansions,-the Corinthian peristyle upon a solid, lofty basement. It is not an old building, but was probably copied from the palace of the Empress Elizabeth, which stood on this spot. Elizaveta Petrovna, though she used this palace a great deal, had a habit of sleeping in a different place each night, the precise spot being never known beforehand. This practice is attributed, by some Russian historians, to her custom of turning night into day. She went to the theatre, for example, at eleven o'clock, and any courtier who failed to attend her was fined fifty rubles. It was here that the populace assembled to hurrah for Elizaveta Petrovna, on December 6, 1741, when she returned with little Ivan VI. in her arms from the Winter Palace, where she had made captive his father and his mother, the regent Anna Leopoldina. It may have been the recollection of the ease with which she had surprised indolent Anna Leopoldina in her bed-chamber which caused her to be so uncertain in her own movements, in view of the fact that there were persons so ill-advised as to wish the restoration of the slothful German regent and her infant son, disastrous as that would have been to the country.

We must do the Russians who occupy the building at the present day the justice to state that they uphold religiously the nocturnal tradition thus established by Elizaveta Petrovna, and even improve upon it. From six o'clock in the evening onward, the long windows of the club, on the bel etage, blaze with light. The occasional temporary obscurations produced by the steam from relays of samovari do not interfere materially with the neighbors' view of the card-parties and the final exchange of big bundles of bank- bills, which takes place at five o'clock or later the next morning. Even if players and bills were duly shielded from observation, the mauvais quart d'heure would be accurately revealed by the sudden rush for the sledges, which have been hanging in a swarm about the door, according to the usual convenient custom of Vanka, wherever lighted windows suggest possible patrons. Poor, hard-worked Vanka slumbers all night on his box, with one eye open, or falls prone in death-like exhaustion over the dashboard upon his sleeping horse, while his cap lies on the snow, and his shaggy head is bared to the bitter blasts.

Later on, the chief of police lived here, and the adjoining bridge, which had hitherto been known as the Green Bridge, had its name changed to the Police Bridge, which rather puzzling appellation it still bears.

A couple of blocks beyond this corner of the Nevsky, the Moika and the Grand Morskaya, the Nevsky Prospekt ends at the Alexander Garden, backed by the Admiralty and the Neva, after having passed in its course through all