he exception of the spire of the Admiralty,
I did not find in St. Petersburg a single new idea.

[Illustration: ST. PETERSBURG.]

Of the famous Nevski-Prospekt, the chief street in St. Petersburg,
it may be said as of our London Regent Street, that it can stand
neither weather nor criticism. As to style of architecture, strictly
speaking the Nevski-Prospekt has none: the buildings, consisting
of shops, interspersed with a few churches and public edifices,
so much partake of the modern and mongrel Italian manner, that
the traveller might easily fancy himself in Paris, Brussels, or
Turin. Few cities are so pretentious in outside appearances as
St. Petersburg, and yet the show she makes is that of the whited
sepulchre: false construction and rottenness of material, facades
of empty parade, and plaster which feigns to be stone, constitute
an accumulative dishonesty which has few parallels in the history
of architecture. Classic pillars and porticos, which have been
thrust in everywhere on slightest pretext, are often built up of
brick covered with cement and coloured yellow. Columns, here the
common and constant expedient, are mostly mismanaged; they are as
it were gratuitous intrusions, they seem to be stuck on, they fail
to compose with the rest of the building. Neither do the architects
of St. Petersburg understand mouldings or the value of shadow, there
is scarcely a moulding in the city which casts a deep, broad or
delicate shadow: hence the facades look flat and thin as if built
of cards. In the same way the details are poor and treated without
knowledge; it thus happens that conceptions bold and grand are
carried out incompletely. The great mistake is that the architects
have made no attempt to gather together the scattered elements of a
national style. With the noteworthy exception of the use of fine,
fanciful and fantastic domes, often gilt or brightly coloured, the
architecture of Russian capitals is either Classic or Renaissance
of the most commonplace description.

I shall not think it worth while to dwell on the very many churches
which adorn the northern capital, because, with few exceptions,
there is nothing in point of art which merits to be recorded. Yet
I can scarcely refrain from again referring to the fine fantasy
played by many-coloured domes against the blue sky. The forms are
beautiful, the colours decorative. The city in its sky outline
presents a succession of strange pictures, at one point the