t, the striking feature of the
place being its _boulevard_, a terrace or platform about 500 yards in
length, laid out and planted as a promenade, looking out seawards and
accessible by a flight of stairs of 150 steps from the landing-place.

Odessa is not an old town, but it looks brand-new, for there has
been of late a great deal of building, and the crumbling nature
of the stone keeps the mason and white-washer perpetually at work.
It is lively, though monotonous, for its broad, straight streets
are astir with business, and the rattle of hackney-carriages,
heavy-laden vans, and tramway-cars is incessant. It boasts many
private palaces and has few public edifices, and in its municipal
institutions it is, or used to be, taxed with consulting rather
more the purposes of luxury and ornament than the real wants of
the people or the interests of charity.

Odessa is in Russia, but not of Russia, for among its citizens, we
are told, possibly with exaggeration, more than one-third (70,000)
are Jews, besides 10,000 Greeks and Germans, and Italians in good
number. It is unlike any other Russian city, for it is tolerably
well paved, has plenty of drinking-water, and rows of trees--however
stunted, wind-nipped, and sickly--in every street. It is not Russian,
because few Russians succeed here in business; but strenuous efforts
are made to Russify it, for the names of the streets, which were
once written in Italian as well as in Russian, are now only set up
in Russian, unreadable to most foreign visitors; and the so-called
"Italian Street" (Strada Italiana), reminding one of what the town
owes to its first settlers, has been rebaptized as "Pushkin Street."
Of the three French newspapers which flourished here till very
lately, not one any longer exists, for whatever is not Russian
is discountenanced and tabooed in a town which, in spite of all,
is not and never will be, Russian. French is, nevertheless, more
generally understood than in most Russian cities, but Italian is
dying off here as in all the Levant and the north coast of Africa,
Italy losing as a united nation such hold as she had as a mere
nameless cluster of divided states.

It is difficult to foresee what results the great change that is
visibly going on in the economical and commercial conditions of
the Russian Empire may have on the destinies of Odessa.

Half a century ago, if we may trust the statistics of the _Journal
d' Odessa_, this city had only the third rank