or they would be liable often to freeze to death on the
briefest exposure. In the public squares and open places before the
theatres large fires in iron enclosures are lighted and tended by the
police at night, for the benefit of the drosky drivers and others
necessarily exposed in the open air. The windows of the
dwelling-houses are all arranged with double sashes, and each
entrance to the house is constructed with a double passage. So also
on the railroad cars, which are then by means of large stoves
rendered comparatively comfortable. Ventilation is but little
regarded in winter. The frosty air is so keen that it is excluded at
all cost. The nicely spun theories as to the fatal poison derived
from twice-breathed air are unheeded here, nor do the people seem to
be any the worse for disregarding them. The animal food brought to
market from the country is of course frozen hard as stone, and will
keep sweet for months in this condition, having finally to be cut up
for use by means of a saw or axe; no knife could sever it. But in
spite of its chilling physical properties, the winter is the season
of gayety and merriment in this peculiar capital. With the first
snow, wheels are cheerfully discarded, and swift-gliding sleighs take
the place of the uncomfortable droskies; the merry bells jingle
night and day a ceaseless tune; the world is robed in bridal white,
and life is at its gayest. Balls, theatres, concerts, court fetes,
are conducted upon a scale of magnificence unknown in Paris, London,
or Vienna. Pleasure and reckless amusement seem to be the only end
and aim of life among the wealthier classes,--the nobility as they
are called,--who hesitate at nothing to effect the object of present
enjoyment. Morality is an unknown quantity in the general
calculation. When that Eastern monarch offered a princely reward to
the discoverer of a new pleasure, he forgot to stipulate that it
should be blameless.

If there are poverty and wretchedness existing here it is not obvious
to the stranger. More or less of a secret character there must be in
every large community; but what we would say is that there is no
street begging, and no half-starved women or children obstruct the
way and challenge sympathy, as in London or Naples. There is to be
sure a constant and systematic begging just inside the doors of the
churches, where one passes through a line of nuns dressed in black
cloaks and peaked hoods lined with white. These individua