s Catherine as a luxurious retreat.

The collection of paintings occupies about forty rooms, and is of
immense value.

Three or four rooms are entirely filled with jewels and articles of
vertu, among these a superb vase of Siberian jaspar of lilac colour, and
others of malachite, with two magnificent candelabras valued at L9,000.

The ground floor with statuary.

Three rooms containing more than 30,000 specimens of engravings, and two
rooms are occupied by a collection of coins and medals. The cameos
amount to the number of 10,000, including specimens of the greatest
beauty and scarcity.

Besides a theatre, there is a library containing more than 120,000
volumes, 10,000 in the Russian language.

The Marble Palace, so called, is built of red granite, and is the
residence of the Grand Duke Constantine.

The Taurida Palace, now in a neglected state, is famous for its
ballroom, 320 feet long by 70 feet wide, and lighted up with 20,000 wax
candles.

Among other numerous palaces may be mentioned the Michaelhof, erected by
the Emperor Paul with extraordinary rapidity, there being 5,000 men
employed daily, and in order to dry the walls more quickly large iron
plates were made hot and fastened to them. Yet after the Emperor's death
it was abandoned as quite uninhabitable after a cost of eighteen
millions of roubles, or three millions sterling.

The room in which the Emperor died is sealed and walled up, and the
palace is now converted into a school of engineers.

The Imperial Library is one of the most extensive in Europe, containing
400,000 volumes and 15,000 manuscripts.

St. Petersburg has only about thirty churches, the four principal the
Kazan, St. Isaac, the Smolnoi and St. Peter and St. Paul.

The first of these, Kazan, is a copy, though on a small scale, of St.
Peter's at Rome, with its colonnade, and adorned with colossal statues.
In the interior are fifty-six marble columns, each 52 feet in height,
hewn out of a single block of marble.

The walls and flooring of the same are all beautifully polished.

That part which answers to our chancel, in all Greek churches is looked
upon as the Holy of Holies, shut off from the rest of the building by a
screen, called the Iconostat. This is set apart for the priests: laymen
may enter, but no woman, not even the Empress, can go into this
mysterious enclosure.

In this church, all its beams and posts are of massive silver, the three
doors and arches being 20 feet