Excerpt from Russia: St. Petersurg, Moscow, Kharkoff, Riga, Odessa, the German Provinces on the Baltic, the Steppes, the Crimea, and the Interior of the Empire
Formed in early antiquity, and crystallized during the barbarism of the middle ages, our cities, with their narrow streets and many-cornered houses, with the hereditary inconveniences and anomalies of their architecture, look often like so many labyrinths of stone, in which chance alone disposed the dwellings; but in St. Petersburg, the offspring of a more enlightened age, every thing is arranged orderly and conveniently: the streets are broad, the open spaces regular, and the houses roomy. The fifty square versts destined for the Russian capital, allowed every house a sufficient extent of ground. In our old German towns, tall distorted buildings seem every where squeezing each other out of shape, and panting, as it were, for want of room to breathe in; whereas in St. Petersburg every house has an individuality of its own, and stands boldly forth from the mass. Yet St. Petersburg is any thing but a picturesque city. All is airy and light. There is no shade about the picture, no variety of tone. Every thing is so convenient, so good-looking, so sensibly arranged, and so very modem, that Canaletto would have found it hard to have obtained for his canvass a single poetical tableau such as would have presented itself to him at every corner in our German cities, so rich in contrasts, recollections, and variegated life. The streets in St. Petersburg are so broad, the open places so vast, the arms of the river so mighty, that large as the houses are in themselves, they are made to appear small by the gigantic plan of the whole. This effect is increased by the extreme flatness of the site on which the city stands. No building is raised above the other. Masses of architecture, worthy of mountains for their pedestals, are ranged side by side in endless lines. Nowhere gratified, either by elevation or grouping, the eye wanders over a monotonous sea of undulating palaces.
This sameness of aspect is at no time more striking than in winter, when the streets, the river, and the houses are all covered with one white. The white walls of the buildings seem to have no hold upon the ground, and the Palmyra of the north, under her leaden sky, looks rather like the shadow than the substance of a city. There are things in nature pleasing to look upon and gratifying to think of, and yet any thing but picturesque, and one of these is St. Petersburg.
No other place, however, undergoes a more interesting change in spring, when the sky clears up, and the sun removes the pale shroud from the roofs and the waters.
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