my left in the way of Russian streets; I set
boldly forth to find out the Nevskoï.

It is about seven in the evening. I walk
say three-quarters of a mile, down the big
street in which my hotel is situated. Then
I find myself in a huge triangular place, of
which the quays of the Neva form one side,
with an obelisk in the midst. I touch
my hat to a bearded man in big boots, and
say "Nevskoï?" inquiringly. He takes off
his hat, smiles, shows his teeth, makes a low
bow, and speaks about a page of small pica in
rapid Russ. I shake my head, say No bono,
Johnny, (the only imbecile answer I can call
up after the torrent of the unknown tongue,)
and point to the right and to the left
alternately, and with inquiring eyebrows. The
bearded man points to the right—far away
to the right, which I conjecture must be
the other side of the river. "Na Prava," I
think he says. I discover afterwards, that
Na Pravo (the o pronounced as a French a)
does mean to the right. To the right about
I go, confidently.

I cross a handsome bridge of stone and
wrought iron, on which stands a chapel,
before whose shrine crowds of people of all
classes are standing or kneeling, praying, and
crossing themselves devoutly. When I am
on the other side of the bridge, and standing
in a locality I have already been introduced
to—the English quay—I accost another man,
also in beard and boots, and repeat my
monosyllabic inquiry: Nevskoï. It ends, after a
great deal more of the unknown tongue, by
his pointing to the left. And to the left
again I go, as bold as brass.

I pursue the line of the quay for perhaps
half a mile, then, bearing to the left, I find
myself in another place so vast, that I begin
to pitch and roll morally like a crazy bark on
this huge stone ocean. It is vast, solitary,
with a frowning palace-bound coast, and the
Nevskoï harbour of refuge nowhere to be
seen. But a sail in sight appears in the
shape of a soldier. A sulky sail he is,
however; and, refusing to listen to my signal
gun of distress, holds on his course without
laying-to. I am fain, for fear of lying-to
myself all the day in this granite Bay of Biscay,
to grapple with a frail skiff in the person
of a yellow-faced little girl, in printed cotton.
Another monosyllabic inquiry, more
unknown tongue (very shrill and lisping this
time), and ultimately a little yellow digit
pointed to the north-east. Then I cross from
where stands a colossal equestrian statue,
spurring fiercely to the verge of an artificial
rock and trampling a trailing serpent beneath
his charger's feet, and on whose rocky
pedestal there is the inscription "Petro
Primo Catharina Secunda." I cross from the
statue of Peter the Great some weary hundreds
of yards over stone billows, (so wavy is
the pavement) to the north-east corner of
that which I afterwards know to be
the Admiraltecskaia Plochtchad, or great
square of the Admiralty; but here alas!
there is a palace whose walls seem to have no
cessation for another half mile, north-east.
And there are no more sails in sight, save
crawling droschkies, and I begin to have a
sensation that my compass must be near the
magnetic islands, when I unpreparedly turn a
sharp angle, and find myself among a throng
of people, and in the Nevskoï Prospekt.

It begins badly. It is not a wide street. It
does not seem to be a long street. The shops
don't look handsome; the pavement is
execrable, and though people are plenty, there is
no crowd. It is like a London street on a Sunday
turned into a Parisian street just after
an émeute. It ought to be lively at half-past
seven in the evening in the month of May, in
the very centre of an imperial city of six
hundred thousand inhabitants. But it isn't
lively. It is quite the contrary; it is deadly.

This is the place, then, I have been fretting
and fuming to see: this is the Boulevard des
Italiens of St. Petersburg. This the Nevskoï.
As for the perspective, there is no perspective
at all that I can see. It is more like
Pimlico. There is a street in that royalty-
shadowed suburb called Churton Street, in
which the Cubitt-Corinthian mansions at its
head melt gradually into the squalid hovels
of Rochester Row, Westminster, at its tail.
The houses on the Nevskoï are big, but I
expect them to make a bad end of it. Here
is a palace; but not far off, I gloomily
prophesy, must be Westminster, and the rat-
catcher's daughter. And have I come all the
way, not exactly from Westminster, but
certainly from t'other side of the water, to
see this? By this time I have walked
about twenty-five yards.

I have not walked thirty-five yards, before
my rashly-formed Nevskoï opinions begin to
change. I have not walked fifty yards, before I
discover that the Nevskoï is immensely wide
and stupendously long, and magnificently
paved. I have not walked a hundred yards
before I make up my mind that the Nevskoï-
Perspective is the handsomest and the most
remarkable street in the world.

There are forty Perspectives, Mr. Bull, in
this huge-bowelled city. I do not wish you
to dislocate your jaw in endeavouring to
pronounce the forty Muscovite names of these
Perspectives; so, contenting myself with
delicately hinting that there is the Vossnessensk
Prospekt, likewise those of Oboukhoff,
Peterhoff, Ismaïloff, and Semenovskoï, I will
leave you to imagine the rest, or familiarise
yourself with them gradually, as they
perspectively turn up in these my travels. But
you are to remember, if you please, that the
Nevskoï extends in one straight line from the
great square of the Admiralty to the convent
of Saint Alecksander-Nevskoï, a distance of
two thousand sagenes, or four versts, or one
French league, or three English miles! And
you will please to think of that Mr. Bull, or
Master Brooke, and agree with me that the