Heaven knows what, but which is the
natural and to the manor-born, smell of
this sainted land. Mind, too, that the roofs
are vaulted, that no lamps save sacred
ones are ever allowed to be here lighted;
and that at about every interval of ten
yards there is a frowning archway whose
crown and spandrils are filled in with holy
pictures, richly framed in gold and silver,
and often more richly jewelled. For in this
the special home and house of call for
commercial roguery, the arrangements for the
admired Fetish worship are on a very grand
and liberal scale.

A lamp suspended before the picture of a
saint is supposed to carry an indisputable
policy of insurance with it in its sacred
destination; but, votive lamps apart, not a
light is allowed at any time, night or day, in
the Gostinnoï-dvor. There are no cigar-
shops, it need scarcely be said—nor magasins
for the sale of lucifer-matches. The Russians
have a peculiar horror of, and yet fondness
for, lucifer-matches, or spitchki, as they are
called. There is a popular notion among
servants and peasants, that they are all
contraband (I never had the slightest difficulty
in purchasing them openly), and that their
sale—except to nobles, of course—is prohibited
by the government. There are so
many things you may not do in Russia, that
I should not have been the least surprised if
this had really been the case. The Russian
matches, I may add, are of the most infamous
quality—one in about twenty igniting. I
believe that it is considered rather mauvais
ton than otherwise if you do not frictionise
them on the wall to obtain a light. I had a
Cossack servant on whom, on my departure
from Russia, I bestowed a large box of wax
taper matches I had brought from Berlin;
and I verily believe that he was more gratified
with the gift than with the few paper
roubles I gave him in addition.

As soon as it is dusk the shops of the
Gostinnoï-dvor are shut, and the early-closing
movement carried into practical operation by
hundreds of merchants and shopmen. Within
a very recent period, even, so intense was the
dread of some fresh conflagration that no
stove or fireplace, not so much as a brazier
or chaufferette, was suffered to exist within
the bazaar. The unfortunate shopkeepers
wrapped themselves up as well as they could
in pelisses of white wolfskin (which, in winter,
forms still a distinctive item of their costume);
and by one ingenious spirit there was
invented a peculiar casque or helmet of
rabbit-skin, which had a fur visor buttoning over
the nose something after the absurd manner
of the convicts' caps at Pentonville prison.
Some hundreds of cases of frost-bite having
occurred, however, and a large proportion of
the merchants showing signs of a tendency
to make up for the lack of outward heat by
the administration of inward stimulants, the
government stepped in just as the consumption
of alcohol threatened to make spontaneous
combustion imminent, and graciously
allowed stoves in the Gostinnoï-dvor. These
are only tolerated from the first of November
to the first of the ensuing April, and are
constructed on one uniform and ingenious
pattern, the invention of General Amossoff.
Thus remembering all these regulation stoves,
that no wood has been used in the construction
of the whole immense fabric,—all being stone,
brick, and iron, the very doors being lined
with sheets of the last-named material; and
recalling all the elaborate and severe police
regulations for guarding the Gostinnoï-dvor
against the devouring element, I should take
it quite as a matter of course, were I to hear
some fine morning that the pride of mercantile
Petersburg had been burnt to the
ground. Man has a way of proposing
and Heaven of disposing, which slide in
perfectly different grooves. Iron curtains
for isolation, fireproof basements, and reservoirs
on roofs, won't always save buildings
from destruction, somehow; and though
nothing can be more admirable than the
precautions against fire adopted by the
authorities, the merchants of the Gostinnoï-
dvor have an ugly habit of cowering in their
back shops, where you may frequently detect
them in the very act of smoking pipes of
Toukoff tobacco, up the sleeves of their wolfskin
touloupes, or poking charcoal embers
into the eternal samovar or tea-urn. I have
too much respect for the hagiology of the
orthodox Greek Church to attribute any
positive danger from fire to the thousand and
one sacred grease-pots that swing, kindled
from flimsy chains in every hole and corner;
but, I know that were I agent for the Sun
Fire Insurance, I would grant no policy, or,
at all events, pay none, for a house in which
there was a samovar. Once lighted, it is the
best tea-urn in the world; the drawback is,
that you run a great risk of burning the
house down before you can warm your
samovar properly.

The shops in the Gostinnoï-dvor are
divided into lines or rows, as are the booths
in John Bunyan's Vanity Fair. There is
Silkmercers' Row; opposite to which, on the
other side of the street, are Feather-bed Row
and Watchmakers' Row. Along the Nevskoï
side extend Cloth-merchants' Row,
Haberdashers' Row, and Portmanteau Row,
intermingled with which are sundry stationers,
booksellers, and hatters. The side of the trapezoid
over against the Apraxine-dvor (which runs
parallel to the Nevskoï) is principally occupied
by coppersmiths and trunkmakers; the
archways are devoted to the stalls of toy-
merchants and dealers in holy images: while
all the pillar-standings are occupied by petty
chapmen and hucksters of articles as cheap
as they are miscellaneous. It is this in-door
and out-door selling that gives the Gostinnoï-
dvor such a quaint resemblance to a Willis's
Room Fancy Fair set up in the middle of