This opinion is open to discussion with regard to the provinces of Russia, which present one dreary monotony from the Black Sea to the Arctic Ocean. But, as far as St. Petersburg is concerned, Gautier's aphorism needs no contradiction, for it is a jewel, the whole value of which is not seen except when it is set in its rim of dull silver. In the streets, the shops, and the drawing-rooms of St. Petersburg men of every degree are roused to fresh activity just when, in the natural course of things, they would sink into torpor.
Life seems to increase in activity as a direct result of the rigors of the climate.
From the German frontier the traveller has rolled over one monotonous undulating plain, between marshes and pine forests, with here and there a lonely poverty-stricken village, with low thatched houses breaking the long white lines with a black patch. Not until the last moment is there anything in these vast solitary districts to warn the traveller of his approach to the capital. All of a sudden, before the train, as it flings aside the snow, rises the Palmyra of the North, with its golden cupola - as and gleaming churches. Beneath the light of a pale copper colored sun, which is above the horizon but for a few hours a day, we get into sledges and glide rapidly over the hard snow carpet in the streets. We pass first through the industrial quarters, between lofty houses with hermetically sealed double windows.