The Indiana State sentinel. [volume] (Indianapolis) 1868-1895, 1881-06-01
ST. PETERSBURG.
Melancholy Character of Life In the Rus
sian Capital.
Correspondence London Telegraph

Correspondence London Telegraph
You may ascribe the sadness, the monot-
ony and the silence of metropolitan life in
Russia to the merciless asperity of the eli
mate; still. l would venture to point out
that what is known as a cold. snap" in New
York City. although il does not last so long
as a Russian winter, rivals the intensity of
that winter in its nipping and eager keen
ness; and yet that there are very few open
air spectacles to be seen in this working
world more joyous than Broadway between
A. I. Stewards dry goods store and Tiffany's,
or Union Square, about 4 p. m. during n
very cold Christmas tide. Also you may urge
that st. Petersburg must needs be melancholy
just now, under the dire bereavement which
has fallen OH its loyal population; and that
all the fashionable world being in mourning
they can not be expected to 20 shopping i'm
the Nevskoi or the Great Morskaia; in short,
that, for a season, all CHEEKY life and sociality
has been crushed out of the great city. But
to this | would reply that was in st. Peters
burg not only four-and-twenty but five years
ago; that il was the winter, and in the midst
OF the fashionable season, and that | found
1t externally a very dull and melancholy
city. 1t will not cease to remain so, |
should say, at all times, so long as it
remains what it is-His Imperial Majesty's
Jail 1t is nothing more nor less than
a huge prison, with about 150, 900
Jailers in civil and military uniform to
look after about 500 900 prisoners. of whom
a 1.-THE perhaps may be legally or illegally
DESTROYS of having a free Constitution estab-
lished, while the remaining nine-tenths do
not know what a free Constitution is; are
not fit to enjoy its privileges, would not
know what to do with a Constitution if they
got one, beyond setting forth, much more
swiftly than their own troikas, tarantasses,
or kibitkas ever travelled post-haste to the
devil, mundanely speaking. That was a
very striking act OF Workmanship at Asst
ley's in the Olden time; the courier of St.
Petersburg riding six horses at once; but it
is enough To make one shudder to hin of
V lvanOvich's riding, as he can ride at
present, even one horse of the con-
stitutiOnal breed. But is the Capital
of Russia to remain a Jail? If you doubt
its being one, go there and see things for
yourself. Try how you like having your
letters opened in the Postoffice. and your
kilograms subjected to the revision of the
official censor. See what effect is produced
on your temper by being continually sub
jected TO surveillance and espionage, or by
being worried in your hotel bedroom by the
passport clerk attached to the establishment
who is continually wanting to know how you
effected an entrance into Russia, and how
many days longer you intend to stay in that
agreeable country; whether you have ever
OCCh DtlOIes dilu Mndl TcdSOllS brought
you there the last time of your coming;
and why the foreign office passport you
brought with you was issued by Lord Derby
instead of Lord Granville. L tested the
stupidity of a gendarme on the frontier
by showing him a very old passport
signed by Lord Clarendon four-and-twenty
wears age, and he was perfectly satisfied.
Finally, | should be anxious to know how
you would like to live in a city into which
it is prohibited to introduce two of the most
important Of the daily newspapers published
in London, and where you Punch, Illus
trated London News, and your Graphic
when you are permitted to receive those
journals-are found to have passed through
the official censors dirty paws, and to. have
been mutilated and defaced by him-now
by the entire excision of a portrait or a car
toon, now by the blocking or stamping out
with some filthy black compound of some
article or paragraph which has been
found obnoxious in the eyes of censorious
and inquisitorial authority. Yes, st. Pc
tersburg is His Imperial Majesty's Jail,
with a vengeance. When Peter the Great
created this essentially artificial city, and
which will go by the board some day, with
its more rotten systems of tyranny, stu
pidity, and corruption, built on piles in the
middle of a moraSs, he did so with the
avOwed intention of having IA window
looking into Europe" But his successors,
in the insanity of their selfish despotism,
took good care to guard the window with a
triple row of bars. The innocent pigeons
which make the streets of st. Petersburg
beauteous even at the ugliest of times, have
thus much in common with Sterne's star
ling-that they might be continuously re-
peating the complaint of that memorable
feathered biped. 1--WE can't get out!' the
Metropolitan pigeons, unfeathered as we'll
as feathered, might dOlefully cry.