Places worth visiting—Peter’s Museum—The Czar’s works—Curious effigy—The war-horse—The Nevsky monastery—The saint’s shrine—Magnificent tomb—Superstition—The cemetery—Catherine—Imperial mausoleum—Description of the sarcophagi—Prisoners—Political offenders—Spy system—Bombardment of Odessa—Dumb spy—A spy of rank—Assemblée de la noblesse—Masked balls—Russian civilization—Love of money—Inebriety—Society in St. Petersburg.
There are many places well worth visiting in St. Petersburg: such as Peter’s Museum at the Academy of Sciences, the Palace of the Hermitage, the Monastery of Alexander Nevsky, &c. &c. The first of these (Peter’s Museum) contains a great many relics of the Czar after whom it is named; many of them are the work of his own hands—models of ships, a chandelier, some iron articles, shoes, and little ivory figures. There are also his tools and instruments, carefully preserved under a glass case. In another apartment is the effigy of the great Peter himself, modelled in wax, habited in one of his own court-dresses, having shoes on that he himself made, and the head is decorated with his own natural hair made into a wig. Unlike the Russians generally, he had dark eyes and hair, and his features had more of the southern cast than of the northern. He must have been of immense stature, for a rod was shown us which we were assured was exactly his height, and its length was some inches more than six feet. Another room contains the horse on which he rode at the battle of Poltava, when the royal Swede “was taught to fly;” it is a wiry little animal, of a light brown, much resembling in size and appearance one of the small species ridden by the Cossacks, but quite out of proportion to the gigantic Czar, whose feet must have nearly reached the ground. I believe there is another museum also called after Peter the Great, but we did not go to see it.
At the very end of the Nevsky Perspective, after passing a vast number of miserable dwellings, we reach the Nevsky Monastery, from which the street is named. Alexander Nevsky is an imperial and warrior saint, and was Czar of Muscovy. After his death he was canonized for some reason or other; and of course, with all his imperial and religious advantages, his shrine is greatly visited and much reverenced by the people. It seems a general rule, not only among the heathen nations of antiquity, but with the Russians as well, that, when thoroughly tired of the “fantastic tricks” played by their monarchs “before high Heaven,” they are content to worship them as gods, though they might themselves have forwarded them on the road to Paradise. The late Emperor Alexander, though not yet dignified with the title of _saint_, has obtained the first step towards it by being surnamed the “_Blessed_,” but why and wherefore no one could ever tell us.