others.  Every person, in all the sledges, was dressed in fancy costume, and masked.  When two miles from the city, the train passed beneath a triumphal arch illuminated with all conceivable splendor.  At the distance of every mile, some grand structure appeared in a blaze of light, a pyramid, or a temple, or colonnades, or the most brilliant displays of fireworks.  Opposite each of these structures ball rooms had been reared, which were crowded with the rustic peasantry, amusing themselves with music, dancing and all the games of the country.  Each of the spacious houses of entertainment personated some particular Russian nation, where the dress, music and amusements of that nation were represented.  All sorts of gymnastic feats were also exhibited, such as vaulting, tumbling and feats upon the slack and tight rope.

Through such scenes the imperial pleasure party rode, until a high mountain appeared through an avenue cut in the forest, representing Mount Vesuvius during an eruption.  Vast billows of flame were rolling to the skies, and the whole region was illumined with a blaze of light.  The spectators had hardly recovered from the astonishment which this display caused, when the train suddenly entered a Chinese village, which proved to be but the portal to the imperial palace of Tzarkoselo.  The palace was lighted with an infinite number of wax candles.  For two hours the guests amused themselves with dancing.  Suddenly there was a grand discharge of cannon.  The candles were immediately extinguished, and a magnificent display of fireworks, extending along the whole breadth of the palace, converted night into day.  Again there was a thundering discharge of artillery, when, as by enchantment, the candles blazed anew, and a sumptuous supper was served up.  After the entertainment, dancing was renewed, and was continued until morning.

The empress had a private palace at St. Petersburg which she called her Hermitage, where she received none but her choicest friends.  This sumptuous edifice merits some minuteness of description.  It consisted of a suite of apartments containing every thing which the most voluptuous and exquisite taste could combine.  The spacious building was connected with the imperial palace by a covered arch.  It would require a volume to describe the treasures of art and industry with which it abounded.  Here the empress had her private library and her private picture gallery.  Raphael’s celebrated gallery in the Vatican at Rome was exactly repeated here with the most accurate copies of all the paintings, corner pieces and other ornaments of the same size and in the same situations.  Medals, engravings, curious pieces of art, models of mechanical inventions and collections of specimens of minerals and of objects of natural history crowded the cabinets.  Chambers were arranged for all species of amusements.  A pleasure garden was constructed upon arches, with furnaces beneath them in winter, that the plants might