The Neva, in its sudden and continual windings, in its clear, cold, sweet water, and its fringing groves of birch, maple, and alder, compensates, in a great measure, for the flatness of its shores.  It has not the slow magnificence of the Hudson or the rush of the Rhine, but carries with it a sense of power, of steady, straightforward force, like that of the ancient warriors who disdained all clothing except their swords.  Its naked river-god is not even crowned with reeds, but the full flow of his urn rolls forth undiminished by summer and unchecked beneath its wintry lid.  Outlets of large lakes frequently exhibit this characteristic, and the impression they make upon the mind does not depend on the scenery through which they flow.  Nevertheless, we discovered many points the beauty of which was not blotted out by rain and cloud, and would have shone freshly and winningly under the touch of the sun.  On the north bank there is a palace of Potemkin, (or Potchomkin, as his name is pronounced in Russian,) charmingly placed at a bend, whence it looks both up and down the river.  The gay color of the building, as of most of the datchas, or country-villas, in Russia, makes a curious impression upon the stranger.  Until he has learned to accept it as a portion of the landscape, the effect is that of a scenic design on the part of the builder.  These dwellings, these villages and churches, he thinks, are scarcely intended to be permanent:  they were erected as part of some great dramatic spectacle, which has been, or is to be, enacted under the open sky.  Contrasted with the sober, matter-of-fact aspect of dwellings in other countries, they have the effect of temporary decorations.  But when one has entered within these walls of green and blue and red arabesques, inspected their thickness, viewed the ponderous porcelain stores, tasted, perhaps, the bountiful cheer of the owner, he realizes their palpable comforts, and begins to suspect that all the external adornment is merely an attempt to restore to Nature that coloring of which she is stripped by the cold sky of the North.

A little farther on, there is a summer villa of the Empress Catharine,—­a small, modest building, crowning a slope of green turf.  Beyond this, the banks are draped with foliage, and the thinly clad birches, with their silver stems, shiver above the rush of the waters.  We, also, began to shiver under the steadily falling rain, and retreated to the cabin on the steward’s first hint of dinner.  A table d’hote of four courses was promised us, including the preliminary zakouski and the supplementary coffee,—­all for sixty copeks, which is about forty-five cents.  The zakouski is an arrangement peculiar to Northern countries, and readily adopted by foreigners.  In Sweden it is called the smoergas, or “butter-goose” but the American term (if we had the custom) would be “the whetter.”  On a side-table there are various plates of anchovies, cheese, chopped