The Grand Duke Heir Nicholas used it from 1819 until he ascended the throne, in 1825, and since that time it has been considered the palace of the heir to the throne.  But the present Emperor has continued to occupy it since his accession, preferring its simplicity to the magnificence of the Winter Palace.

The high walls, of that reddish-yellow hue, like the palace itself, which is usually devoted to government buildings in Russia, continue the line of offices along the Prospekt, and surround wooded gardens, where the Emperor and his family coast, skate, and enjoy their winter pleasures, invisible to the eyes of passers-by.

These woods and walls also form the eastern boundary of the Alexandra Square, in whose centre rises Mikeshin and Opekushin’s fine colossal bronze statue of Katherine II., crowned, sceptred, in imperial robes, and with the men who made her reign illustrious grouped about her feet.  Among these representatives of the army, navy, literature, science, art, there is one woman,—­that dashing Princess Elizaveta Romanovna Dashkoff, who helped Katherine to her throne.  As Empress, Katherine appointed her to be first president of the newly founded Academy of Sciences, but afterward withdrew her favor, and condemned her to both polite and impolite exile,—­because of her services, the princess hints, in her celebrated and very lively “Memoirs.”

In the Alexandra Theatre, for Russian and German drama, which rears its new (1828) Corinthian peristyle and its bronze quadriga behind the great Empress, forming the background of the Square, two of the Empress’s dramas still hold the stage, on occasion.  For this busy and energetic woman not only edited and published a newspaper, the greater part of which she wrote with her own hand, but composed numerous comedies and comic operas, where the moral, though sufficiently obvious all the way through, one would have thought, in the good old style is neatly labeled at the end.  These were acted first in the private theatres of the various palaces, by the dames and cavaliers of the Court, after which professional actors presented them to the public in the ordinary theatres.

It is in vain that we scrutinize the chubby-cheeked countenance of the bronze Prince Potemkin, at Katherine II.’s feet, to discover the secret of the charm which made the imperial lady who towers above him force upon him so often the ground upon which they both now stand.  He stares stolidly at the Prospekt, ignoring not only the Theatre, but the vast structures containing the Direction of Theatres and Prisons, the Censor’s Office, Theatrical School, and other government offices in the background; the new building for shops and apartments, where ancient Russian forms have been adapted to modern street purposes; and even the wonderfully rich Imperial Public Library, begun in 1794, to contain the books brought from Warsaw, with its Corinthian peristyle interspersed with bronze statues of ancient