* Since the above was written, this able officer and very efficient prefect has died.

Court carriages with lackeys in crimson and gold, ambassadors’ sledges with cock-plumed chasseurs and cockaded coachmen, the latter wearing their chevrons on their backs; rude wooden sledges, whose sides are made of knotted ropes, filled with superfluous snow; grand ducal troikas with clinking harnesses studded with metal plaques and flying tassels, the outer horses coquetting, as usual, beside the staid trot of the shaft-horse,—­all mingle in the endless procession which flows on up the Nevsky Prospekt through the Bolshaya Morskaya,—­Great Sea Street,—­and out upon the Neva quays, and back again, to see and be seen, until long after the sun has set on the short days, at six minutes to three.  A plain sledge approaches.  The officer who occupies it is dressed like an ordinary general, and there are thousands of generals!  As he drives quietly along, police and sentries give him the salute of the ordinary general; so do those who recognize him by his face or his Kazak orderly.  It is the Emperor out for his afternoon exercise.  If we meet him near the gate of the Anitchkoff Palace, we may find him sitting placidly beside us, while our sledge and other sledges in the line are stopped for a moment to allow him to enter.

Here is another sledge, also differing in no respect from the equipages of other people, save that the lackey on the low knife-board behind wears a peculiar livery of dark green, pale blue, and gold (or with white in place of the green at Easter-tide).  The lady whose large dark eyes are visible between her sable cap and the superb black fox shawl of her crimson velvet cloak is the Empress.  The lady beside her is one of her ladies-in-waiting.  Attendants, guards, are absolutely lacking, as in the case of the Emperor.

Here, indeed, is the place to enjoy winter.  The dry, feathery snow descends, but no one heeds it.  We turn up our coat collars and drive on.  Umbrellas are unknown abominations.  The permanent marquises, of light iron-work, which are attached to most of the entrances, are serviceable only to those who use closed carriages, and in the rainy autumn.

Just opposite the centre of this thronged promenade, well set back from the street, stands the Cathedral of the Kazan Virgin.  Outside, on the quay of the tortuous Katherine Canal, made a navigable water-way under the second Katherine, but lacking, through its narrowness, the picturesque features of the Fontanka, flocks of pigeons are fed daily from the adjoining grain shops.  In the curve of the great colonnade, copied, like the exterior of the church itself, from that of St. Peter at Rome, bronze statues, heroic in size, of generals Kutuzoff and Barclay de Tolly, by the Russian sculptor Orlovsky, stand on guard.