to the introduction of this species of oak into the naval dock-yards, where, we understand, the distinction was not even suspected. It may thus be discriminated from the true old English oak: the acorn-stalks of the Robur are long and its leaves short, whereas the Sessiliflora has the acorn-stalks short and the leaves long; the acorns of the former grow singly, or seldom two on the same footstalk; those of the latter in clusters of two or three, close to the stem of the branch. We believe the Russian ships of the Baltic, that are not of larch or fir, are built of this species of oak; but if this were not the case, their exposure on the stocks, without cover, to the heat of summer, which, though short, is excessive, and the rifts and chinks, which fill up with ice and snow in the long winter, are enough to destroy the stoutest oak, and quite sufficient to account for their short-lived duration.

Dr. Granville is moderate in stating the Russian army as not being less than half a million of men, which others, by paper estimates, have extended to a full million; but in this million are included all the employés belonging to the staff in St. Petersburg, to the commissariat, and, we believe, all the numerons persons about the court, who have rank in the army, including even the maids of honour, who are all major-generals. The machinery for the management of this army-the Horse-Guards of St. Petersburg -is in the palace of the Etat Major. One grand division of this vast institution is composed of hydrographers, topographers, and geographers, in which the general map of the empire, and maps of the respective governments, are constructed, examined, and corrected from the surveys, as they are brought in. Private soldiers were observed in one room, employed in copying MS. maps, plans of towns, and fortifications; others engraving them on copper; in another suite of apartments, a number of officers and soldiers, sitting round large tables covered with green cloth, were intent on calculations, drawing up tables, and keeping registers. Three large rooms are appropriated to the lithographic department. Another suite of rooms contains the instruments, and the manufactory of them. 'The workmen are all privates or subalterns in the army, and natives of Russia, who have been taught the art, and seem to be very expert artisans.' From ten to twenty printing presses are constantly at work in the neighbouring apartments, and they have a laboratory, in which the types are cast. Another range of rooms is set aside for the chancellerie, for transacting purely military matters; and a large octagon saloon is fitted up as a military library. In it is also a war-game table, more instructive than chess, to familiarize very readily the young officer with the practice and technology of his profession.' There is also a room, two hundred and fifty feet long by one hundred

wide, containing the archives of the whole Russian army, enshrined, we presume, in receptacles rather different from the little odd white presses round the 'heel-kickery' (as the H.P. gentlemen call it) of our Horse-Guards. It is not, however, as the doctor says, 'unique in its kind,' as being wholly of cast iron :' there is a store-house in Plymouth dock-yard six times its size, with doors, windows, floors, and staircase entirely of cast iron. There is a hospital attached to this establishment, which contains about one thousand people, who constantly live in the house, besides one hundred and thirty women, and from forty to fifty children.

We pass over the long and very uninteresting account of the Imperial Academy of the Sciences, instituted by the Czar Peter; the Museums of Natural History, of Curiosities, and of Medals. The following articles, however, must be curious :

In the same part of the building have been arranged the different objects in gold, found in the tumuli of Siberia; and directions, I understand, have been given to the governors of that part of Russia to forward to the Academy all similar monuments and remains that might hereafter be brought to light. These relics of a nation scarcely known consist in diadems, military trophies, coats of mail, jewels, idols, and figures of various animals. The material of which they are made, and the beauty of their design and workmanship, bespeak great wealth, and an advancement in the polite and useful arts in the dominions of the race of Tschinghis-Khan, scarcely to be credited, were not these testimonies indubitable.'- Granville, vol. ii. p. 127.

Everything in this northern capital is on the grandest scale. A triumphal arch was constructing, of porphyry, granite, and marble, in commemoration of the return of the Guards from Paris, which, when finished, we are told, will vie in grandeur with the colossal temples of Egypt. The imperial government pays the expense, but one individual, Theodore Ouvaroff, was permitted to contribute four hundred thousand roubles.

In the Hotel des Mines, the great conference-hall is stated to measure three hundred and fifty feet in length. Here the models of the mines and of the modes of separating the gold from the siliceous sand are neatly executed; and in another room is a splendid collection of minerals, all neatly arranged, and placed in glass cases. In this establishment are three hundred and thirty resident students, two hundred of whom are required to pay a pension of eight hundred roubles a year. They are instructed in every process of mining. Dr. Granville was shown in a model the structure -(it must have been a huge model)-of a real mine, with its surrounding strata. Descending with the conductor, each having a lighted taper,

we followed him (says the author) into the bowels of the earth, under the building, by a tortuous road, and penetrated into the interior of a

series of mining chambers, the walls of which represented, by the aggregation of real specimens, the various stratifications which illustrate geology, and the metalliferous veins, skilfully arranged. Here, also, we observed the mode of sinking shafts, of making trenches and galleries, of cutting for the ore and carrying it out of the mine, the pumps employed to drain the mine, and every other utensil, machine, or process usually employed in such operations. The extent of this subterraneous practical school is very considerable. I found, also, that it was rather colder than was comfortable, and we were very glad to see daylight once more peep upon us at the termination of our long peregrination. Those parts of geology and the metalliferous veins which appeared to me to be most successfully represented, were the coal formation and the veins of copper, and in another place, of gold in decomposing granite.'—Granville, vol. ii. p. 155.

The total produce of the gold mines in the year 1827 is stated to have been 616,383l., of which two-thirds may belong to private individuals. One of these, of the name of Demidoff, is said to have left 150,000l. sterling a year to each of his three children! One of them died last year at Florence. The following account of this family is curious enough.

6

When Peter learned how valuable a subject he had rewarded in old Demidoff, he wished to see him placed in the class of nobles. After some hesitation, the old man consented to receive his Sovereign's farther bounty, and being asked what his arms should be, he answered, "a miner's hammer, that my posterity may never forget the source of their wealth and prosperity." It is said, that one of the three brothers left, at his death, the whole of his property to the Foundling Hospital, at Moscow.

Nothing can equal the splendour in which Monsieur Demidoff lived; nor has there existed, for many years past in Europe, a more magnificent patron of the fine arts. Of the numerous suite which accompanies him every where, and in which there are painters, sculptors, musicians, and poets, the most remarkable feature is, a regular company of French comedians, with all their trappings and apparatus for establishing a theatre wherever their liberal master may choose to reside.'-Granville, vol. ii. p. 159.

The last public institution we shall notice is the botanical garden, which, like all the rest, is of gigantic dimensions. It contains sixty-five acres: a parallelogram formed by three parallel lines of hot-houses and conservatories, united at the extremities by covered corridors, constitutes the grand feature of this establishment. The south line contains green-house plants in the centre, and hot-house plants at each end; the middle line has hot-house plants only, and the north line is filled with green-house plants. The connecting corridors are two hundred and forty-five feet. The north and south line contain respectively five different compartments of one hundred toises each,' that is to say, they are

together

together six thousand feet. The middle line has seven compartments,' that is, three thousand more, making in the whole length nine thousand feet! Here, again, the doctor blunders egregiously in his measurement, as appears from what immediately follows. The whole range of hot and green-houses, taken in a continued line, measures three thousand six hundred and twentyfour feet, being little short of three-fourths of an English mile in length.' Either dimensions are gigantic enough, but the only value of figures is their accuracy, and, for aught we know, many others in the doctor's book may, like this, be two or three times too great or too small. There is, he says, besides, out of doors, a nursery for trees and shrubs, and a systematical arrangement of hardy plants, and such as are employed in the materia medica. In this there must also be some mistake; at least we are assured by a gentleman just returned from Petersburg, that he saw little or nothing growing out of doors but the common matricaria, or wild camomile.

Professor Fischer has great merit in being able to force his plants to a magnitude corresponding with that of the buildings which inclose them. Thus, we are told, an Acacia speciosa had grown eighteen feet in the space of two years, and an Eucalyptus five and twenty feet in the same period. But these are trifles. A specimen of the Lobaa candens maxima, in the green-house of creepers, had ascended to the height of thirty-two feet, and covered with its main stem and feeders, a space of seven hundred feet, though struck from a cutting under a hand-glass only two years before! And this wonderfully exuberant vegetation is in a green house, under the parallel of 60° latitude. A shoot of bamboo had reached nearly the top of the house, but what that height is we are not told; it is stated, however, that during the great heat of 1826, this plant had grown twenty-six feet in the space of eighteen days, or three-quarters of an inch in an hour!'

We have not yet, however, quite done with the giants, because what we are about to notice, we are told, has no parallel, and because there is here also a trifling blunder in the measurement. This is the restored or amended church of St. Isaac ; and here we have an instance of that incessant meddling of the successors with what their predecessors had done in the way of palaces, churches, and public buildings. St. Isaac was founded by Peter in 1710. In 1768, Catharine ordered it to be reconstructed in marble, on a more extensive scale. Having reached the height of the entablature, Catharine died, and the work stood still. The Emperor Paul entirely changed the plan of the building; and Alexander approved of another plan, in the year 1818, by a Monsieur Montferrand, which is now in progress of execution, provided Nicholas

should

should not take it into his head to alter or demolish it altogether. It has a cupola, which, up to the ball, is to be three hundred and seven English feet high. The interior is to be ornamented with one hundred and eighty-eight columns and pilasters of the Corinthian order, of marble drawn from the quarries of Finland; the capitals and bases of bronze richly gilt.

But the most astonishing, and certainly unparalleled feature of this magnificent edifice, will be the four porticos which are to decorate its exterior; each of which will consist of eight columns in front, and three in the flank, with capitals and bases of gilt bronze. These fortyeight columns of the Corinthian order, unique in Europe, have been cut out of the rock in Finland, each of one solid piece of granite, five feet ten inches in diameter at their base, five feet two inches near the astragal, and fifty-six feet high; consequently much loftier than those of the Roman Pantheon, which measure only forty-six feet nine inches and eleven lines.'-Granville, vol. ii. p. 198.

To see these gigantic pillars raised, it is said that architects of all countries have signified their intention of being present-' an opportunity which,' the doctor says, 'neither times past have offered, nor will future ages, in all probability, again afford, of seeing forty-eight columns, each of one solid block of highly polished bronze and sparkling granite, seventeen and a half feet in circumference at their bases, and loftier than any that the hand of an architect has ever ventured to design.' Indeed! who was it that ' ventured to design' Pompey's pillar? As the doctor tells us to a line what is the height of the Pantheon columns, he ought, at least, to have been accurate to an inch in the circumference of those of St. Isaac, which, instead of being 17 feet, are, if our arithmetic be right, 18.333 feet, full ten inches more than he has stated them to be; and when he tells us that each column weighs 288,000 pounds, he again errs the contrary way. The average weight of a cubic foot of close-grained granite is, as nearly as possible, 164 pounds; the contents of the column of St. Isaac are 1350.467 cubic feet; ergo, the weight of the column is 218,197 pounds, or about one-fourth part less than the doctor asserts it to be.

With all the magnificence and oriental splendour of this Northern Babylon, the enormous wealth and extensive establishments of the nobles, the superb furniture of their palaces, and the splendid entertainments which are constantly given, to an extent unknown in other countries of Europe, there is still something that lacks of the delicacy and refinement which prevail among the upper ranks of more civilized nations, and smacks of the barbarian. We may illustrate this by two little anecdotes mentioned by Captain Jones. This officer was invited to a grand ball and supper given by the Empress-mother.

'After