CHAPTER XII.

PICTURE OF ST. PETERSBURGH.

.The

Commercial and other Establishments of Industry and their Buildings. The Imperial EXCHANGE. - The Rostral Columns. first Foreign Ship at St. Petersburgh. Peter the Great and the Dutch Skipper. Inauguration of the New Exchange. - Affability and Condescension of Alexander the First towards the English Merchants. New Imperial Warehouses. - CUSTOM HOUSE. Navigation of Merchant Vessels up the Neva. - Number of Vessels entered at St. Petersburgh in 1827. Amount of Tonnage for that Year. Lists of Imports and Exports for the last ten years. Balance of Export Trade in favour of Russia. — General value of Corn exported in 1826 and 1827. - Custom-house Revenue, during the last six years. Steady increase of it every year. Number of Vessels entered and cleared, classed according to Nations. -Decrease in those belonging to England. — Mercantile Spirit and Industry of the Russians. - Interior Navigation. - Canal between St. Petersburgh and Moscow. - A Curious Discovery. Peter the Great and the noted financier, Law. Proposed Asiatic Trade Company. Imperial Manufactories. - PLATE GLASS ZAVOD. — Colossal Mirror for the Duke of Wellington.-Crystal Bed for the Shah of Persia. — FARFOROVOï ZAVOD, or China and Porcelain Manufactory. ALEXANDROWSKY. - General Wilson. — English and American Machinery imitated in Russia.-Cotton Manufactory. -Profit from the Manufactory of Playing-cards. - Discipline and treatment of the Foundlings employed at Alexandrowsky. The KOLPINSKOÏ ZAVOD. - Coins. Paper Currency. Mons. CANCRIN's opinions on that subject. Amount of Bank Notes in Russia. The ASSIGNATSION NOÏ BANK. - Revenue of Russia. National Debt. Amount of Annual Redemption. The LOAN BANK. The COMMERCIAL BANK.-The LOMBARD.

THAT Russia is a great commercial nation, requires no demonstration. That St. Petersburgh has become what

its sagacious founder intended it to be, the emporium of Russian commerce with Europe, in the short space of little more than a century, is equally manifest. A visit to that city, however short, will convince every stranger of both these facts. He will there also acquire a knowledge of the immense extent of traffic carried on in the interior of the country, of the means adopted for encouraging it, and of the manner in which the Government seems disposed to favour it on purely national principles. Russia is perhaps the only country of such an extent which, without exportable manufactures, can carry on, year after year, an increasing import and export trade, the active balance of which is invariably in her favour.

But with the more general question of Russian trade I can have nothing to do; my task is much more simple, and must be confined to the observations I made during my short stay in St. Petersburgh. on the buildings and a few of the institutions in that city, that have a reference to commerce. In regard to the former the Imperial Exchange first claims our attention. To its situation on the eastern point of the Vassileiostroff I have already alluded. The building was finished in 1811 after the plans of Monsieur Tonon, a French architect of great merit, but was not opened until the year 1816. Commerce was not likely to flourish during the eventful period that elapsed between the former and the latter of these dates. The building is in the form of a parallelogram, fifty-five toises long, forty-one wide, and fifteen high. A noble peristyle, of forty-four columns of the Doric order, surrounds it, forming an open gallery or piazza, raised on a stylobate of considerable height, to which a very wide and bold flight of steps in front and at the back of the building affords an easy ascent. The interior consists of a single hall, 126 feet long, and sixty-six wide, ornamented with emblema

tical sculptures, of colossal dimensions, lighted from above, and warmed by four stoves placed in symmetrical order, so as to form corresponding embellishments to the room. There are four entrances into the hall, and on each side of these, two smaller chambers serve for a variety of purposes connected with the establishment. Altogether the interior of this beautiful building is very striking, and only inferior to the new Bourse at Paris. In this place the Russian and foreign merchants meet daily at three o'clock, and as a French traveller has well observed, "Là le moindre mouvement est calculé, le moindre geste a son prix, le moindre sourire, doit rapporter quelque chose."

The Exchange is insulated on all sides; a very handsome semicircular open space lies in front of it, terminated by a granite quay, with two circular descents to the water's edge; and at each extremity rise the two colossal rostral columns already alluded to, composed of granite, ornamented with allegorical statues in bronze at their bases; the shaft interspersed with representations of the prows of vessels of the same metal projecting considerably; decorated with the emblems of trade, and surmounted by a group of three figures of Atlas, bearing hollow semi-globes, which are intended to receive fires on every occasion of public illumination.

It is well known how the Imperial Reformer of Russia received the first foreign vessel which arrived here in 1703. Dressed in a sailor's garb, and accompanied by the lords of his suite similarly clothed, the Emperor went to meet her in a boat, and piloted her from Cronstadt to St. Petersburgh, near to the very spot on which stands the New Exchange. The Governor of the town, Prince Menschikoff, received with great pomp the skipper and the; pilot and the surprise of the former must have been considérable, when, at the repast which followed his arrival, he recog