"Vous les avez repoussé avec effroi et indignation," says the Emperor Nicholas, in the proclamation which he addressed to the Russian armies after the consummation of the awful sentence, 66 ces fauteurs de troubles et d anarchie que vos rangs avaient eu le malheur de recéler. La justice vient de prononcer sur leur sort; la sentence qu'ils avaient merités a reçu son execution, et l'armée est purgée de la contagion qui la menaçait, ainsi que la Russie toute entière." Prince, and the rest were Colonels, Captains, and Lieutenants in the army; four only were Civilians. His Majesty, however, commuted the capital punishment awarded against thirty-one of them out of the total number, into banishment, degradation, and political disqualification; and left the law to take its awful course with regard to the rest. The names of the distinguished persons who composed the Court of Inquiry, (I have had occasion to ascertain,) are some amongst the most illustrious in Russian society for integrity, talent and stern impartiality. They were those of Tatistcheff, President, Minister at War. Michael (Grand-duke), Grand-master of the Artillery. G. Kotouzoff, Aid-de-camp-General and Military Governor Tchernycheff (since Count), Aid-de-camp-General. Benkendorff, Aid-de-camp-General. Levacheff, Aid-de-camp-General. Potapoff, Aid-de-camp-General. Bloudoff, Actual Counsellor of State. CHAPTER XVII. PICTURE OF ST. PETERSBURGH. - Imperial Country Residences and Environs of St. Petersburgh. TCHESME. -Portraits of contemporary Sovereigns with Catherine. -Sad coincidences and recollections. - The Caprice.-Theatrical Village. - Tropheal Column to Orloff.- La Tour des Heritiers. Alexandrovsky. - Sophy.-The Palace of TZARSCO-ÇELO. Elizabeth and the French Ambassadors. Catherine and the gold scrapers. Architecture of the Palace. - Fate of the great Architects, Rastrelli, Brenno, Dumot, Voronikhin, Cameron, and Guarenghi. Apartments at Tzarsco-çelo. The Amber and Lapislazuli Rooms.- Parks and Pleasure Grounds.- Ornamental Build ings, Temples, and Colonnades. Peter the Great and a grateful Empress, or origin of Tzarsco-selo. PAULOVSKY. Trip to GATCHINA. - Baron de Meyendorff and General Stanger. — The Emperor Paul's Establishment. Polypharmacy. - The School for Foundlings.-The Imperial Residence of GATCHINA.-CATHERINHOFF. -STRELNA. Modern Russian Paintings. PETERHOFF. -The Empress Alexandra's Cottage. Her taste, and that of the Emperor for Architecture, and real domestic comforts. - Superb View of the Country. The Palace of Peterhoff. - Private Residence of the Emperor Nicholas. - The Russian Versailles. The Emperor Alexander's Private Cabinet. Last Visit. State Apartments. The Great Portrait Room. - MONPLASIR. Kitchen and Bed Room. L'HERMITAGE. The Independent Dining Table.- MARLY. -The Water-works. - Peter's Sagacity. His extensive Wardrobe. ORANIENBAUM. The HA! CRONSTADT. - The Islands of YELAGUINE and KAMENNOÏ. parations for Departure. — Carriage on Sledges. -- Russian Coachmakers. Winter Travelling Equipment. - Presentation to the Empress ALEXANDRA. - Adieu to ST. PETERSBURGH. THE reader will now be pleased to accompany me and a friend or two, although a deep snow covers the ground, and the thermometer marks several degrees of cold below the freezing point, to the principal Imperial country residences situated in the environs of St. Petersburgh. Our steps shall be first directed to Tzarsco-çelo the Windsor, or St. Cloud of the Imperial family of Russia; and in visiting that celebrated spot, we shall have the benefit of the architect's company, M. Menelas, a gentleman from Edinburgh, who has been resident in Russia upwards of forty years; worked with his countryman, the late Mr. Cameron, another eminent architect; and has been filling for many years the office of Imperial Architect, attached to the palaces of Tzarsco-çelo and Peterhoff. We assuredly cannot have a better or more obliging Cicerone. Our party engaged a close carriage, or rather the body of one, placed on a sledge-bed, drawn by four horses abreast, and started at sunrise, the air being most beautifully clear and bracing. For some distance after leaving St. Petersburgh, the road, which is the same that leads to Moscow, passes between fields of arable land, recovered from drained morasses by a company of Quakers who work for the Crown, and are all settled in the neighbourhood in very neat villages. At the seventh verst we crossed a canal, and entered the pleasure-grounds of Tchesmé, a small Imperial seat built by the Empress Catherine, in the centre of a large park. This edifice, which was intended to commemorate the discomfiture of the Turkish naval forces by Orloff, in the harbour of Tchesmé on the coast of Anatolia, is now entirely abandoned. Its architecture is that of a lofty Turkish pavilion, built of red brick, having a quadrangular form, with a small and pinnacled tower at each end. Within, a circular grand staircase leads to twelve rooms, which range round a central rotunda of forty feet in diameter, and in which are hung the full-length portraits of all those Sovereigns, and of some of their families, who were contemporaries with the conqueror at that great seafight, and who despatched these representatives of their persons to testify their approbation of Catherine's measures, and their joy at her success against the Sultan. With one or two exceptions, the portraits do not manifest any very great proficiency in the art of painting at the epoch in question. They are, in fact, very inferior performances, although the likeness of a few among them, particularly that of the late revered Monarch of Great Britain, is very striking. The Imperial apartments, at present, are in a dilapidated state, and entirely stripped of furniture. Silence reigns where the voice of revelry once resounded; and those chambers present the image of solitude, in which anxious courtiers, glittering with stars, had formerly thronged to catch the smallest glance of their allpowerful Imperial mistress. Assuredly the sight of these deserted abodes of royalty is admirably calculated to awaken reflections of the deepest interest; but when in addition to those reflections, the history of such palaces suggests coincidences of a painful nature, connected with their former Imperial masters, how much more forcible is the lecture they convey to us on the uncertainty of our worldly possessions? Tchesmé, which had never received within its deserted halls its late Sovereigns while living, was destined to open its gates to admit them when dead. September 1825, the Empress Elizabeth passed by this Imperial palace on her way to Taganrog, and was followed soon after by her Imperial consort, who likewise traversed the domain of Tchesmé on that occasion. In less than eight months after, their mortal remains alone. revisited this same spot, and found shelter for the night within the palace, but in a reversed order; for those of his Majesty had the fatal precedence on their return home, and were followed by the remains of the Empress two months In afterwards, being like those of her consort, deposited, for a while, in the halls of this Imperial residence! Here the regalia, and the crown, which were to mark the exalted rank of the Imperial pilgrims on their return, were imposed on their funeral car which left Tchesmé soon after in gloomy procession for the capital. The stranger who is acquainted with the modern history of Russia, cannot but be struck with these sad associations on viewing the palace which lies in the road to Imperial Tzarsco-çelo. On arriving opposite to one of the gates of this Imperial residence, called the Caprice, I observed on my right a cluster of white houses of modern architecture, arranged in a very singular manner, and not unlike the painted perspective of a drop scene. They are built of different sizes, and are smaller the farther they are removed from the road. They are disposed in two rows, and converge at the farthest extremity. Their form, shape, and design, are also various. The coup-d'ail is striking, and awakens at once the curiosity of the observer, to know what could have been the origin of so bizarre an arrangement. It is, in fact, a Caprice. The Empress Catherine, happening to be at the theatre one night, was struck with a painted scene, representing the perspective view of a small town, at which she expressed her great pleasure to Orloff, who was with her. The next time she visited Tzarsco-çelo, she was agreeably surprised with the sight of her favourite scene, which she found there delineated in reality. Orloff, with a rapidity that has no parallel, and which money and unbounded authority can alone command, had planned and ordered the realization of that scene to surprise his Sovereign; and it must be admitted that he has succeeded admirably; for viewed from the gate of the Caprice, this little town presents itself precisely like a perspective town projected upon an even surface. In the centre of the open space, between the two |