Page:Masterpieces of German literature volume 10.djvu/405

 chickens, and they go everywhere for food. No one does them any harm, and the Russians think it a sin to eat them. The Gostinoy Dwor (the merchants' court) is especially a repetition of the Oriental Tschurchi. One booth is next to the other, and the narrow passages that separate them are covered; therefore the same dim light and the same smell of leather and spices exist as at the Missir, or Egyptian market, in Constantinople. The wares here, however, are mostly European, and cheaper at home, so that we are not much tempted to buy.

If I had my choice, I would rather live in Moscow than in St. Petersburg.

Peter the Great found an island without any seacoast. He could look upon the Black Sea or the Baltic as a communication with the civilized world; but one or the other must first be conquered. The hot-headed King of Sweden pressed him to a Northern war, and, besides, the Southern Sea was inhabited by barbarians. His original intention, it is said, was to build his new capital on the Pontus, and that he even had selected the spot. The one coast, indeed, is not much farther from the centre of the empire than the other.

How would it have been had he built his St. Petersburg on the beautiful harbor of Sebastopol, close to the paradisiac heights of the Tschadyr Dagh, where the grape grows wild and everything flourishes in the open air that is forced through a greenhouse on the Neva; where no floods threaten destruction; where the navy is not frozen fast during seven months of the year; and where steam power makes an easier communication with the most beautiful countries of Europe than the Gulf of Finland does?

What a city would St. Petersburg have been, did her wide streets extend to Balaklava and did the Winter Palace face the deep blue mirror of the Black Sea; if the Isaac Church stood at the height of Malakoff; if Aluschta and Orianda were the Peterhof and Gatschina of the Imperial family!