Show the site of st petersburg those who imagine that peter chose that site without consideration or because he had derived his only ideas of a city from amsterdam with which during his residence there he had become familiar form a too narrow estimate of that coarse but vigorous genius his ambition rose far beyond the country of which he found himself the master and far beyond the day in which he expected to live he placed before himself the map of the world he saw that europe asia and america converge towards the north pole and that rus sia sla situated on the point 0 int where their meridians meet appeared to ab be e their destined mistress ile he formed the purpose of fuming this assumed intention of the creator into a fact by successive co conquests bests to give the people the possession of tiree three three worlds and by the opening ing 0 of rivers canals and caravans to form fo I 1 m the re remotest regions into a single state with such suck an idea before him the position of st petersburg was well chosen although for the purposes of ordinary life nothing could well be worse there they tremble upon a eve great reat subterranean scaffold scaffolding D it rea ready d Y asi as I 1 have heard it graphically sai sil said sald to sink into the marsh like a stage ghost through a trap door with a climate so destructive to buildings that the glittering exterior which we have just surveyed has to be renewed every summer at enormous cost with a neighborhood so difficult of drainage that no food can be raised without incredible labor anu ana in the forests of which as I 1 can testify from having obtained and sent home the head of one of them the wolves still prowl and above all with the possibility 0 O 9 sibl sivility lity suspended over them of a complete submergence b beneath the surrounding waters for whenever it shall happen that a powerful west wind shall blow during the fortnight that witnesses the breaking up of the ice the tide of the gulf of finland will meet the tide of lake ladoga cadoga and rising together they will roll over the city no ti part art of which rises fifteen feet above the or ordinary inary level when its ita palaces monuments and temple temples together with the souls which constitute its population will experience a fate not less terrible than that of herculaneum Hercula and Porn poin pompeii peli gurneys gurness Gur evening 0 recreation |