Petersburg,
it may be said as of our London Regent Street, that it can stand
neither weather nor criticism. As to style of architecture, strictly
speaking the Nevski-Prospekt has none: the buildings, consisting
of shops, interspersed with a few churches and public edifices,
so much partake of the modern and mongrel Italian manner, that
the traveller might easily fancy himself in Paris, Brussels, or
Turin. Few cities are so pretentious in outside appearances as
St. Petersburg, and yet the show she makes is that of the whited
sepulchre: false construction and rottenness of material, facades
of empty parade, and plaster which feigns to be stone, constitute
an accumulative dishonesty which has few parallels in the history
of architecture. Classic pillars and porticos, which have been
thrust in everywhere on slightest pretext, are often built up of
brick covered with cement and coloured yellow. Columns, here the
common and constant expedient, are mostly mismanaged; they are as
it were gratuitous intrusions, they seem to be stuck on, they fail
to compose with the rest of the building.
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