The universal geography : earth and its inhabitants

338 RUSSIA IN EUROPE.epidemics at times carrying off one-fifth of all the children. Of the 7,578received into the Foundling Hospital in 1876, as many as 7,190 were illegitimate,and the total mortality rose to 6,088, or about 80 per cent.A city in which the military and officials of all ranks form such a large sectionof the population is naturally a gay and extravagant place, and here luxury andsqualor are brought into the closest contact. Apart from the poverty-stricken ruralimmigrants, the proletariate classes are necessarily very numerous in the firstmanufacturing town of the empire. To the State belong some very largeporcelain, glass, and carpet establishments ;but much more important are theprivate industries, sugar refineries, foundries, tanneries, woollen and cottonspinning and weaving factories, breweries, distilleries, tobacco works, altogetherabout 620 establishments, employing (1875) 41,400 hands, of whom one-fourth arewomen, and yielding manufactured goods to the amount of £12,000,000. Yetmore even than on the resources of industry the wealthy classes depend on therevenues of the great domains, and on their heavy salaries and pensions, tosupport their princely expenditure. The retail trade alone is partly in the handsof the Russians, while the wholesale business is mostly carried on to the profit ofGerman or English merchants and Jewish bankers. The local trade is veryLirge, the exchanges amounting in some years to a fourth or a third of thecommerce of the whole empire. But more than half of the shipping sails underthe English, German, and Norwegian flags.To facilitate the approaches by water,it is now proposed to dredge a passage 16 or 17 feet deep and 18 miles longbetween Kronstadt and the capital, and to avoid the Neva windings and rapidsby a canal running from its mouth directly to Lake Ladoga.As regards public instruction St. Petersburg lags behind most of the WesternEuropean cities, over 300,000 being still wholly unlettered. But its high schoolsand learned bodies rank amongst the very first in the world. For works ofclassic literature, the arts and sciences, it is the chief centre of the empire,while far surpassed by Moscow for publications of a more popular character.Its University, with 88 professors and 1,418 students, and a library of 120,000volumes, turns out the best physicists and mathematicians. Th e School ofMedicine, with nearly 1,600 students in 1876, is henceforth limited to 500, thefemale courses being now conducted in a separate establishment. The Academyof Sciences and some other societies have published memoirs of permanent importance,whiL the Geographical Society, disposing of a large income and greatlyencouraged by the State, continues to further ethnological research throughoutCentral Asia and China. Besides those of the L T niversity and Academy ofSciences, containing some rare works and valuable collections, the ImperialLibrary ranks next to those of London and Paris, withnearly 1,000,000 volumesand over 40,000 manuscripts, including Voltaire's collection of 7,000 volumes andmany unique works. The museums also are amongst the most remarkable inEurope. Attached to the Academy of Sciences is an admirable Asiatic gallery,besides zoological collections, where may be seen the famous mammoth broughtfrom Siberia in 1803. The Hermitage, which communicates with the Winter