is the ruined castle of Castelholm, in which the unfortunate Eric XIV. was confined in 1751. Scarpans, in this sound or sund, was chosen by the Russians as the most favourable spot, where, for more than twenty years, extensive works have been carried on, in the building of fortresses and fortified barracks, which extended their powerful arms along the channel between Aland and Wardo. These islands having been evacuated by the Russians, it is anticipated that they will be taken possession of by the allied fleet. Such an occupation is not without its political importance. The fort of Gustavsvorn, at Hango Head, the extreme southwestern point of Finland, and the neighbouring port and fortress of Eknas, may be considered as advance posts of this island system, the real difficulties of which lie not only in an intricate navigation, but also in their ready adaptation to a kind of guerilla warfare by gun-boats, of which Russia and Sweden possess whole hosts.

Abo, or Aboa, in Finnish Turku, the capital of Finland, is situated on the Duro, about half a mile from the sea, and is said to have an excellent harbour. The fortress of Abo Slot, or Abo Hous, is on a peninsula at the mouth of the river. This, like Castelholm, has been a royal prison, John III. having been a prisoner within its walls in 1563, and Eric XIV. in 1752. In 1791 this castle was repaired for holding troops, and a station founded for a flotilla of gun-boats. Gun-boats and bomb ketches have been the basis for many years of the system of warfare in use among these innumerable islands, to which they are indeed better adapted than anything else, and they have assumed a remarkable development in modern times.

The University of Abo was founded by Gustavus in 1628, and it was erected into an university by Christina in 1640. The cathedral is a large building of great antiquity, having been founded in 1300. Abo being mainly built of wood, has suffered so much by fires as to have acquired quite a notoriety for such. A most disastrous fire occurred in 1775, and others have happened quite recently.

Helsingfors, in the district of Nyland, so called from its having been peopled not by Finns but by people from Helsingland, was founded by Gustavus I. upon a peninsula, the port having ever been considered to be the best in the Gulf of Finland. This port is encompassed by islands, seven in number-Sveaborg-three of which are joined to each other by bridges. The principal island, originally fortified by Gustavus, and hence still called Gustaf holm, or Gustafs Sward, is now perhaps the most formidable fortress in Russia. Casemates are fashioned in it for six thousand muskets, and it is said to be defended by 800 guns and 12,000 men. The garrison of the town and islands generally, now that it has been strengthened by the garrisons of Aland and other places, must be much more considerable. The arsenal, barracks, and magazines for the land forces are on another island. All the islands are defended; some of the defences being cut out of the solid stone, especially a rock which constitutes in reality an eighth island, and from which the fortress might have been bombarded under cover of the rocks. Large ships cannot enter the harbour except by an extremely narrow channel, which is commanded by the guns of the fortress. The harbour itself can hold sixty sail of the line, and it has splendid docks, in which it is said ships can lie under cover, both for the sake of preservation as well as in docks for repairs, between sluices. These docks are cut out of the solid rock. On

the mainland are the forts of Broberg and Ulricabourg, as also barracks and a magazine for field artillery, so that Helsingfors is almost as well prepared to receive an enemy by land as by sea.

At the head of a small gulf, at the north-east extremity of the Gulf of Finland, is the ancient prosperous and fortified town of Viborg-an old bone of contention between Sweden and Russia. Swedish in 1293, part of the province was ceded to Russia in 1338, and the remainder at the treaty of Nystadt, in 1721. At the peace of Abo, in 1743, the fortresses of Frederickshamm and Wilmanstrand followed the fate of Viborg. Gustavus Adolphus reconquered Kexholm, which had been promised by the Tsar Wasili Iwanowitsch to Charles IX., in recompense for services performed, but which promise had never been fulfilled; it was also restored to Russia by the treaty of Nystadt.

Frederickshamm ("the Gate of Frederic"), and Borgo, an ancient episcopal city, are on the coast between Helsingfors and Viborg; but Kexholm, or Karelgorod, that is, the fortress of Karelia, is built inland, on two little islands, where the river Woxen flows into Lake Ladoga. Fort Wilmanstrand stands on a hillock-a rare thing in the marshy neighbourhood in question-near Lake Saima. It was the scene of a bloody battle the 23rd of August, 1741. Frederickshamm has a good harbour, and is well fortified. It was made the frontier town between Russia and Sweden by the treaty of Nystadt. The port of Borgo is shallow and unsafe.

Beyond Borgo is the town of Lowisa, or Louisa, with a good harbour, which is defended by a strong fortress, called Svartholm, at its entrance. This town was the frontier between Russia and Sweden during the treaty of 1745, and was at that time called Degerby. In 1752, King Adolphus Frederic gave to it the name of Lowisa. Fortia, who travelled in 1790-92, described Louisa as "a frightful town, with neither gates nor pavement, with a little fort a mile out at sea, but of no great consequence."

There are also several other minor strongholds on the Gulf of Finland. Russian staticians enumerate, indeed, twenty-four kreposts, or fortresses, as defending the empire on the side of the Baltic; but many of these are inland and not maritime, and others that are maritime are of no real importance.

The Russian fleet in the Baltic, it only remains to remark, is estimated by Haxthausen at 27 ships of the line, 18 frigates, and 15 sloops. To this must be added the steamers, all, with the exception of the Bogatir, built in England, and the boat fleet, said to comprise more than 500 craft, of a most destructive character when fighting behind rocks and islands in narrow channels. With respect to large and small ships of war, when the allied fleet shall have been reinforced by the squadron which has sailed from Brest, and the additional ships preparing for the same seas, it will be numerically nearly equal to the Russian fleet, and materially much stronger; to which will be added the great advantage of being able to navigate the narrow channels of the coast of the Gulf of Finland, and enter or leave its harbours at times when it is utterly impossible for sailing vessels to attempt putting to sea. The navigation of most of the harbours in the Gulf of Finland, it is to be observed, is generally obstructed by ice till the month of May: Cronstadt is sometimes not free from such obstructions till June.

DIARY OF A FIRST WINTER IN ROME-1854.

BY FLORENTIA.

First Impressions of Rome St. Peter's-The Corso and the Palaces-The Opera of Mose-Villa Borghese-Making a Saint-The Capitol and Tarpeian RockSan Paolo fuori le Mura.

I LIKE Rome less than either Florence or Venice at present-mais voyons-I have not been here a week yet. It is painful, however, to see imperial Rome sunk down into a third-rate modern city!

I retract: I have seen more, and Rome is not a third-rate modern city. It has many and peculiar beauties, putting aside all considerations of art or historical antiquity; but, like some fabled hero, its nobler features are marred by faults, defects, and blemishes which, when considered alone, seem fatal. It is a strange medley of the grand, the beautiful, the rich, the great, with dirt, ugliness, squalor, and vulgarity. I have seen St. Peter's, and, truth to say, am sorely disappointed! To arrive there I passed through some of the vilest streets I ever traversed, without exaggeration, recalling nothing but the thoroughfares of St. Giles's. The dirt, the filthy population, the crowds of French soldiers, the street-side kitchens, where fish, flesh, fowl, and fruit are all frying in the open air, form so disgusting an ensemble, that a lady feels positively ashamed of being seen on foot in such a bear-garden.

St. Peter's is not situated, as I conceived, in the city, but quite in a distant purlieu, at a considerable distance from the Corso, and to reach it these wretched streets must be traversed. Then comes the Tiber, a respectable river after the shallow Arno, and the bridge of San Angelo, swarming with crowds of passengers, carts, carriages, and waggons,-a modern jumble utterly at variance with the exalted state of enthusiastic expectation with which one desires to approach that renowned sanctuary. The Castel San Angelo, about which one has indulged in such romantic ideas, is an ordinary round tower, surmounted by a brazen angel. In looking at it I quite forgot all about Adrian's tomb; for beyond size and massiveness, one never would notice this fortress, under ordinary circumstances, more than the Castle of Milan, or any other fortress. I followed a dirty suburb for some distance, redolent with truly Italian odours, and at last, dusty, weary, and already disheartened, I found myself opposite the great Basilica.

This first feeling was one of decided disappointment! From the immense size of the colonnades, and the rising ground on which the church stands, the whole appears unaccountably small-much less imposing indeed than our own St. Paul's. But the fountains are lovely; of all fountains in this city of flowing waters the grandest and the purest.

As I mounted the steps and approached the façade glowing with expectation and eager curiosity, I was positively blanked at its increasing smallness and the utterly unecclesiastical appearance it presents, more like the front of a nobleman's mansion than a church. The square windows, stone balconies, and short pillars, are principally to blame for this. The vestibule, in shape like St. Marco's, at Venice, strikes the eye, already accustomed to the colossal proportions of the whole, with no particular wonder. I draw aside the mat that covers the door and enter

alas! it is all gold, glare, and glitter, all glaring sunshine; no columned aisles, no "dim religious light," no painted glass windows, but gorgeous flaunting colours, such as I have ever disliked in the Genoese churches; it is a style I detest, and not all the magnitude of the proportions, not all the prestige of that magnificent shrine, can reconcile me to a style fit only for a church upholsterer arranging an ecclesiastical drawing-room. Oh! give me rather ten times rather-that chaste, solemn duomo of Milan in all its marble purity! Give me that forest of pillars, where the eye wanders confused from each marvellously clustered pillar to another, springing aloft in snowy splendour to the delicately fretted roof.

Give me those awful windows whereon are so skilfully represented the mysteries of our faith, casting down such broken and mysterious light on the aged monuments around.

All this ran in my mind as I advanced up the nave of St. Peter's, towards the hideous baldacchino in the centre, an eyesore I really find intolerable.

All here is sunlight and garish; all looks modern, and of that most offensive period, the bad French style. Not even the absurdly grotesque black statue of St. Peter sitting in a chair, with his foot extended to be kissed, looks classical, and I could not get up enough faith even to believe it a genuine Jupiter.

Many of the tombs of the Popes are in execrable taste-exceptions, of course, there are-but still generally I felt quite in good humour with our own monstrosities in St. Paul's.

There are no pictures at any of the numerous altars (in Italy most disappointing), but in lieu of them wonderfully beautiful mosaic copies of celebrated originals. Still, admirable as these are as specimens of skill, there is a sameness about stone copies quite wearisome as one wanders from one altar to another. The finest mosaics struck me as those in the corners of the dome representing the four evangelists; there is a spirit and action about them far superior to the glazy look of the copied pictures.

Under the baldacchino, against which I have declared eternal war, is open space railed round, down which one looks on what the faithful believe are the tombs of SS. Peter and Paul, an arrangement precisely similar to the tomb of that good, excellent San Carlo Borromeo, at Milan (who really was the best of modern worthies), with this notable difference, that his body really lies visibly interred in the sepulchre, whereas here the simple unit 0 expresses the contents of these tombs! Oh, what a thing is faith! There do all true Catholics believe they lie, believing which is the truth-forgive the involuntary pun. Around the space burn innumerable golden lamps.

All the choir was blocked up with boards, and carpenters and lampistes preparing for a fête next Sunday, when the Pope officiates, and is to create a new saint into the celestial hierarchy.

I have here given my sincere impressions of St. Peter's; and I believe it is only want of moral courage that keeps a great many from saying much the same. I declare, from henceforth I shall cherish a much profounder respect for St. Paul's, seeing that in many respects it is superior to "the most glorious temple ever raised to religion," as Gibbon, to round a period, chooses to say.

Having so much abused the dirty streets, I must do justice to the grandeur and magnificence of the unique Corso-nearly a mile in length -where the eye wanders from palace to palace, in a maze of astonishment as to what size the next stupendous structure will attain. Aladdin's palace, with its four-and-twenty windows in a row, would be quite put to the blush beside those amazing edifices that call the Doria, the Torlonia, the Schiarra, master. Less gloomy than the palaces of either Florence or Venice (both of which have a repulsive prison-aspect, spite of great picturesqueness), they exceed all others in size, splendour, and number. There is more poetry about those beautiful cortiles at Genoa, where the orange-trees, the fountains, and the flowers, blend into the façade of its palaces, giving them a touch of Moorish romance-there is a majesty in those huge medieval piles at Florence, mounting so high in air as to obscure the very street-such palace-dungeons as the Strozzi and the Pitti, with the heavily-barred windows.

There is a look of French elegance, repair, and finish about the Milanese palazzi, with the soupçon of gaudy hangings and rich furniture within—and, last of all, there is a charm peculiarly their own, Byzantine, eccentric, strange, about the picturesque abodes of dear sweet Venice, with their rounded long, their ranges of windows, heavily sculptured fronts, looking solemnly down in the bright sea, and the great watergates, with the gondolas waiting.

But all and every, beautiful as they are, and grand each in its peculiar style, cannot match with those unrivalled palaces that follow each other in rapid succession along the Roman Corso, unaccountably uniting the finest points of all the others. This is, indeed, "a street of · palaces, a walk of state," and as the moon rose and coloured the great piles with her silver light, I gazed in rapt wonder at the mighty monument of mediæval feudality around me. Names such as the Colonnathe Doria-the Borghese-are noted in the aristocracy of the universe, and their homes are commensurate to the world-wide fame attained by those historic names. If Rome possessed but this one street it might be called imperial.

The shops are Parisian in their elegance and display. Splendid vehicles chase each other along, and crowds of pedestrians fill the remaining space, recalling the busiest thoroughfares of Paris or London. Here and there a piazza opens, with its lovely fountain, the splashing waters deadening the surrounding noise. All the world knows how Rome is famous for its fountains, but no description can do justice to their number and beauty.

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To-night at the Opera to see "Mosè." The theatre was the Argentina, and a dirtier house and more abounding in bad smells I never entered. The music is grand, but furieusement rococco, or, as the Italians have it, troppo usata ;" one recognised tunes of absolute antiquity, which, had I been asked, I never could have conceived from whence they came, and yet I knew them like a spelling-book, The libretto is painfully impious-quite a scandal in this city of priests—it would never be permitted in London. Moses descends from Mount Sinai, bearing the commandments in his arms, and there is the voice of the Almighty behind the scenes in recitativo. The plagues of Egypt were touched on, and the darkness admirably done; the entire house was black as Erebus,