CHAPTER XXV: MISCELLANEOUS NOTICES. [excerpts]--COFFEE HOUSES.

The coffee-houses of St. Petersburg are of small importance. When a man is sure of being received by his friends, morning, noon, and night, in the most obliging way in the world, he has little inclination to visit coffee-houses, where he must pay for every thing, and after all, is never so comfortable as in the house of a wealthy friend. So long as the inhabitants of St. Petersburg are so extremely hospitable, the taverns and coffee-houses are not likely to prosper greatly. In Paris and London there are people enough who spend half their time in such places; in St. Petersburg they are frequented only by unconnected foreigners, or by officers perhaps who give each other the rendezvous there. They meet there to go afterwards to the house of a mutual friend, and consume only as much as a sense of propriety obliges them to consume; or they run in before dinner, to read the papers, and collect as much news as they can for their dinner party. Even this trifling want has been enough in St. Petersburg to call into life some very elegant establishments. The most celebrated is Beranger's, who has several shops for the sale of confectionary in the principle streets of the capital. His headquarters are in the Prospekt. Compared to the Parisian houses, however, they are small and lifeless, but furnished with taste and elegance, and provided with the best English, French , and German newspapers .