462. A general idea of a modern Russian villa is easily given. It is a white square building, in the Italian modification of the Grecian style, with a copper roof, painted green. Near it are a number of miserable-looking log-houses as offices, and also a church in the same style of architecture as the house, and, like it, painted green. In 1813 we took a sketch (fig. 146.) of the handsomest small villa of this sort which we met with on the roadside between St. Petersburgh and Brody. The cottages in some parts of this road, and even the post-houses (fig. 147.), are as wretched as can well be conceived. The feelings of satisfaction with which the traveller, who has been passing for days together through a country without entering any better human dwellings than these, hails the appearance of a large town, such, for example, as that of Kiow (fig. 148.), may be more easily conceived than described.
