What is it that can be added to the real beauty of a place by the idea that we are about to quit it ? In thinking that I behold it for the last time, I feel as though I валу it for the first.
Our destiny is so movable as compared with the destiny of things, that whatever recalls to us the shortness of our days inspires us with a renewed admiration. This sentiment of respect for things that last longer than do we, leads us to reflect upon ourselves. The stream that we are descending is so rapid that the objects we leave on the banks seem beyond the influence of time. The waters of the cascade must believe in the immortality of the tree that overshadows them ; and the world seems to us eternal, so rapidly are we passing through its varied scenes.
Perhaps the reason that the life of the traveller is so full of emotions is because the departures of which it is composed are but rehearsals of death. Herein, doubtless, lie the reasons for our discovering beauty in
THE PHILOSOPHY OF ADIEUS.203
that which we abandon; but there is another reason which I scarcely venture here to dwell upon.
In certain minds the necessity for independence becomes a passion. The fear of forming ties operates in such manner that we attach ourselves only to things from which we flee, because the attraction that we feel towards such objects binds us to nothing. We experience raptures without any further results. We depart: to depart is to perform an act of liberty. By absence we disengage ourselves from the fetters of sentiment; man enjoys in full security the pleasure of admiring that which he will never see more; he abandons himself to his preferences or his affections without fear or constraint: he knows that he has wings ! But when he feels that through constantly expanding and folding them, they are beginning to wear out, when he discovers that travelling instructs him less than it fatigues him, then is the hour for return and repose arrived : I can perceive that this hour is approaching for me.
It was night. Obscurity, like absence, has its illusion ; like it, it forces us to conjecture. Towards the end of the clay the mind abandons itself to reverie, the heart opens to sensibility and to regret. When all that we see disappears, there remains for us only what we feel: the present dies, the past revives ; death and earth restore their prey, and night. rich in shade, drops over the varied objects an atmospheric veil which magnifies them and makes them appear more tenderly beautiful; obscurity, like absence, enthrals the mind by means of incertitude; it summons the vagueness of poetry in aid of its en-<. hantments : night,' absence, and death are magicians, к G
204
IMAGINATION.
and their power is a mystery like every thing else that acts upon the imagination. Imagination in its relations with nature, in its effects, in its illusive influences, will never be defined satisfactorily by minds even the most subtle and the most sublime. Clearly to define imagination would be to mount up to the fountain head of the passions. Source of love, channel of pity, moving element of genius, most tremendous of all the endowments of man—for it makes of him a new Prometheus, — imagination is the strength of the Creator lent for one moment to the creature. Man receives it, but he cannot scan it: it is in him, but it is not of him. When the voice ceases to warble, when the rainbow melts away, whither are the sounds and the colours fled ? Can any one say whence they came ? Similar in their nature, although yet more incomprehensible, more varied, more fugitive, and above all, more disquieting, are the illusions of imagination ! I have felt the power of this faculty all my life with an unavailing awe; I have far too much of it for the use I make of it; I sought to render myself its master; I remain its victim and its toy. Abyss of desires and contradictions, it is it which still urges me to traverse the world, and which attaches me to places at the very moment when it is summoning me elsewhere. О illusions ! how perfidious are you when you seduce us, and how cruel when you abandon us !
It was past ten o'clock when I returned from the promenade of the Islands. At that hour the aspect of the city has a singular and not easily described effect; for the beauty of the picture does not consist in the lines, since the site is entirely flat, it lies in
A TWILIGHT SCENE.
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the magic of the vapoury nights of the North ; though vapoury, luminous, and — though it cannot be understood without seeing them—full of poetic majesty.
On this evening the disposition of the light was such as to involve the west of the city in obscurity, though the heaven above was clear ; whilst in the east, everything on earth was brightly illuminated, and stood in white relief against a dark sky. This contrast produced to the eye an effect that words could render but very imperfectly. The slow melting of the tints of twilight, which appeared to perpetuate the day in struggling against an ever-increasing gloom, communicated to all nature a mysterious movement; the low lands of the city, with their structures little raised above the banks of the Neva, seemed to oscillate betwixt the sky and the water, which gave the impression of their being about to vanish in the void.
Holland, although it enjoys a better climate and a richer vegetation, might convey an idea of some of the streets of Petersburg, but this would only be by day-light, for the polar nights teem with apparitions of wonder all their own. Several of the towers and steeples of the city are, as I have already said, surmounted with lofty turrets, which resemble the masts of vessels; at night, these ornaments of the Russian public buildings, gilded according to the national custom, seem to float in the expanse, and, when not lost in the shade, shine with a thousand reflections similar to the glossy scales of the lizard.
It is now the beginning of August, the end of summer in these latitudes, nevertheless a small portion of the heavens remains luminous the whole night. This glory of mother-of-pearl, set in the horizon, is
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GOD IN NATURE.
reflected in the calm stream or rather lake of the Neva, which, thus irradiated, resembles an immense plate of bright metal, a silver plain, only separated from a sky as white as itself, by the dim miniature of a city. That little spot of earth which seems to detach itself from the water and to tremble upon it like the froth of an inundation, those small dark irregular points scarcely observable between the white of the sky and the white of the river, can they form the capital of a vast empire?—or rather, is it not all an optical illusion, a phantasmagoria?
The spire of the cathedral church in which are deposited the remains of the last sovereigns of Russia, rises blackly against the white curtain of heaven. This taper spire, soaring above the fortress and the city, has the effect of the too hard and too bold pencil-stroke given by a painter in a moment of intoxication. A stroke which would spoil a picture may embellish the reality. God does not paint as we do. The whole scene was beautiful; — scarcely any movement, but a solemn calm, a vague inspiration. All the sounds and bustle of ordinary life were interrupted ; man had disappeared, the earth remained in the possession of the supernatural powers. There are in these remains of
