or rather like the nasal accents of the old Jews in the German synagogues. They say these
280FIRST VIEW OP THE VOLGA.
peasants are very musical; we shall see by and by. I have heard nothing yet that merits the trouble of being listened to. The chanted communings of the coachman with his horses, during the night, are very doleful: tliis murmur without rhythm, this declamatory reverie in which man confides his sorrows to the brute, the only kind of friend by whom he is not despised, filled me with a melancholy more deep than pleasing.
At one place, the road shelved suddenly upon a bridge of boats, which lay much below its level by reason of the droughts that had dried up the river thus crossed. This river, still broad, although shrunk in its bed by the summer heats, bears a celebrated name — it is the Volga. Upon the border of the famous stream appeared, gilded by the moon, a city, whose long white walls gleamed in the night, which is only a twilight favourable to the conjuring up of images. The road formed a bend round this newly whitewashed eity, where I found the everlasting Roman pediments and colonnades of plaster, of which the Russians are so fond, because they think them proofs of their knowledge of the arts. The city, of which I went the round, appeared immense. It was Twer, a name that brought to my recollection the interminable civil contests which make up the history of Russia until the invasion of the Tartars. I could hear brethren insulting their brethren ; the cry of war resounded ; I saw the massacre; the Volga flowed with blood ; from the deep solitudes of Asia, the Calmue hurried on to drink it, and to shed more. But what have I to do with this blood thirsty crowd ? It is to have a new
DEWS OF THE NORTH.
281
journey to recount to my friends ; as though the picture of a country where nature has done nothing, and where art has only produced some rough sketches or copies, could interest, after the description of Spain — of that land where a people the most original, the most lively, the most independent in character, even the most free, in practice if not in theory*, straggle secretly against the most gloomy of governments ; where they dance and pray together, in the intervals of throat-cutting and church pillaging. Such is the picture that my friends must forget, in order that I may describe to them a plain of some thousand leagues wide, and a society which has nothing original that it does not endeavour to
Оо
conceal. . . . The task is a hard one.
Even Moscow will not recompense me for the trouble I am taking to see it. Shall I give up the idea of Moscow ? order the coachman to turn, and depart in all haste for Paris ? To this had my reveries broiight me when the day dawned. My caleche had remained open, and in my protracted doze I had not perceived the banenu influence of the dews of the north; my clothes were saturated; my hair in a state as if dripping with perspiration; all the leather about my carriage was steeped in noxious moisture; my eyes pained me, a veil seemed to obscure my sight;
I remembered the Princewho became blind in
twenty-four hours after a bivouac in Poland, under the same latitude, in a moist prairie. †
* Within twenty leagues of Madrid, the Castilian shepherd, during the times of absolute monarchy, had no idea but that there was a free government in Spain.
† A similar fate very nearly happened to me ; the disorder
282DEPARTURE FOR MOSCOW.
My servant has just entered to announce that my carriage is mended ; I am therefore again about to take the road : and unless some new accident detain me, and destine me to make my entrance into Moscow in a cart, or on foot, my next chapter will be written in the holy city of the Russians, where they give me hopes of arriving in a few hours.
I must, however, first set about concealing my papers, for each chapter, even those that will appear the most inoffensive to the friends who receive them in the form of letters, would be sufficient to send me to Siberia. I take care to shut myself up when writing; and if my feldjager or one of the coachmen knock at the door, I put up my papers before opening it, and appear to be reading. I am going to slip this sheet between the crown and the lining of my hat. These precautions are, I hope, superfluous, but I think it necessary to take them ; they at any rate suffice to give an idea of the Russian government.
in my eyes, which commenced when I wrote this sheet, increased during my sojourn in Moscow, and long after ; in short, on my return from the fair of Nijni, it degenerated into an ophthalmia, the effects of which I still feel.
FIRST VIEW OF MOSCOWSYMBOLIC ARCHITECTURE OF GREEK
CHURCHES.CASTLE OF PETROWSKI. ENTRANCE TO MOSCOW.
ASPECT OF THE KREMLIN.CHURCH OF SAINT BASIL.THE
FRENCH AT MOSCOW. ANECDOTE RELATIVE TO THE FRENCH IN
RUSSIA. —BATTLE OF MOSKOWA. THE KREMLIN A CITY.
ORIGIN OF THE WORD CZAR.AN ENGLISH HOTEL IN RUSSIA.
THE CITY BY MOONLIGHT. POPULATION OF MOSCOW. THE
OBJECT OF CONSCIENCE. GARDENS UNDER THE WALLS OF THE
KREMLIN.DESCRIPTION OF THE FORTRESS.IVAN III. NA
POLEON AND THE KREMLIN.MODERN GRANDILOQUENCE.
Does the reader never remember having perceived, when approaching by land some sea-port town in the Bay of Biscay or the British Channel, the masts of a fleet rising behind downs, just elevated enough to conceal the town, the piers, the flat shore, and the sea itself beyond ? Above the natural rampart nothing-can be discovered but a forest of poles bearing sails of a dazzling white, yards, many-coloured flags, and floating streamers. A fleet, apparently on land — such is the apparition with which my eye has been sometimes surprised in Holland, and once in England, after having penetrated into the interior of the country between Gravesend and the mouth of the Thames. Exactly similar is the effect that has been produced upon me by the first view of Moscow : a multitude of spires gleamed alone above the dust of the road, the undulations of the soil, and the misty line that nearly always clothes the distance, under the summer sun of these parts.
284
ARCHITECTURE OF
The uneven, thinly-inhabited, and only half-cultivated plain, resembles downs dotted with a few stunted firs. It was out of the midst of this solitude that I saw, as it were suddenly spring up, thousands of pointed steeples, star-spangled belfries, airy turrets, strangely-shaped towers, palaces, and old convents, the bodies of which all
