Moscow is not merely a palace, a national sanctuary for the historical treasures of the empire; it is the bulwark of Russia, the revered asylum in which sleep the tutelary saints of the country; it is also the prison of spectres.
This morning, still wandering without a guide, I penetrated even to the middle of the fortress, and found my way into the interior of some of the churches which ornament that pious city, as venerated by the Russians for its relics as for the worldly riches and the warlike trophies which it encloses. I am too excited now to describe these objects in detail, but hereafter I shall pay a methodical visit to the Treasury.
The Kremlin, on its hill, gives me the idea of a city of princes, built in the midst of a city of people. This tyrannical castle, this proud heap of stones, looks down scornfully upon the abodes of common men ; and, contrary to what is the case in structures of ordinary dimensions, the nearer we approach the indestructible mass the more our wonder increases. Like the bones of certain gigantic animals, the Kremlin proves to us the history of a world of which we might doubt until after seeing the remains In this prodigious creation strength takes the place of beauty, caprice of elegance : it is like the dream of a tyrant, fearful but full of power; it has something about it that disowns the age; means of defence which are adapted to a system of war that exists no longer;
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THE KREMLIN.
an architecture that has no connection with the wants of modern civilisation: a heritage of the fabulous ages, a gaol, a palace, a sanctuary, a bulwark against the nation's foes, a bastille against the nation, a prop of tyrants, a prison of people, — such is the Kremlin. A kind of northern Acropolis, a Pantheon of barbarism, this national fabric may be called the Alcazar of the Slavonians.
Such, then, was the chosen abode of the old Muscovite princes; and yet these formidable walls were not sufficient shelter for the terror of Ivan IV.
The fear of a man possessing absolute power is the most dreadful thing upon earth; and with all the imagery of this fear visible in the Kremlin, it is still impossible to approach the fabric without a shudder.
Towers of every form, round, square, and with pointed roofs, belfries, donjons, turrets, spires, sentry-boxes upon minarets, steeples of every height, style and colour, palaces, domes, watch-towers, walls, em-battlemented and pierced with loopholes, ramparts, fortifications of every species, whimsical inventions, incomprehensible devices, chiosks by the side of cathedrals— every thing announces violation and disorder, every thing betrays the continual
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extraordinary in architecture as the visions of St. John are in poetry. It is a habitation which would suit some of the personages of the Apocalypse.
In vain is each turret distinguished by its peculiar character and its particular use ; all have the same signification, — terror armed.
Some resemble the caps of priests, others the mouth of a dragon, others swords, their points in the air, others the forms and even the colours of various exotic fruits; some again represent a head-dress of the czars, pointed, and adorned with jewels like that of the Doge of Venice; others are simple crowns: and all this multitude of towers of glazed tiles, of metallic cupolas, of enamelled, gilded, azured, and silvered domes, shine in the sun like the colossal stalactites of the salt-mines in the neighbourhood of Cracow. These enormous pillars, these towers and turrets of every shape, pointed, pyramidical, and circular, but always in some manner suggesting the idea of the human form, seem to reign over the city and the land. To see them from afar shining in the sky, one might fancy them an assembly of potentates, richly robed and decorated with the insignia of their dignity, a meeting of ancestral beings, a council of kings, each seated upon his tomb; spectres hovering over the pinnacles of a palace. To inhabit a place like the Kremlin is not to reside, it is to defend one's self. Oppression creates revolt, revolt obliges precautions, precautions increase dangers, and this long series of actions and reactions engenders a monster; that monster is despotism, which has built itself a house at Moscow. The giants of* the antediluvian world, were they
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to return to earth to visit their degenerate successors, might still find a suitable habitation in the Kremlin.
Every thing has a symbolical sense, whether purposely or not, in its architecture ; but the real, the abiding, that appears after you have divested yourself of your first emotions in the contemplation of these barbaric splendours, is, after all, only a congregation of dungeons pompously surnained palaces and cathedrals. The Russians may do their best, but they can never come out of the prison.
The very climate is an accomplice of tyranny. The cold of the country does not permit the construction of vast churches, where the faithful would be frozen at prayer: here the soul is not lifted to heaven by the glories of religious architecture; in this zone man can only build to his God gloomy donjons. The sombre cathedrals of the Kremlin, with their narrow vaults and thick Avails, resemble caves ; they are painted prisons, just as the palaces are gilded gaols.
As travellers say of the recesses of the Alps, so of the wonders of this architecture — they are horribly beautiful.
My eye inflames more and more. I have been obliged to call in a sur2;e0n, who has condemned me to the application of a bandage, and an imprisonment of three days in my chamber. Fortunately, I have one eye left, so that I can still occupy myself with something.
I intend to employ these three days of leisure on a work commenced at Petersburg, but interrupted
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by the busy gaieties of that city. This work is a brief review of the reign of Ivan IV., the tyrant
Its plan was conceived and executed by his grand-sire Ivan III. I have done my best to give an idea of the place itself, and I will now endeavour to aid the description by painting the colossal figures of the men who were its habitants. If from the arrangements of a house we can form a judgment as to the character of its inhabitants, can we not also, by an analogous operation of mind, picture to ourselves the aspect of edifices by a study of the men for whom they were constructed ? Our passions, our habits, our genius, are powerful enough to engrave themselves indelibly on the very stones of our dwellings.
Assuredly, if there be any building to which may be applied such a process of the imagination, it is the Kremlin. Europe and Asia are there seen united, under the influence of the genius of the Lower Empire.
