Russia in 1839 -Empire of the Czar: A Journey Through Eternal Russia

of the slave may not have followed the martyr in his triumph, even to the gates of heaven.

No! it cannot be: death is not a flatterer, not even in Russia. This example then of supernatural virtue proves to us the beautiful and desirable truth, that the action of the most corrupted society is insufficient to subvert the primitive plans of Providence; and that man, who, according to Plato, is a fallen angel, may always become an exalted saint.

What a tragedy was this! Never has Rome, either Pagan or Christian, produced any thing more noble than these long adieus of the son of Ivan IV. to his father.

If the Russians do not know how to be humane, they know sometimes how to soar above humanity.

Karamsin doubts the sincerity of the grief of the Czar. It is true it lasted only a short time, but I believe it was genuine.

However this may be, it did not soften the character of the monster, who continued to the end of his life to wallow in the filthiest debauch, and to wash himself in innocent blood.

On the approach of death, he caused himself to be carried several times into the apartment where lay his treasures. There he greedily feasted his dulled lack-lustre eyes on the jewels and useless gold which he could not carry with him beyond the grave.

After having lived as a tiger, he died as a satyr, outraging by a revolting act, his daughter-in-law, an angel of virtue and purity, the young and chaste wife of his second son, Fedor, who, after the death of the Czarewitch, had become the heir of the empire. This young lady approached the bed of the dying

Q 4

344

MORAL LESSON.

man to console him in his last moments, — and waa seen to fly, uttering a scream of horror.

Thus died Ivan IV. in the Kremlin ; and, though it be difficult to believe, he was long mourned by the nation, the great and the little, the laity and the clergy, as though he had been the best of princes.

These marks of sympathy, whether spontaneous or not, arc, it must be owned, any thing but encouraging to virtuous sovereigns. Let us, however, draw this lesson from the history: Unlimited despotism has upon the human mind the effect of an intoxicating drink; the madness of the tyrant is communicable to the slave; and, which is yet more astonishing, the victims become the zealous accomplices of their executioners.

A detailed and veracious history of this country would, perhaps, be one of the most instructive books that could be furnished for human meditation, but it would be impossible to compile. Karumsin attempted the work, and flattered his models, but he stopped before the accession of the Iiomanows. The faint and abridged sketch that I have traced will suffice to give an idea of the events and the men with whom the mind, in spite of itself, associates the terror-clad walls of the Kremlin.

APPENDIX.345

APPENDIX TO CHAP. XXVL

The reader will now be able to enter in some measure into the feeling produced by the sight of the great Russian fortress; but a painter alone could impart any definite conception of its form. Art has no name by which to characterise the architecture of this infernal citadel; the style of its palaces, prisons, and churches have nothing in common with any known order of building. The Kremlin is neither Gothic, classic, moresque, nor yet pure Byzantine : it is neither like the Alhambra, nor the monuments of Egypt, India, China. Greece, or Rome. If the expression may be allowed, it is built in the Czaric style. Ivan is the ideal of a tyrant; the Kremlin is the ideal of a tyrant's palace. The Czar is the inhabitant of the Kremlin ; the Kremlin is the house of a Czar. I have little taste for newly-coined words, and least of all for those of my own coining : but Czaric architecture is a descriptive term necessary to the traveller ; no other could picture what it pictures to the thoughts of those who know practically the meaning of the word czar.

Dream on some day, when under the influence of fever, that you tread the abodes of the strange beings that come and go before your eyes, and you may form some idea of this city of the giants, whose edifices thus rise in the midst of a city of men. The Kremlin has been imagined by M. de Lamartine, who, without having seen it, has painted it in his descriptions of the city of the antediluvian giants, in his Fall of an Angel, a work that, notwithstanding the rapidity with which it was composed, or perhaps owing to that inspired rapidity, contains beauties of the highest order, and may be designated as poetry in fresco.

The Russians are, of all civilised people, those among whom the sentiment of equity is the most weak and the most vague. Thus, in giving the surname of Terrible to Ivan IV., a title which they had previously accorded as one of eulogy to his grandfather, Ivan III., they have done jnstiee neither to the glorious monarch nor to the tyrant. The following is from Karamsin : —

' It is to be remarked that, in the memory of the people, the

346APPENDIX.

brilliant renown of Ivan survived the recollection of his bad qualities. The groans had ceased, the victims were reduced to dust; new events caused ancient traditions to be forgotten ; and the memory of this prince reminded people only of the conquest of three Mogul kingdoms. The proofs of his atrocious actions were buried in the public archives; whilst Kazan, As- traehan, and Siberia remained in the eyes of the nation as imperishable monuments of his glory. The Russians, who saw in him the illustrious author of their power and civilisation, rejected or forgot the surname of tyrant, given him by his contemporaries. Under the influence of some confused recollections of his cruelty, they still call him Ivan the Terrible, but without distinguishing him from his grandfather, to whom ancient Russia had given the same epithet, rather in praise than in reproach. History does not pardon wicked princes so easily as do people.'

Thus are the great prince and the monster together identified under the appellation`of Terrible!!— and this by posterity ! Such is Russian equity ; and time is accomplice in the injustice. Lavau, when describing the Kremlin, does not blush to invoke the shade of Ivan IV., whom he dares to compare to David weeping the faults of his youth.

I cannot resist here inserting another extract from Karamsin, illustrative of the character of a prince in whom Russia gloried — Ivan III., grandfather of Ivan IV.

' Without being a tyrant like his grandson, he had received from nature a certain harshness of character, which he knew how to moderate by the strength of his reason. Founders of dynasties are rarely distinguished by the sensibility of their feelings; and the firmness requisite for great political achievements is very nearly allied to stern severity. It is said that a single glance of Ivan's, when he was excited with anger, would make timid women swoon; that petitioners dreaded to approach his throne ; and that even at his table, his grandees trembled before him—not daring to utter a single word, or to make the slightest movement, when the monarch, fatigued with conversation, and overcome with wine, fell asleep towards the end of the banquet: all then sat in profound silence, waiting for a new command, to divert the Czar, and to enjoy themselves.'

It was Ivan III. who was the true founder of the modern

APPENDIX.

347