better than those dispersed throughout the rest of the city. At the first view, Moscow produces a very powerful impression: to a bearer of despatches, travelling quickly past its Avails, it would, with its churches, convents, palaces, and strong castles, any of which might be taken for the abode
DESECRATION OF THE FORTRESS.21
of unearthly beings, appear the most beautiful of cities.
Unfortunately they are now building at the Kremlin a new palace for the Emperor. Нале they considered whether this sacrilegious improvement will not spoil the general aspect, unique as it is in the world, of the ancient edifices of the holy fortress? The present habitation of the sovereign is, I admit, mean in appearance ; but, to remedy the inconvenience, they are intrenching upon the most venerable portions of the old national sanctuary. This is profanation. Were 1 the Emperor, I would rather raise my new palace in the air, than disturb one stone of the old ramparts of the Kremlin.
One day at Petersburg, in speaking to me of these works, the monarch said that they would beautify Moscow. I doubt it, was the answer of my thoughts : you talk as if you could ornament history. I know that the architecture of the old fortress does not conform to any rules of art: but it is the expression of the manners, acts, and ideas of a people and of an age that the world will never see again; it is, therefore, sacred as the irrevocable past. The seal of a power superior to man is there impressed — the power of time. But in Russia, authority spares nothing. The Emperor, who, I believe, saw in my face an expression of regret, left me, assuring me that his new palace would be much larger and better adapted to the wants of his court than the old one. Such a reason would suffice to answer any objection in a country like this in which I travel.
In order that the court may be better lodged, they are going to include within the new palace, the little
22ERROR OF THE EMPEROR NICHOLAS.
church of the Saviour in the Garden. That venerable sanctuary, the most ancient, I believe, in the Kremlin and in Moscow, is then to disappear among the fine white walls, with which they will surround it, to the great regret of all lovers of antiquity and of the picturesque.
What more provokes me is the mockery of respect with which the profanation is to be committed. They boast that the old monument will still be preserved ; in other words, it will not be destroyed, but only buried alive in a palace. Such is the way in which they here conciliate the official veneration for the past with the passion for 'comfort,' newly imported' from England. This manner of beautifying the national city of the Russians is altogether worthy of Peter the Great. TV^as it not sufficient that the founder of the new city should abandon the old one ? No ! —his successors must also demolish it, under the pretext of adorning it.
The Emperor Nicholas might have acquired a glory of his own, instead of crawling аклш the road laid out by another. He had only to leave the Petersburg winter-palace when it had been burnt for him, and to return and fix the imperial residence in the Kremlin * as it stands ; building for the wants of his household and for the great fetes of the court, as many palaces, beyond the sacred walls, as he might think fit. By this return he would have repaired the fault of Peter the Great; who, instead of dragging his boyards into the theatre which he built for them on the Baltic, ought to have been able to civilise them in their own homes, by availing himself of the admirable elements which nature had placed within their reach and at his
RESTORATION OF THE CAPITAL.23
disposal — elements which he slighted with a contempt and with a su])erficiality of mind unworthy of a superior man, as, in certain respects, he was. At each step that the stranger takes on the road from Petersburg to Moscow, Russia, with its illimitable territory, its immense agricultural resources, expands and enlarges on the mind in a measure equal to that in which Peter the Great diminished and contracted it. Monomaclms, in the eleventh century, was a truly Russian prince; Peter I., in the eighteenth, was, in his false method of improving, nothing more than a tributary of foreigners, an imitator of the Dutch, a mimicker of civilisation, which he copied with the minuteness of a savage.
If I were ever to see the throne of Russia majestically replaced upon its true basis, in the centre of the empire, at Moscow ; if St. Petersburg, its stuccoes and gilt work, left to crumble in the marsh whereon it is reared, were to become only what it should have always been, a simple naval port, built of granite, a magnificent entrepot of commerce between Russia and the West, as, on the other side, Kazan and Nijni serve as steps between Russia and the East; I should say that the Slavonian nation, triumphing by a just pride over the vanity of its leaders, sees at length its proper course, and deserves to attain the object of its ambition. Constantinople waits for it; there arts and riches will naturally flow, in recompense of the efforts of a people, called to be so much the more great and glorious as they have been long obscure and resigned. Let the mind picture to itself the grandeur of a capital seated in the centre of a plain many thousands of leagues in extent — a plain which stretches
24RESTOKATIOX OF THE CAPITAL.
from Persia to Lapland, from Astraehan and the Caspian to the Uralian Mountains and the White Sea with its port of Archangel ; from thence, bordering the Baltic, where stand Petersburg and Kron-stadt, the two arsenals of Moscow, it sweeps to the Vistula in the west, and from thence again to the Bosphorus, where concpicst awaits the coming of the Russians, where Constantinople will serve as another portal of communication between Moscow, the holy city of the Muscovites, and the world.
The Emperor Nicholas, notwithstanding his practical sense and his profound sagacity, has not discerned the best means of accomplishing such an end. He comes now and then to promenade in the Kremlin; but this is not sufficient. He ought to have recog-nised the necessity of permanently fixing himself there : if he has recognised it, he has not had the energy to make such a sacrifice, — this is his error. Under Alexander, the Russians burnt Moscow to save the Empire : under Nicholas, God burnt the palace of Petersburg to advance the destinies of Russia; but Nicholas docs not answer to the call of Providence. Russia still waits !—Instead of rooting himself like a cedar in the only fitting soil, he disturbs and upturns that soil to build stables and a palace, in which he may be more conveniently lodged during his journeys ; and with this contemptible object in view, he forgets that every stone of the national fortress is, or ought to be, an object of veneration for all true Muscovites. It is not wise in him — a sovereign whose authority depends upon the superstitious sentiments of his people — to shake, by
TASTE OF CATHERINE II.25
national monument which they possess. The Kremlin is the work of the Russian genius;. but that irregular, picturesque marvel is at length condemned to pass under the yoke of modern art : it is the taste of Catherine II., which still reigns in Russia.
That woman, who, notwithstanding the grasp of her mind, knew nothing of the arts or of poetry, not content with having covered the empire with shapeless monuments copied from the models of antiquity, left behind her a plan for rendering the facade of the Kremlin more regular ; and here behold her grandson, in part executing the monstrous project : flat white surfaces, stiff lines, and right angles replace the recesses and projections, the slopes and terraces, where lights and shadows formerly played; where the eye was agreeably bewildered, and the imagination excited by external staircases, walls encrusted with coloured arabesques, and palaees of painted Delft ware. Let them be demolished, let them be concealed; —are they not going to be replaced by smooth white walls, well-squared windows, and ceremonious portals? Xo ! Peter the Great is not dead: the Asiatics whom he enrolled and drilled, travellers and imitators, like him, of the Europe which, while continuing to copy, they affect to disdain,
