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

124ARRIVAL AT YAROSLAF.

CHAP. XXXI.

COMMERCIAL IMPORTANCE OF YAROSLAF.—A RUSSIAN'S OPINION OF

RUSSIAN ARCHITECTURE.DESCRIPTION OF YAROSLAF.MONO

TONOUS ASPECT OF THE COUNTRY. — THE BOATMEN OF THE

VOLGA.COUP-d'cEIL ON THE RUSSIAN CHARACTER.PRIMITIVE

DROWSKAS. ANTIQUE COSTUME. — RUSSIAN BATHS. — DIF

FERENCE BETWEEN RUSSIAN AND GERMAN CHILDREN. — VISIT

TO THE GOVERNOR. AN AGREEABLE SURPRISE. SOUVENIRS

OF VERSAILLES. —INFLUENCE OF FRENCH LITERATURE.VISIT

TO THE CONVENT OF THE TRANSFIGURATION. RUSSIAN PIETY.

— BYZANTINE STYLE IN THE ARTS. — GREAT POINTS OF RELI

GIOUS DISCUSSION IN RUSSIA. — THE ZACUSKA. THE STERLED.

RUSSIAN DINNERS.FAMILY SOIREE. — MORAL SUPERIORITY OF

THE FEMALE SEX IN RUSSIA. — JUSTIFICATION OF PROVIDENCE.

A LOTTERY. FRENCH TON CHANGED BY POLITICS. —WANT

OF A BENEFICENT ARISTOCRACY. THE REAL GOVERNORS OF

RUSSIA. — BUREAUCRACYCHILDREN OF THE POPES. PRO-

PAGANDISM OF NAPOLEON STILL OPERATES IN RUSSIA.THE

TASK OF THE EMPEROR.

The prediction made to me at Moscow is already accomplished, although I have yet scarcely completed a quarter of my journey. I have reached Yaroslaf in a carriage, not one part of which is undamaged. It is to be mended, but I doubt whether it will carry me through.

Summer has now vanished*, not to return until the next year. A cold rain, which they here consider as proper to the season, has driven away the dog-days entirely. I am so accustomed to the incon-

* Written 18th of August.

COMMERCIAL IMPORTANCE OF YAEOSLAF. 125

veniences of the heat, to dust, flies, and muscµiitos, that I can scarcely realise the idea of my deliverance from these scourges.

The city of Yaroslaf is an important entrepot for the interior commerce of Russia. By it, Petersburg comimmicates with Persia, the Caspian, and all Asia. The Volga, that great national and moving road, flows by the city, which is the central point of the interior navigation of the country — a navigation wisely directed, much boasted of by the subjects of the Czar, and one of the principal sources of their prosperity. It is with the Volga that the immense ramifications of canals are connected, that create the wealth of Russia.

The city, like all the other provincial cities in the empire, is vast in extent, and appears empty. The streets are immensely broad, the squares very spacious, and the houses in general stand far apart. The same style of architecture reigns from one end of the country to the other. The following dialogue will show the value the Russians place on their pretended classic edifices.

A man of intelligence said to me, at Moscow, that he had seen nothing in Italy which appeared new to him.

' Do you speak seriously ? ' I asked.

' Quite seriously,' he replied.

' It seems to me impossible,'' I responded, ' that any one could descend for the first time the southern side of the Alps, without the aspect of the land producing a revolution in his mind.'

' In what manner ? ' said the Russian, with that G 3

126A RUSSIAN'S OPINION OF

disdainful tone and air which here too often pass for a proof of civilisation.

' What!' I replied, ' the novelty of those landscapes adorned by art, those hills and slopes, where palaces, convents, and villages stand surrounded with vines, mulberries, and olives, those long ranges of white pillars, which support festoons of vines, and which carry the wonders of architecture into the recesses of the steepest mountains,—all that magnificent scenery, which gives the idea of a park laid out by Lenotre for the pleasure of princes, rather than of a land cultivated in order to yield the labourer his daily bread; all those creations of man applied to embellish the creations of God,— is it possible that they did not appear to you as something new ? Surely, elegantly designed churches, in the steeples of which we recognise a classic taste modified by feudal customs, with so many other stately and extraordinary buildings dispersed in that superb garden, must have caused you some surprise ! Roads carried over enormous passes, on arcades as solid as they appear light to the eye *, mountains serving as the base of convents, villages, and palaces,— all announce a land where nature owns art as her sovereign. Woe to him who could tread the soil of Italy, without recognising in the majesty of the sites, as in that of the edifices, the land that is the cradle of civilisation ! '

' I congratulate myself,' replied my opponent, ironically, ' on having seen nothing of all tins, as my blindness will serve as an excuse for your eloquence.'

* Witness the town of Bergamo, the lakes Maggiore, Como, &c„ and all the southern valleys of the Alps.

RUSSIAN ARCHITECTURE.127

' I shall not much care,'' I answered, coolly, ' though my enthusiasm appears to you ridiculous, if I only succeed in awakening in you a sentiment of the beautiful. The choice of the sites alone of the edifices, villages, and towns of Italy, reveals to me the genius of a people born for the arts. In the localities where commerce has accumulated wealth, as at Genoa, Venice, and the feet of all the great passes of the Alps, what use have the inhabitants made of the treasures they amassed? They have bordered their seas, lakes, rivers, and precipices with enchanted palaces,— ramparts of marble raised by genii. It is not alone on the borders of the Brenta that these miracles are to be seen; every mountain has its prodigy. Towns and villages, churches, castles, convents, bridges, villas, hermitages, the retreats of penitence as well as the abodes of pleasure and luxury, all so strike the imagination of the traveller as to weave a spell over the mind as well as the eye. The grandeur of the masses, the harmony of the lines are new to the men of the north. Add to this the associations of history.— Greece herself, notwithstanding her sublime but too scarce relics, less astonishes the greater number of pilgrims; for the ages of barbarism have left Greece empty, and the land requires to be searched in order to be appreciated. Italy, on the contrary, needs only to be looked at —'

' How,' interrupted the impatient Russian,—?? how can you expect us inhabitants of Petersburg and Moscow to be astonished, as you are, with Italian architecture ? Do you not see models of it at every step you take in even the smallest of our towns and cities ? »

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