In approaching these northerly regions you seem to be climbing the platform of a chain of glaciers: the nearer you advance, the more perfectly is the illusion realised. The globe itself seems to be the mountain you are ascending. The moment yon attain the summit of this large Alp, you experience what is felt less vividly in ascending other Alps : the rocks sink, the precipices crumble away, population recedes, the earth is beneath your feet, you touch the pole. Viewed from such elevation, the earth appears diminished, but the sea rises and forms around you a vaguely defined circle; you continue as though mounting to the summit of a dome — a dome which is the world, and whose architect is God.
From thence the eye extends over frozen seas and crystal fields, in which imagination might picture the
SHORES OF FINLAND.6O
abodes of the blest, unchangeable, inhabitants of an immutable heaven.
Such were the feelings I experienced in approach-ins; the Gulf of Bothnia, whose northern limits ex-tend to Toraeo.
The coast of Finland, generally considered mountainous, appears to me but a succession of gentle, imperceptible hills; all is lost in the distance and indistinctness of the misty horizon. This untransparent atmosphere deprives objects of their lively colours ; every thing is dulled and dimmed beneath its heavens of mother-of-pearl. The vessels, just visible in the horizon, quickly disappear again; for the glimmering of the perpetual twilight, to which they here give the name of day, scarcely lights up the waters; it has not powTer to gild the sails of a distant vessel. The canvas of a ship under full sail- in northern seas, in place of shining as it does in other latitudes, is darkly figured against the grey curtain of heaven, which resembles a sheet spread out for the representation of Chinese figures. I am ashamed to confess it, but the view of nature in the north reminds me, in spite of myself, of an enormous magic lantern, whose lamp gives a bad light, and the figures on whose glasses are worn with use. I dislike comparisons which degrade the subject; but we must, at any rate, endeavour to describe our conceptions. It is easier to admire than to disparage ; nevertheless, to describe with truth, the feeling that prompts both sentiments must be suffered to operate.
On entering these whitened deserts, a poetic terror takes possession of the soul: you pause, affrighted, on the threshold of the palace of winter. As you ad-
66 MELANCHOLY OF NORTHERN PEORLE.
vance in these abodes of cold illusions, of visions, brilliant, though with a silvered rather than a golden light, an indefinable kind of sadness takes possession of the heart; the failing imagination ceases to create, or its feeble conceptions resemble only the undefined forms of the wanly glittering clouds that meet the eye.
When the mind reverts from the scenery to itself, it is to partake of the hitherto incomprehensible melancholy of the people of the north, and to feel, as they feel, the fascination of their monotonous poetry. This initiation into the pleasures of sadness is painful while it is pleasing; you follow with slow steps the chariot of death, chaunting hymns of lamentation, yet of hope; your sorrowing soul lends itself to the illusions around, and sympathises with the objects that meet the sight: the air, the mist, the water, all produce a novel impression. There is, whether the impression be made through the organ of smell or of touch, something strange and unusual in the sensation : it announces to you that you are approaching the confines of the habitable world; the iey zone is before
I cannot cease to regret having been detained so long this summer, on account of my health, at Paris and at Ems. Had I followed my first plan, I should now be in Lapland, on the borders of the White Sea, beyond Archangel; but it will be seen from the above, that I feel as though there, which is the same thing.
Descending from the elevation of my illusions, I
IRRESOLUTION INDUCED BY ILLNESS.67
find myself, not among the deserts of the earth, but travelling on the superb steam-boat Nicholas the First, and in the midst of as refined a society as I have met with for a long time.
He who could embody in the style of Boccaccio the conversations in which I have taken a very modest part during the last three days, might make a book as brilliant and amusing as the Decameron, and almost as profound as La Bruyere.
I had been long an invalid. At Travemunde I was so ill that, on the very day for sailing, I thought of renouncing the journey. My carriage had been placed on board, but I felt the cold fit of fever thrilling through my veins, and I feared to increase the sickness that already tormented me, by the sea-sickness that I knew I could not escape. What should I do at Petersburg, eight hundred leagues from home, were I to fall seriously ill. To embark with a fever on a long journey — is it not an act of insanity ? Such were my thoughts. But, then again, would it not seem yet more absurd to change my mind at the last moment, and have my carriage brought back on shore ? What would the people of Travemunde say ? How could my irresolution be explained to my friends at Paris?
I am not accustomed to be governed 'by reasonings of this character, but I was sick and reduced in strength : the shiverings also increased; an inexpressible languor, an utter distaste for food, and severe pains in the head and side, made me dread a passage of four days. I shall not survive it, said I to myself; yet to change a project is as difficult for invalids as for other men.
68DIALOGUE WITH MY SERVANT.
The waters of Ems have, in curing one disease, substituted another. To cure this second malady, rest is necessary. Is not this a reason for deferring a visit to Siberia? and yet I am going there.
Under the influence of these conflicting considerations, I was absolutely incapable of deciding how to act.
At length, determined to guide, as by the rules of a game of chance, the plans of a life which I no longer knew how to guide otherwise, I called my servant, resolved that he should decide the question. I asked his opinion.
' We must go on,' he replied; ' it is so near the time of starting.'
' Why, you are generally afraid of the sea.'
' I am afraid of it still; but were I in the place of my master, I would not change my mind after having sent my carriage on board.'
' You seem more afraid of my changing my mind than of my becoming seriously ill.'
No answer.
' Tell me, then, why you would go on ?'
' Because!!!'
' Very good ! we will proceed.'
' But if you should become worse,' resumed this worthy personage, who began to shrink from the responsibility that would attach to him, ' I shall reproach myself with your imprudence.'
' If I am ill, you will take charge of me.'
' But that will not cure you.'
' Never mind; we will go.'
Thus moved by the eloquence of my servant, I proceeded on board, carrying with me a fever, low
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