full of edifices without style, taste, or historic interest. But to make the picture complete, that is, faithful, I should have inserted the figures of men naturally graceful, and who, with their oriental genius, have adapted themselves to a city built by a people which exist no where, for Petersburg has been constructed by wealthy men, whose minds were formed by comparing, without deep study, the different countries of Europe. This legion of travellers, more or less refined, and rather skilful than learned, formed an artificial nation, a community of intelligent and clever characters, recruited from among all the nations of the world. They did not constitute the Russian people. These are roguish as the slave, who consoles himself by privately ridiculing his master ; superstitious, boastful, brave and idle as the soldier; poetical, musical, and contemplative as the shepherd; for the habits of a nomade people for a long time prevailed among the Slavonians. All this is in keeping neither with the style of the architecture nor
302 CHURCH ARCHITECTURE IN RUSSIA.
with the plan of the streets in Petersburg: there has been evidently no connection between the architect and the inhabitant. Peter the Great built the city against the Swedes rather than for the Russians ; but the natural character of its popiuation betrays itself, notwithstanding their respect for the caprices of their master; and it is to this inyohmtary disobedience that Russia owes its stamp of originality. Nothing can efface the primitive character of its people; and this triumph of innate faculties over an ill-directed education is an interesting spectacle to every traveller capable of appreciating it.
Happily for the painter and the poet, the Russians possess an essentially religious sentiment. Their churches, at least, are their own. The unchangeable form of these pious edifices is a part of their religion, and superstition defends her sacred fortresses against the mania for mathematical figures in freestone, oblongs, planes and straight lines ; in short, against the military, rather than classic architecture, which imparts to each of the cities of this land the air of a camp destined to remain for a few weeks during the performance of some grand manoeuvres.
The genius of a nomade race is equally recognised in the various vehicles and harness, the carriages and the drowska already described. The latter is so small as quite to disappear under those who occupy it. Its singular appearance, as it passes rapidly between long straight lines of very low houses, over which are seen the steeples of a multitude of churches and other buildings, may be easily imagined.
These gilded or painted spires break the monotonous line of roofs, and rise in the air with shafts so tapered,
GENERAL VIEW OF PETERSBURG.303
that the eye can scarcely distinguish the point where their gilding is lost in the mists of a polar sky. They are of Asiatic origin, and appear to be of a height which, for their diameter, is truly extraordinary. It is impossible to conceive how they maintain themselves in air.
Let the reader picture to himself an assemblage of domes, to which are attached the four belfries necessary to constitute a church among the modern Greeks; a multitude of cupolas covered with gold, silver, or azure ; palace roofs of emerald green, or ultra-marine; srpiares ornamented with bronze statues.: an immense river bordering and serving as a mirror to the picture — let him add to it the bridge of boats thrown across the river's broadest part — the citadel, where sleep in their unornamented tombs Peter the Great and his family*, and an island covered with edifices built after the model of Grecian temples — let him embrace in one view the whole of these varied parts, and he will understand how Petersburg may be infinitely picturesque, notwithstanding the bad taste of its borrowed architecture, the marshes which surround it, the unbroken flatness of its site, and the pale dimness of its finest summer days.
Let me not be reproached for my contradictions : i have myself perceived them without wishing to avoid them, for they lie in the things which I contemplate. I could not give a true idea of objects that I describe, if I did not often seem to contradict myself. If I were less sincere, I should appear more consistent;. but in physical as in moral order, truth
* The Greek rite forbids sculpture in churches.
304SUBLIMITY OF THE ENVIRONS
is only an assemblage of contrasts — contrasts so glaring, that it might be said nature and society have been created only in order to hold together elements which would otherwise oppose and repel each other.
Nothing can be more dull than the sky of Petersburg at midday ; but the evenings and mornings, whose twilight occupies three quarters of the whole period of life, are admirable. The summer sun, which is submerged for a moment about midnight, continues for a long time to float along the horizon on a level with the Neva and the lowlands through which it flows. It sheds over the waste, streams of light brilliant enough to beautify nature in her most cheerless aspect. But it is not the enthusiasm produced by the deep colouring of tropic landscapes which this beauty inspires, it is the attraction of a dream, the irresistible influence of a sleep full of memories and of hopes. The promenade of the islands at this hour is the image of a real idyll. No doubt there are many things wanting in these scenes to constitute pictures good as compositions, but nature has more power than art on the imagination of man; her simple aspect suffices under every zone to supply that necessity for admiring which exists in the soul. God has reduced the earth in the vicinity of the pole to the extreme of flatness and nudity; but notwithstanding this poverty, the spectacle of creation will always, in the eye of man, be the most eloquent interpreter of the designs of the Creator. May there not be beauty in the bald head ? For my part, I find the environs of Petersburg more than beautiful: they have a sad and sombre dulness about them which is sublime, and which, in the depth of its
OF ST. PETERSBURG.305
impression, rivals the richness and variety of the most celebrated landscapes of the earth. They present no pompous, artificial work, nor agreeable invention, but a profound solitude, a solitude terrible and beautiful as death. From one end of her plains, from one shore of her seas to the other, Russia hears that voice of God which nothing can silence, and which says to man, puffed up with the contemptible magnificence of his miserable cities, ' Your labour is vain, I am still the greatest! ' Often a countenance devoid of beauty has more expression, and engraves itself on our memory in a manner more ineffaceable than those regular traits which display neither passion nor sentiment. Such is the effect of our instinct of immortality, that the things which most highly interest an inhabitant of eai`th are those which speak to him of something unearthly.
Нолу admirable is the power of the primitive endowment of nations ! For more than a hundred years the higher classes of Russians, the nobles, the learned, and the powerful of the land, have been begging ideas and copying models from all the communities of Europe; and yet this absurd phantasy of princes and courtiers has not prevented the people from remaining; original.*
The finely endowed Slavonic race has too delicate a touch to mingle indiscriminately with the Teutonic people. The German character has even at this day a less affinity with the Russian than has the Spanish, with its cross of Arab blood. Slowness, heaviness,
* This reproach, which applies to Peter I. and his immediate successors, completes the eulogy of the Emperor Nicholas, who has begun to stem the torrent of the mania.
Л06RUSSIANS AND SPANIARDS.
coarseness, timidity and awkwardness have nothing in common with the genius of the Slavonians. They would rather endure vengeance and tyranny. Even the German virtues are odious to the Russians ; thus, in a few years the latter, notwithstanding their religious and political atrocities, have made greater progress in public opinion at Warsaw* than the Prussians, notwithstanding the rare and solid qualities which distinguish the German people. I
