N^ ^Aavyaiii^"^^' ^i]]3NV-Mir<^ '^/s}\l^M\^^ -7,viv}ifl V. ^v ;! >o sKiSAvCFLfr..^ vr- -, ;- ( J.I':.. ! 1 ? ^NlllPKAliV'.. U|7 -:A.^FC m^ %OJiiVDJu^ ^'%!j!iV.) iu^ ^^\\^LMlV[R.\7/^_ ^v^AOS-ASTilfx^ .JJtr: . ,.-v '/, - -. ,- v'v 4J 1 i k^n % t h^X :-5 .K:i 1 1 { c-MJ / .[{ \'\ A 'i' -U^-^ m A JOURNEY ST. PETERSBURG AND MOSCOW THROUGH COURLAND AND LIVONIA. LEITCH RITCHIE, Es^. AUTHOR OF "turner's ANNUAL TOUR," " SCHIN DERH ANNES," &C. WITH TWENTY-FIVE SPLENDID ENGRAVINGS, BY THE FIRST ARTISTS. AFTER DRAWINGS, BY A. G. VICKERS, Esq. LONDON : LONGMAN, REES, ORME, BROWN, GREEN, AND LONGMAN. T. WARDLE, PHILADELPHIA. 1836. LONDON : PRINTED BY J. HADDON AND CO., DOCTORS" COMilONS. ^ rr ADVERTISEMENT. The former volumes of the Picturesque Annual, although aspiring to a permanent place in the library, were yet written with some re- ference to the character of drawing-room table books stamped upon them by their gorgeous binding and exquisite engravings. When the author, however, undertook to travel in Russia, a country about which so many conflicting opinions have been published, he thought he would best consult the advantage of the public by making his book a work entirely of infor- mation, and allowing whatever amusement it might contain to depend upon the nature of the facts communicated. A nVERTISEMENT. It was with this idea he set out upon the journey, and he soon found reason to con- gratulate himself upon his decision. He has not indulged either in theory or controversy. He has given a plain account of what he saw vfc^ith his own eyes, and heard with his own ears ; and however much the narrative may in some parts be condemned by former tra- vellers and their admirers, he is conscious that it will one day receive credit for its truth. The critical reader is requested to bear in mind the manifest inadequacy of the space afforded by this little volume. The author hopes very soon to have leisure to make use of the rest of his materials. CONTENTS. Chapter 1. Entrance into Russia Riga 3. Journey from Riga to St, Petersburg I. Origin and construction of the City 5. Pliysical aspect 6. Street scenery ^religion churches 7. Remarkable edifices 8. Remarkable edifices continued 9. Progress of civilization 10. State of society literature statistics 11. Journey from St. Petersburg to Moscow 12. Physical aspect of the city 13. Street scenery 11. Manners .... 15. Charitable Institutions 16. Sights .... 17. Police Population Statistics Page 1 20 30 48 61 82 102 117 139 153 167 183 2G0 213 227 238 218 ENGRAVINGS, FR05I DRAWINGS BY ALFRED GEORGE VICKERS, ESQ. Page 1. Tower of the Nikolskoi Church (vignette) . 71 2. Troitskoi Bridge 4-7 3. Admiralty Square 67 4. Nevskoi Prospekt ...... 83 5. Kazan Church and Bridge . . . .98 6. Kazan Church, interior 100 7. Colonnade of the Kazan Church . . 101 8. Smolnoi Convent, froji the Neva . . . 107 9. Fortress and Church of St. Peter and St. Paul 112 10. Exchange, from the Neva 117 11. Isaak's Bridge and Admiralty .... 123 12. Alexandrine Column 136 13. Hay Market 162 li. Admiralty, from the palace quay . . . 166 15. Moscow, from the Nieskooshni Gardens . . 187 16. Church of Vassili Blagennoi .... 188 17. Holy Gate 201 18. Interior of the Grand Cathedral of the As- sumption 204 19. Tower of Ivan Velikoi 208 20. Nikolskoi Gate of the Kremlin . . . 213 21. Stone Bridge 216 22. Moscow, from the Esplanade of the Kremlin 226 23. Kremlin, from the Quay 233 24. Krasnoi Square and Gate of Vladimir . . 240 25. Kremlin, from the right bank of the Moskva 256 .^ ERRATUM. The engraving at page 136 is a view of the Alexandrine Column, and not of the ceremony of its coronation, as is there stated. The author referred by mistake to another of the artist's drawings, which is not yet published. A JOURNEY ST. PETERSBURG AND MOSCOW CHAPTER I. Departure from Metnel frontiers of Prussia on the Baltic entrance into Russia douane reflections preliminary to the inquiries that are to follow Russian inns change of climate living on the road amusements scenery pea- santry arrival at Mittau and detention there by the gover- nor the town and its inhabitants Jew-smugglers beards and costumes departure. In the middle of April, 1835, I set out from IMemel, the last frontier town of Prussia on the Baltic, with the intention of visiting St. Petersburg and ]Moscow, and returning to England by the way of Warsaw, Berlin, and Hamburg. At St. Petersburg I hoped to become acquainted with IModern Russia, and to be enabled to form some idea of the real progress of her civilization, in so far at least, as this is indicated in tlie manners of the B I A JOURNEY IN RUSSIA. people ; at ^Moscow, in the heretofore capital of the Tsars, I should find myself in the very heart of the ancient empire, where the tribes and nations of the distant dependencies still resort as to a common centre ; and in Poland an opportunity would present itself of studying the character of the most interesting of the conquered provinces, the preservation of which costs more in blood, and tears, and money than a whole continent is worth. iNIy carriage, the best I could obtain for hire iu iVIemel, resembled a diligence, which, having fallen into superannuation and decay, had been cut down for private use ; and this machine was drawn \>\ three horses abreast, the leader being very well worthy of his dignity, by nearly two feet of advantage over the others in point of stature. The driver was a tall, hale, ruddy old man, with a physiognomy strongly expressive of the quiet good humour of the Prussians. Like the postillions of his country, he rarely used his whip, preferring to yield rather than resort to violence ; and as rarely did he give himself the trouble either of remonstrating or encouraging by words. In England this mode of government could not exist, for there the horses are (mly permitted to see straight forward ; and, to comprehend their master behind, they must be nuxde both to hear and feel. In Prussia their eyes are uncovered, and it is curious to observe the anxious attention with which they watch the motions of the, to them, harmless \\\\\\^. The road, soon after leaving the town, conducted us into a wilderness of sand and water, where it EXIT FROM PRUSSIA. 3 seemed, by the wheel tracts, that each carriage was in the habit of choosing its own way. Having traversed Prussia in its greatest length my eyes were not un- accustomed to scenery of the kind ; but I question whether even in the deserts of Brandenburg, in the midst of which stands the capital like a city transported thither by enchantment from the habit- able world there can any thing be seen more dreary and desolate. We at length reached a solitary habitation, appar- ently a toll-house. The bar, painted with the royal colours, black and white, was raised. No one ap- peared either to exact dues, or to question the passer- by as to his whereabout ; but the coachman stopped at the door, and took in my passport. In a minute or two he returned and we resumed our journey, and I found that I had passed through one of the entrance or exit gates of Prussia. The desert became still more desolate, and tlie wind began to moan with that strange unearthly sound which it has in lonely places, over tracts of snow or sand. To the left, the wilderness was bound in by the distant Baltic as with a girdle, only distinguishable from the sky, with which it mingled, by its deeper blue. Every where else fields of sand and morass extended to the verge of the horizon. This apparently was a neutral ground between the two countries; and it was with no small degree of curiosity that I awaited my introduction into Russia. The gate at length appeared, and its stripes of 4 A JOURNEY IN RUSSIA. black and white, the former colour edged with red, so nearly resembled those of Prussia that I began to fancy I had been premature. The next moment, however, the ring of arms upon the pavement re- assured me. As the carriage entered, it was stopped by Cossacks with fixed bayonets ; and one mounting behind, I was thus driven like a prisoner of state, to the douane. The door of this house was guarded by armed sentinels, and in a room opening into the one Avhere my luggage was examined, a Cossack stood, like a wooden figure, with fixed bayonet. The examining officers were in uniform, and wore swords ; but they were not otherwise difi'erent from their brethren of England or France, than by a gentlemanly courtesy, which in those countries appears to be considered out of the way of the profession. They exhibited none of the vulture-like eagerness about trifles which renders the customhouse even of London at once vexatious and ridiculous; and so far from turning over my things like Jew-clothesmen, they were only anxious to prevent the attendants from disturbing their arrangement.* I must add that of the few books I had, only one was opened. ]\Iy passport, however, was an affair not so easily managed. The questions they put were innunier- On this subject every traveller differs, not only from otlier. but irom himself. The conduct of the customhouse officers varies at every port and with every change of individuals ; and it may be well to remark that the last time I visited London (since writing the text; I had nothing' whatever to coniplain of. ATTEMPT AT EXTORTION. O able, and the entries made in consequence by the clerk, would have sufficed for a memoir. At length all was over ; and willingly granting the request made openly by the attendants for a small gratuity, I pursued my journey, marvelling not a little at the complaints made by some former travellers of the hardships and indignities they had endured from the frontier police of Russia. I was not destined, however, to escape with abso- lute ease myself. At a distance of two or three hundred yards, at the entrance of a small village, we were again stopped by soldiers with fixed bayonets, and my passport again demanded. I confess I gave it with reluctance, being unable to conceive what purpose all this could serve ; and when one of them coolly stepped into the carriage, and desired me to open my portmanteau for the second time, it was Avith a very bad grace indeed I obeyed. But when the fellow, after putting me to this unnecessary, and as I was convinced, unlawful trouble, demanded money, my trifling stock of patience failed me all on a sudden^ and I ordered the coachman to drive on. The man hesitated, and looked, or affected to look alarmed, and the soldiers persisted more clamour- ously; but when I attempted to leap out of the carriage in order to return to the douane to com- plain, they raised the siege at once, and their curses, " not loud but deep," mingled with the rattle of the wheels as we drove on. I told this anecdote after- wards to the Chief of the Secret Police at St. Petersburg, and perhaps the nuisance exists no b2 ^ 6 A JOURNEY IN RUSSIA. more; but in case it should still continue, I now relate the circumstance for the benefit of quietly disposed travellers. These persons should throw the beggarly ruffians a small silver coin on their pass- port being demanded, and desire their coachman to proceed. We speedily entered a forest, in which we wan- dered the whole day, and where I had nothing more amusing than my own reflections to beguile the time. These were naturally occupied with the country I had entered. It seemed to me that I was already able to account for the conflicting statements even of the most recent travellers, and that at my first step into Russia, I had seen both sides of the medal. It would be illiberal and unbecoming to charge some of my predecessors with prejudice ; for this, when applied to a traveller to one who sees the world in its different forms, and mankind in their difl'erent phases, amounts to a cliarge of absolute stupidity ; but surely they have not weighed with due attention the remarkable circumstances in which this very remarkable nation has been placed. M. Bachoutsky, a Russian author, gives himself the trouble of quoting an inquiry into the relative degree of civilization of the great nations of Europe at recent periods l)ut this is all in vain. The insulated facts from wliicli he would reason, can no more be taken as evidences of the character of a people, than a stone as a sample of a building. No sophistry can conceal the truth tliat a century ago the old nations of Europe \vere not greatly diftVrent, RUSSIAN CIVILIZATION. J in the moral features of civilization^ from what they are now, and that at the same period the Russians were in a state of the darkest barbarism. The boiars lived in their chateaux, whether at INIoscow or in the provinces, plunged in all the ignorance of the feudal age. Their character was not elevated by a single trait even of that fantastic species of refine- ment which forms the poetical charm of the times of chivalry. Their women were at the same time secluded like Eastern slaves, and insulted, beaten, and occasionally murdered with impunity, like the wives of savages. Their religion was half paganism, or more than half; and Panitsa, the Venus of the heathen, jostled the Virgin Mary even in the temples. Such was the chaos in which the elements of a great people were plunged when the genius of Peter the Great first " moved upon the face of the waters." This man, rude in his manners, fierce in his passions, and vulgar in his tastes and habits, was in some respects no bad representative of his country; but in the finer part of his nature, he was one of those intellectual giants who appear at long intervals among meaner men, like a comet among the stars. Nay, his very rudeness rendered him the better tamer of a rude people. No tricks of refinement, no Machiavellian cunning would have had any effect in a case like this. Peter carried his purposes into execu- tion by the strong hand. He compelled his subjects to assume the manners, well knowing that this would bring about in time the reality, of civilization ; and 8 A JOURNEY IN RUSSIA. rushing in upon the old boiar in his native woods, he shaved his beard by main force, "And dragged the struggling savage into day." That absolute power is in itself a prodigious evil no one can deny, but in this case it Avas productive of positive good. At any rate, when the creations of absolute power are beneficial to the people, they are necessarily destructive of itself a fact which will probably receive some illustration in the course of this work. The successors of Peter, however, trod stea- dily in the same path. In particular his wife, Catherine I., the licentious Catherine II., the late emperor Alexander, all pursued, and his present majesty still pursues, the wise plans of their great prototype. What have they effected ? Of that I hope to obtain some idea in the course of my tour ; ])ut it is necessary, on setting out, to ascertain the time afforded for the ripening of these gigantic plans, and for the execution of their multitudinous details. It is true that the Emperor Alexis laid the first step, the vantage ground, from which his son was one day to take his magnificent flight ; but with Peter himself commenced the real civilization of the Russians. Since his death there have elapsed one hundred and ten years; but of these only .seiciitij have been occupied by the above-mentioned princes, while the remainder is divided among the coni- })aratively unproductive reigns of Peter II., Anne. Ivan, Elizabeth, Peter III., and the unhapi)y Paul. FOREST-INNS. 9 We thus arrive at the true data on which to pro- ceed, and the only one which will enable the tra- veller to form a correct estimate of the character of the Russian nation, and of the present condition and prospects of the country. With these data in his mind, the stranger will either exclaim conscien- tiously against the ignorance and stupidity of the people in having effected so little; or he will inquire in astonishment, how they could have done so much in so short a period. What a pity it is that philo- sophers so rarely travel ; or, at least, in sending us of the staff and wallet to fetch materials, that they do not lend us their own spectacles ! About mid-day we halted for dinner at an inn in the middle of the forest. The inns on this road are all of the same construction ; and, although very unlike such places in France or England, are by no means uncomfortable. The coachman knocks at an immense door, and horses, carriage, and all, are driven into the house. The traveller finds himself in a vast oblong haU, surrounded by the equipages of other travellers, and at the further end of which there is another door for his exit. The postillions are mending their tackle, the horses feeding, and flights of fowls fluttering and screaming around as they contest with one another the scattered grains of corn. Confused by the noise and darkness visible of the place, he is guided by his coachman to a side door, which opens into the portion of the house destined for the reception of two-legged guests ; and here he finds a suite, generally of three or four large 10 A JOURNEY IN RUSSIA. rooms, in any one of wliich he may establish himself for his meal. The furniture of these rooms, although cheap, is extremely handsome ; the chairs and tables being made of birch brilliantly polished, and, when new, bearing a strong resemblance to satin-wood. The walls are covered with bad prints, chiefly English, and the window-sills with flowering plants, even in the depth of winter. During that season, and, indeed, for eight months of the year, every apart- ment is a true hot-house, the atmosphere being kept up to a certain high temperature by stoves. The windows are double that is to say, there are two glazed window-frames in each aperture, a single pane of Avhich is made to open, so as to render a change of atmosphere in the room at least possible ; while every other joint or seam is carefully pasted over with paper. In each apartment, it must be added, there are three or four beds ; but these, being extremely narrow, take up no more room than a sofa, as it is not the custom here for the husband and wife to occupy the same couch. My dinner consisted of a white soup, made of milk, butter, vegetables, and sucki?ig pig, together with a portion of roasted turkey. The meal upon the whole, notwithstanding the blackness and sour- ness of the bread, Avas very acceptable to a hungry traveller : but, alas ! with me it was " toujours perdrix !" for live consecutive days I could get nothing else to eat than white soup and roasted turkey. CHANGE OF CLI3IATE. 11 At the inn where I slept I found a clean and comfortable bed, although the chambermaid had the atrocity almost to insist upon my sleeping in one close to the hot stove ; and I was lulled to sleep by the songs of a large company of peasants assembled in the kitchen. Some of them' sung in parts, while the others contributed the chorus. The music was in general simple and mournful, and many of the voices were singularly sweet. In the morning as we resumed our journey, I felt very sensibly that I had been travelling northward for some weeks. When I left Paris the weather was almost disagreeably warm ; while here, the pools by the road side were covered with ice, and the trees clothed in their winter finery of hoar- frost. As the beams of the early sun slanted tlirough the branches, the effect was the most beau- tiful imaginable. The fable of the JMagician's gar- den seemed to be realized, for every leaf was hung with sapphires, rubies, and emeralds. The trees were chietly pines, with here and there a few birches, gleaming with a spectral whiteness through the mysterious gloom ; and below there was almost always an underwood of juniper, and a rich green carpet of blaeherrij hushes. We at length emerged from this seemingly inter- minable forest, and the view opened suddenly, dis- closing numerous farmsteads and cottages scattered over the face of rather a picturesque country. The road led across a rapid stream, someA\hat violent in \vinter, if one may judge by the strength of the 12 A JOURNEY IN RUSSIA. breakwaters. These did not form a part of the bridge ; but, as is customary in Russia, were con- structed at a distance of a good many feet. This description of view was closed by the first country seat I had seen since passing the frontiers. The ground story of the building was white, and the upper red, but notwithstanding, the eifect was far from being disagreeable. Beyond this, the scene changed into a most desolate heath, interspersed with small pools, with woods and hills in the distance. At the inn where we dined this day the room was hung with living ivy, festooned with great regu- larity. It grew in little pots placed on the sills of the numerous windows. Having desired to taste at dinner some London porter of which the hostess boasted, it was set before me with sugar and a spoon ; and, seeing me reject these appendages, the good woman linjiered in the room with evident curiosity to watch how the nasty foreigner could otherwise swallow such a potion. This mode of serving English porter I afterwards found to be customary even in the larger towns. The scenery now improved every step we ad- vanced till it became absolutely picturesque, exhi- biting all the varieties of hill and vallev, wood and lake, with here and there patches of cultivated ground. At every house Ave passed there was one unfailing appendage a swing ; and the peasantry might be correctly described as being divided into two classes, those who were sA\'inging, and those who were waiting for a swinu'. I observed a mother SWING. 13 passing by with her child at her breast eye long- ingly the tempting apparatus. At that moment the seat became vacant^ and, giving the baby to another to hold, she ran to indulge herself in a swing. The girl who waited at dinner, when standing by the window, saw the swing unoccupied; and, pretend- ing to be called, immediately left the room. I saw her dart across the road, and into the swing ; and, when she had made three or four aerial courses, she came back satisfied. The men swing standing upon the seat, sometimes several at a time; the women in a sitting posture. This machine is occasionally made of hewn wood, in the form of a gallows ; but, in general, it consists of a branch of a tree fastened transversely between two pines near the top, with two slender trees hanging down from it instead of ropes, connected at the bottom by what serves for the seat. Neither hemp nor iron enters into the construction, the fastenings being all of tough roots and lichens. The next day the scenery was strangely diversi- fied, now exhibiting a desert of sand, and now a rich and picturesque country. We passed another rapid stream, by a flying bridge, leaving behind a village and chateau near the bank. As yet the Russian villages consisted merely of isolated dwell- ings, widely scattered, without any attempt at a general plan ; arising, as it would seem, partly from the cheapness of land, and partly from the difficulty of finding an area of productive ground sufficiently large for the whole community. In a picturesque 14 A JOURNEY IN RUSSIA. spot like this they are always a deformity. Their white walls and fiery red roofs give them the ap- pearance of the houses we see in a child's ])icture- book. Neither are the rural churches in this part of the country very poetical ohjects. They are surmounted ])y a short, sturdy, peremptory-looking cone, sheathed with tin or copper ; and are usually seen in isolated situations, where they serve as a conmion rendezvous for several A'illages. Glens, and \\'Oods, and vales, now opened and shut around us as we rolled past, with swelling hills in the dis- tance, or dark forests bounding tlie horizon. The peasants as yet were still in PJuropean cos- tume. Tliey wore a kind of tunic, cliiefiy of blue or grey cloth, and not unlike an English frock coat. Sometimes this was lined Avith sheep fur. The women exhibited little peculiarity in dress, and were inferior to the men in jiersonal appearance. The men appear fond of the inn kitchen, answerinelong to the river, that single spot more imme- diately and prominently presented to its percep- tions. Even making allowance, however, for such invo- luntary illusions, I cannot conceive how JMr. Rae Wilson could have supposed the fall to be a thousand feet broad, and four hundred and seventy-three feet high ! At the spot I allude to, where alone there is any thing at all resembling a fall, the river is just a hundred paces broad, and the descent of the water over the rocks is certainly within the computation of Herbinius twelve feet. The four hundred and seventy-three feet mentioned by Mr. Wilson, if not 44 A JOURNEY IN RUSSIA. a mistake altogether, must be the descent of the river in a course of at least half a mile. The account given by the old traveller Olearius, possesses a quality of imagination of quite a different kind, and its truth as well as beauty will strike every one who visits the Narova. " About half a league above this town," says he, " there is a fall of water, which makes a dreadful noise, and is so violent, that breaking upon the rocks it is reduced, as it were, to powder, which filling the air, affords a strange sight, by reason that the sun shining upon it, makes a kind of rainbow no less pleasant than that framed in the clouds." After leaving Narva (once a Hanseatic town !) we crossed the river Laga on a Hying bridge. It was now dark, and the embarkation took place by torch-light. The scene was worth the study either of a poet or painter ; and the tumbling, rushing, and roaring of the black waters of the river added enough of the idea of danger to keep our feelings on the stretch. The operation was superintended by soldiers in uniform, whose figures contrasted finely with those of the shaggy, sheepskinned peasants who conducted the moving bridge. When coach, horses, and passengers were at length fairly on board, and we found ourselves gliding out into the torrent, whose mystic forms were distorted by the lights that danced brokenly on the surges, I would not for a few minutes have exchanged feelings with any hero of romance who ever launched upon the sea of adventure, to tumble on for a time in danger, DISMAL SCENERY. 45 darkness, and mystery and then land safe and sound upon terra firma ! From this place to St. Petersburg, the scenery may be said to have been entirely without relief. As soon as there Avas light enough, a dreary flat presented itself, with here and there a jungle or morass, and a few huts on the brink of the cheerless horizon. As we advanced, this expanse became almost entirely covered with snow ; and groups of peasants, men and women, engaged in clearing it, amounting in all I should think to some thousands, lined the road. Occasionally the passengers were obliged to descend and wade through the snow themselves. Every thing gave us to understand that we had entered the government of St. Petersburg, where the climate is severer than in any other civilized country in the world ; and where at this moment the highway, covered with the snows of winter, and broken up by the thaws of spring, enjoyed the advantages of neither season. It was not till after we had crossed the flying- bridge that we had fairly entered Russia. Till then w8 had traversed the governor-generalships of Courland and Livonia, and a portion of that of Esthonia, of which the capitals are Mittau, Riga, and Revel. The inhabitants of those provinces in the middle ages were various struggling tribes, afterwards conquered successively by Russians, Poles, Danes, Swedes, and Germans. Under so many masters, the people of course sunk into the lowest state of servage ; and, indeed, it was not till 46 A JOURNEY IN RUSSIA. the late reign that any general attempt was made to elevate them to their proper rank in the creation. While the peasants remain in a state of ignorance, the proprietors will, as a matter of course, remain poor. This is, in a great measure, the condition of both at present, but a rapid change for the better is in progress. The system of territorial loan-banks, which prevails in all the three provinces, is one great means of keeping up the resources of the landholders. These banks lend to the proprietor upon mortgage, in such a manner, that if the interest is regularly paid the principal can never be de- manded. If the interest is not paid, the bank takes the estate into its own hands, and continues to manage it till the deficiency is made up ; and the land then returns to its owner. In Courland there is this difference, that a small sinking fund upon the principal is required every year. In Courland, also, the interest is five per cent, while in Livonia and Esthonia it has been reduced from that rate to four. On quitting Esthonia the change in the appear- ance of the population is very perceptible, and not very pleasing. Some of the women of that province, in spite of their lank yellow hair, are tolerably good looking ; while here, the fair sex as yet are clad with just as little regard to the picturesque; and are besides we speak it under correction stumpy and ugly- It was the middle of the night before we reached St. Petersburg. The streets were deserted, except bv the watchmen, who stood here and there at ARRIVAL AT ST. PETERSBURG. 47 regular distances, each armed with a pole-axe. Every thing was as silent as the grave ; and at an hour when London is traversed by hurrying crowds, and the houses shaken by the roll of carriages, I found the great northern metropolis buried in pro- found slumber. My first impression was amazement at the gigantic scale on which the city appeared to be laid out, and the stupendous forms of the objects around me ; but when we rolled past the magnificent bridge over the Fontanka. I could hardly contain my impatience till the morning. With the accurate and beautiful representation of this bridge, and the church of the Trinity in the neighbourhood, which is annexed, I bespeak the interest of the reader for the notices I am about to lay before him of the various parts of St. Petersburg. We at length reached the Diligence Hotel, an advertisement of which, boasting, among other advantages, of its reasonable terms, I had seen in every inn on the road, and here I took up my abode for the remainder of the night. Here too I had reason to be surprised at the great scale on which things are conducted in St. Petersburg : the price of a bed-room, destitute of almost every comfort and convenience, was five rubles ! CHAPTER IV. Origin of St. Petersl)urg first appearance of Peter the Great on the banks of the Neva idea of the localities construc- tion of the fortress manner of building progress of the works the log-hut palace intlux of population myste- rious marriage of the Tsar marriage of the dwarfs- funeral of the dwarf- husband first book printed at St. Petersburg compulsory increase of the city discontent of the people triumph and death of the Tsar. The site of Petersburg may be said to have belonged from time immemorial to the Russians. The republic of Novgorod may be looked upon as a rebel power springing up in times of tumult and disaster; and when Ivan III. in the fifteenth century, brought under his s\\'ay the whole of its dependencies, he only gathered together the divided provinces of Russia. The Neva was then, as it had been for several centuries before, the grand highway of the external commerce of Novgorod ; and Ingria on the left THE EMPEROR-CAPTAIN. 49 bank^ and Carelia on the right, had been more than once a debatable land of bloodshed between the forces of the republic and those of the invading Swedes. The latter at length, after experiencing various fortunes, in the course of -which they were sometimes masters of the province, and were some- times expelled, taking advantage of the distracted state of the country in the beginning of the seven- teenth century, obtained firm possession of Ingria and Carelia, which eventually were surrendered to them in 1617 by the treaty of Stolbof. The Swedes made good use of their conquest. They built a town called Nyen, at the confluence of the Okhta with the Neva (nearly opposite the Smolnoi monastery of to-day) which became, although only for a short time, a famous mart of commerce. Peter the Great, however, was not likely to allow the maritime frontiers of his kingdom to remain long in the hands of a foreign power. He directed his utmost resources to the re-conquest of the Neva ; and in the month of April, 1703, we find him, in the rank of a captain of grenadiers, marching under the orders of his own general, along those wild and dreary banks where a stupendous city was one day to be called into being by the enchantments of his genius. The fortress of Nyen soon fell, and a Swedish fleet which, unconscious of the circumstance, appeared at the mouth of the river, was destroyed by a party in boats headed by the Tsar in person. Peter was thus master of the Neva, the grand avenue of com- F 50 A JOURNEY IN RUSSIA. merce to the centre of his dominions ; and the question naturally became, how to secure the con- quests he had gained. The whole country around was a forest or a marsh. The darkness of these primeval woods was only relieved here and there by a gleam of water, which showed that they Avere nearly impassable by the foot of man. A few huts on the edge of the river were tenanted by savage natives, who lived upon the fish of the Neva, and the rewards they sometimes received for piloting the Swedish barks up the stream. It was here the Tsar determined to found a mighty and magnificent city. Before the Neva falls into the Gulf of Finland, it sends off two branches to the right, and the three streams form the grand outline of its delta. Exactly midway between these two branches, there was a very small island, separated from the right bank only by a narrow channel. The main body of the river, therefore, was in its front, the small channel behind, and behind that an immense morass ; while on either side an arm of the Neva embraced the morass, of which they formed an island. It was this spot which Peter chose for his citadel ; and here he set to work with an earnestness of enthusiasm, a " regia animositas," which has few parallels in history. It was necessary to elevate the surface of the little island by means of earth transferred from other places to cut timber to transport stones even before the actual task of constructing the fortress MANNER OF BUILDING. 51 commenced ; and the number of labourers required was, therefore, immense. These consisted not only of the troops of the Swedish prisoners of the neighbouring Ingrians and Carelians even of the people of Olonetz and Novgorod ; but also of vast numbers of labourers from the interior governments of the empire of Cossacks, Tatars, Kalmuks, brought hither from their distant solitudes to build a city between the Baltic and the White Sea. Forty thousand men were thus employed at one time ; races, tongues, and creeds were intermixed ; and the young women of the Neva, the mothers of the future capital, received husbands from the banks of the Don and the Volga. To provide instruments of labour for such u multitude would have swallowed up a revenue much greater than Peter's. Besides, that was their own affair. The Tsar merely commanded them to do such a thing he did not interfere with the mode in which they were to set about it. They had neither pickaxes, nor hatchets, nor shovels, nor carts ; but they had their fingers to dig, their hands wherewith to carry, and, if more was necessary, they could turn their caftans into sacks. In this manner the work progressed with a rapidity which seems astonishing. In a few weeks the face of nature Avas changed, and instead of two fishing-huts in ruins, the only original habitations on the island, their arose the walls of a formidable fortress. It is needless to say, that in the meantime the Avorkmen slept upon the damp ground, and in the open air ; and that it was very 52 A JOURNEY IN UUSSIA. often a matter of impossibility in such a wilderness as this, to supply forty thousand Elijahs with their daily meal. The building of St. Petersburg it is calculated, cost the lives of upwards of three hundred thousand men. In four months the fortress was completed, and named in honour of the apostle. It contained a wooden church dedicated to the apostles Peter and Paul, on the three spires of which a ship's Hag was hoisted on Sundays and festivals. The roofs of the houses were covered, in the Finnish fashion, with turf or birch bark. To the south of the church, where the commandant's house is now placed, there was a corps de garde, with two ornaments in front curiously characteristic of the time and the country. These were the wooden figure of a horse with its back forming an edge as sharp as could be produced, and a post surrounded by a narrow circle of stakes, the upper ends cut to a fine point. On the horse convicted culprits were seated astride ; on the post they were placed standing. The imperial palace was not in the fortress but close by. It was a common log-house, fifty-six feet long and twenty-one broad, and contained two apartments, one on each side of the door, and a little bedroom the breadth of the passage to fill up. This edifice was painted outside to resemble brick; and the interior, instead of tapestry, was hung ^vith coarse canvass painted white. The ceiling, \\ith its large rude joints, was covered in like manner ; and the ridce of the roof was adorned with a mortar in HUT-PALACE. 53 the centre, and at each end with a bomb in sculp- tured wood. IM. Bachoutsky calls the bed-room a kitchen ; but its only entrance is from one of the principal apartments, and besides it is covered, roof and walls, with white canvass like the others. The kitchin doubtless was altogether apart from the cottage, according to a custom very general in the Russian houses. MenchikoiF, the favourite, lived immediately opposite the Tsar, but in so spacious a house that his master was fain to borrow it some- times on the occasion of grand audiences. These, with the tents and huts which the workmen noAv began to construct in preparation for the approaching winter, formed the city of St. Petersburg one hundred and thirty -two years ago. In the following two years, many private houses were built near the imperial abode, all of wood, all of one story, without court, and without any general plan ; und on the opposite, or left bank of the Neva, a range of humble cottages began to line the river. The population increased daily. The Tatars and Kalmuks, and other workmen from distant parts of the empire, were contented to sit down, after their labours at the fortress were over, and to find on the Gulf of Finland an abiding place and a continuing city. Fins, Esthonians, Livonians, all Hed from the tumult of war, and took refuge under the wings of the imperial eagle. Even the Swedes themselves who had been driven from their homes, came to beg for refuge in St. Petersburg. Tradesmen, labourers, sailors, flocked hither in thousands with their wives f2 54 A JOURNEY IN RUSSIA. and families, in search of a subsistence ; and, as a natural consequence of this sudden increase of in- habitants, the new city became the resort of pedlars and merchants of every description. All were welcomed with open arms. Land and timber were given away in profusion. The captain of the first foreign ship a Dutchman received a present of five hundred ducats, and each of the crew three hundred dollars. Thus the great work went on, with a rapidity which, if all these accompanying circumstances were unknown, would be reckoned marvellous, if not incredible. The intelligent reader will here observe, without any suggestion of mine, the origin of that religious toleration which at the present day has set down in this city no fewer than seven diflferent temples of seven different creeds, in a single street. When the priests of the other churches have occasion to men- tion the Greek fiiith, they call it merely -what it really is, the " dominant " or prevailing " religion of the country." Ill 1707 the streets of St. Petersburg already began to take some form, for the Tsar Avas discon- tented with their irregularity; and some ship-building yards were established on the site of those of the present Admiralty. Towards the winter of that year Peter again visited the city, and proceded as usual to his cabin-palace near the fortress. At nightfall he ordered his sledge, and stepping into it with a lady, desired Bruce, the commandant, to get up behind. They dashed across the river, which MYSTERIOUS MARRIAGE 00 was frozen over, turned to the rights in tlie direction which leads to the sea, and plunging through the woods Avhich covered their savage tract, arrived at a little wooden church near the embouchure of the Fontanka. The little church was almost buried in snow, but they contrived to effect an entrance ; and Bruce having led in a priest, and lighted a few feet around them by means of a solitary lamp, Peter the Great was there and then married to the Empress Catharine the First. What church this was it is impossible now to say, and even the precise date of these extraordinary nuptials is unknown to history ! It is not my hint to speak of the various perils undergone by the infant city. It surmounted them all ; and in the seventh year of its existence was the scene of a ceremony very different from the above. Peter liked all ceremonies of which he himself was not the ostensible hero. If his destiny had con- nected him with the stage, he would have been a prompter and not an actor. Nay, he carried this kind of modesty so far that it actually amounted to mauvaise honte, and caused him to blush like a girl. This was particularly observed at the public and brilliant reception of the Persian ambassador in 1723, three years after he had received the richly merited titles of Peter the Great, Father of his Country, and Emperor of all the Russias. On the present occasion, however, the nuptials of his niece the Tsarevna Anna Ivanovna with the Duke of Courland, presented the first public spectacle on an extended scale which the citizens of Petersbur"; 56 A JOURNEY IN RUSSIA. had seen. The imperial family, the foreign minis- ters, and the principal grandees of Russia, were present ; and these had the satisfaction of seeing the greatest man of his age enact the part of master of the ceremonies at a girl's wedding. Peter performed his duty with the same zealous enthusiasm which distinguished the founder of Petersburg, and the conqueror of Pultava, He paraded the streets in his quality of first marshal of the day, with music playing before him ; and during the banquet went round the table, decorated with an immense shoul- der-knot of lace and ribbons, serving the guests, and forcing them to do justice to the good things he set before them. It is not upon record that he actually pocketed the keys of the house ; but we know that it was expressly forbidden to any one to retire without leave of the Tsar ; which leave was not granted till two o'clock in the mornino;. The entertainment which followed, given by MenchikofF, the favourite of the Tsar, is well known, at Avhich two dwarfs were served up to the com- pany in two gigantic pies. The Russian grandees have always been fond of dwarfs, and are so, in some instances, at the present day; and Peter, more especially, who was a man of splendid genius, but not a miracle, delighted in these unfortunate acci- dents of nature.* The famous iNIarriage of the Dwarfs, Avhich took place also on the occasion of tlie * The dwarfs still to be seen in the houses of the Russian nobility, and I do not think they amount to inure than half a dozen for the wliole empire, are no lonirer buBoons but domestic servants. THE DWARFS. 57 above nuptials, is the most stupendous thing in little which the world ever beheld. Seventy-two dwarfs, of both sexes, were assem- bled at Petersburg to assist at the marriage. The little marshal of the day headed the cortege, and then, hand in hand, came the little bride and bride- groom. Immediately after their littlenesses came Peter the Great and his suite ; and then, two and two, the rest of the dwarfs and dwarfesses fol- lowed, as may well be supposed, by every living soul in St. Petersburg. The marriage ceremony took place in the church of Saint Peter and Saint Paul, in the fortress, and all then repaired to the hotel of MenchikoiF, where they partook of a splendid repast. One feels sorry to pursue the history of this singular union. Nine or ten months after, the poor bride died an agonizing death in bringing forth a dead child ; and the circumstance occasioned an edict against the marriage of dwarfs. The husband survived her a dozen years, but his life was embit- tered by his own bad conduct, and the consequent loss of the favour of the Tsar. His funeral, how- ever, was conducted with all the grotesque magnifi- cence of his bridal. The cortege assembled in that part of the Winter Palace which is near the Hermitage ; and, headed by six infant choristers, and the smallest priest that could be found in the city, took the way to the Nevski Prospekt. The dead body was carried in a hearse drawn by six dwarf ponies, guarding which on each side was a long 58 A JOURNEY IN RUSSIA. line of gigantic soldiers, clothed in black mantles, and each holding a lighted torch in his hand. The dwarfs then came, marching two and two, the males lirst, and the females after; but, on reaching the Nevski Prospekt, they were put into immense chariots, drawn by great horses. Here the em- peror, who had so far accompanied the procession, returned to his palace ; and the little mourners were driven on to lamska'ia, where they deposited their comrade in the eartli, according to the forms of the Greek church. About this epoch of the city the first post-house was built, and then the first tavern (frequented by Peter himself), and last, not least, the first printing establishment. For thirteen years before, the Rus- sian books had all been printed at Amsterdam, and previous to that period, at Moscow. The following is the title of the first book produced by the press of St. Petersburg, " The Book of Mars ; or exploits of the Russian warriors of his Tsarian JMajesty, at the taking of superb fortifications, and on different fields of battle, exploits executed against the troops of his Swedish Majesty." Although the city continued to increase with a rapidity approaching the marvellous, considering the nature of the ground, it failed to keep pace with the wishes of the Tsar. In 1714, he published an oukaz, compelling three hundred and fifty noble families to remove from IMoscow and other places, and build themselves houses in St. Petersburg, on the locations assigned to them. The same extraor- DEATH OF PETER. 59 dinary measure was taken with regard to the mer- chants and artizans, each of which classes was ordered forthwith to build three hundred houses. Peter also compelled his barbarian subjects to adopt the rules of politeness ; and^ by introducing assem- blies and soirees, and teaching his bears to dance, he rescued from a state of savage degradation, and elevated to her natural sphere in society, that civilizer of man Woman. The Russians, however, were not at that time qualified to comprehend and appreciate the designs of a man of genius ; and it required all the energy of Peter to sweep aside the obstacles that were per- petually thrown in his way. At one time, a spirit of prophecy seized the opponents of civilization, and a "Wo! wo!" was preached to the citizens, calling upon them to prepare for speedy destruction. On another occasion, the image of the Virgin in the church of the Trinity was made to shed tears. Murmurs were heard, and tumultuous meetings seen on all sides ; but the Tsar, turning neither to the right nor to the left, carried through his designs with the strong hand. If ever absolute sovereignty was beneficial to a people, it Avas in this instance. Peter efi'ected more in a single life-time than society left to itself could have achieved in many genera- tions. That valuable life was not much longer spared to Russia and mankind. Twenty-two years after the foundation of St. Petersburg, Peter the Great ter- minated his busy, useful, and glorious career. 60 A JOURNEY IN RUSSIA. To pursue further the advance of the city Avould far exceed the limits of my little book. The build- ing of palaces, besides, and the erection of monu- ments in the usual way are, comparatively speaking, vulgar and uninteresting affairs. Perhaps, how- ever, the reader will not grudge the few pages which I have devoted to the foregoing sketch. Such, at all events, could not fail to have been my reflections, or my inquiries, with my foot upon the threshold of St. Petersburg. CHAPTER y. First idea of the aspect of St. Petersburg want of individu- ality in its physical character grandeur of the scale on which it is built construction of the streets curious wooden pavement houses and mode of building general character of the city first idea of the population vehicles and drivers artizans and labourers dislike to machinery extraordinary ladder and scaffold perilous situations of the workmen mujik from the interior female peasants grand distinctive characteristic of the population. St. Petersburg has been frequently called "the most magnificent city in Europe/' but the expres- sion appears to me to be wholly destitute of meaning. Venice is a magnificent city^ so is Paris^ so is St. Petersburg ; but there are no points of comparison among them. St. Petersburg is a city of new houses, newly painted. The designs of some of them may be old, but the copies are evidently new. They imitate the classic models ; but they often imitate them badly, and there is always some- thing to remind one that they are not the genuine classic. They are like the images which the G 62 A JOURNEY IN RUSSIA. Italian boys carry about the thoroughfares of London ^''enuses de IVIedici and Belvidere Apollos, in stucco. But the streets are wide, and the walls painted white or light yellow ; and from one street opens another, and another, and another all wide, and white, and light yellow. And then, here and there, there are columned facades, and churches, and domes, and tapering spires all white too, that are not gilded, or painted a sparkling green. And canals sweep away to the right and left almost at every turning, not straight and Dutch-like, but bending gracefully, and losing themselves among the houses. And there is one vast and glorious river, as wide as the Thames at London, and a hundred times more beautiful, which rolls through the whole ; and, beyond it, from which ever side you look, you see a kindred mass of houses and palaces, white and yellow, and columned facades, and churches, and domes, and spires, gilded and green. The left bank of this river is a wall of granite, with a parapet and trottoir of the same material, extending for several miles ; and this forms one of the most magnificent promenades in Europe. The houses on either side look like palaces, for all are white, and many have columns ; and there are also absolute de facto palaces ; for instance, the Admi- ralty, the Winter Palace, and the iMarble Palace, on one side, and the Academy of Arts, on the other. The water in the middle is stirring Avith boats, NEVSKI PROSPEKT. 63 leaping and sweeping through the stream^ with lofty, old-fashioned sterns, painted and gilded within and without. Among the streets, there is one averaging the width of Oxford Street in London, sometimes less, sometimes a little more. It is lined with trees, and shops with painted shutters, and churches of half a dozen different creeds. Its shops, indeed, are not so splendid as ours, nor are their Avindows larger than those of private houses ; but the walls are white and clean, sometimes columned, sometimes pillastered, sometimes basso-relievoed : in fact, if you can imagine such a thing as a street of gi?i- palaces just after the painting season and that is a bold word you may form an idea scarcely exag- gerated of the Nevski Prospekt. But no analogy taken from London can convey an idea of the ^grandeur, I may venture to say, pre- sented by the vistas opening from the main street. Here there are no lanes, no alleys, no impasses, no nestling-places constructed of tilth and rubbish for the poor. These lateral streets are all parts of the main street, only diverging at right angles. The houses are the same in form and colour ; they appear to be inhabited by the same classes of society ; and the view is terminated, ever and anon by domes and spires. The whole, in short, is one splendid picture, various in its forms, but consistent in its character. Such were my first impressions thus thrown down at random, without waiting to look for words, and hardly caring about ideas, the first sudden 0'4 A JOURNEY IN RUSSIA. impressions flashed upon my mind by the physical aspect of St. Petersburg. I have said in a former volume of this work, that I have the custom^ like other itllers, I suppose^ of wandering about during the first day of my visit to a foreign city, without apparent aim or purpose ; without knowing, or desiring to know, the geography of the place ; and without asking a single question. Now this is precisely the sort of view which should be taken of the new city of the Tsars, by one who prefers the poetry of life to its dull and hackneyed prose. St. Petersburg is a picture rather than a reality grand, beautiful, and noble, at a little distance, but nothing more than a surface of paint and varnish when you look closer. Or, rather, to amend the comparison, it is like the scene of a theatre, which you must not by any means look behind, if you would not destroy the illusion. It will be said, that such is the case with all cities, with all objects that derive their existence from the puny sons of men : but this is one of those misnamed truisms which are considered worthy of all acceptation for no other reason than tliat thev come from the tongue, or through a neighbouring organ, with the twang of religion or morality. London does not lose but gain by inspection ; although on inspection it is found to be an enormous heap of dirty, paltry, miserable brick houses, which, but for the constant repairs of the inliabi- tants, would in a few years become a mass of sucli COMPARISON. 65 pitiful ruins as the owls themselves would disdain to inhabit. Those narrow, winding, dingy streets those endless lines of brick boxes, without taste, without beauty, without dignity, without anything that belongs to architecture, inspire us with growing wonder and admiration. The genius, the industry, the commerce, of a whole continent seem concen- trated in this single spot ; and the effect is uninter- rupted by any of the lighter arts that serve as the mere ornaments and amusements of life. An ear- nestness of purpose is the predominating character of the scene a force of determination which seizes, and fixes, and grapples with a single specific object, to the exclusion of every other. The pursuit of wealth acquires a character of sublimity as we gaze ; and Mammon rises in majesty from the very de- formity of the stupendous temple of commonplace in which he is worshipped. Venice does not lose but gain by inspection ; although on inspection it is found to be but the outlines of a great city, filled up with meanness, and dirt, and famine. We enter her ruined palaces with a catching of the breath, and a trembling of the heart; and when we see her inhabitants crouching in rags and hunger in their marble halls, we do but breathe the harder, and tremble the more. The effect is increased by the contrast; for Venice is a tale of the past, a city of the dead. The Rialto is still crowded with the shapes of history and ro- mance ; the Giant's Steps still echo to the ducal tread; and, mingling with the slaves and wantons G 2 66 A JOURNEY IN RUSSIA. who meet on the Sunday evenings to laugh at the rattle of their chains in the Piazza di San IMarco. we see gliding, scornful and sad, the merchant-kings of the Adriatic. St. Petersburg, on the other hand, has no moral character to give dignity to common-place, or haunt tombs and ruins like a spirit. It is a city of imita- tation, constructed, in our own day, on what were thought to be the best models ; and hence the severity with which its public buildings have been criticised by all travellers, except those who dote upon gilding and green paint, and are enthusiasts in plaster and white-wash. As a picture of a cit\ , notwithstanding, superficially viewed an idea of a great congregating place of the human kind, without reference to national character, or history, or indivi- duality of any kind St. Petersburg, in my opinion, is absolutely unrivalled. It would be difficult, even for the talented artist whose productions grace these sketches, to convey an adequate idea of the scale on ^hich this city is laid out ; and yet, without doing so we do nothing. This is the grand distinctive feature of the place. Economy of room was the principal necessity in tlie construction of the other great European cities ; fr. above all things, they were to be protected from the enemy by stone walls. But, before St. Petersburg was built, a change had taken place in the art and customs of war, and permanent armies had become in some measure a substitute for permanent fortifi- cations. Another cause of prodigality was the little MAGNITUDE OF THE SCALE. 67 value of the land; but, above all these, should be mentioned, the far-seeing, and far-thinking ambition of the builders. Conquest was the ruling passion of the Tsars from the beginning ; and, in founding a new capital, they appear to have destined it to be the capital of half the world. It is needless to exaggerate the magnitude of the city ; as, for instance, some Avriters have done, by stating that the Nevski Prospekt is half as wide again as Oxford Street in London. Every thing is here on a gigantic scale. The quays, to which vessels requiring nine feet of water cannot ascend, except when the river is unusually high, might serve for all the navies of Europe. The public offices, or at least many of them, would hardly be too small, even if the hundred millions were added to the popula- tion of the country, which its soil is supposed to be capable of supporting. Perhaps it may be as well to introduce here, for the sake of illustration, although a little prematurely as regards the description, a view of the grand square of the Admiralty. This is an immense oblong space in the very heart of the city. The spectator stands near the manege, the building which projects at the left-hand corner. Beyond this is the Admiralty, with its gilded spire, which is visible from almost all parts of the metropolis. Farther on is the Winter Palace, distinguished by a flag, in front of which, near the bottom of the vista, is the column raised to the memory of Alexander. Opposite this, on the right hand, is the palace of the 68 A JOURNEY IN RUSSIA. Etat Major ;, and returning towards the foreground, the War Office. The group in front are employed in dragging stones for the new Isaak's church, which stands in the left hand corner, although the view is not wide enough to admit it. This is to be the richest and most splendid building in the world; but it has been so long in progress, and is now so little advanced, that a notice of it must fall to the lot of some future traveller. Saint Isaak, I believe, is not particularly connected with Russia, except by his day falling upon the birth-day of Peter the Great. Such is the scale on which St. Petersburg is built ; for although this may be considered the heart of the city, the other members correspond. The very vastness of the vacant spaces, however, it should be observed, seems to make the houses on either side look less lofty ; while on the other hand, no doubt the real want of loftiness in the houses exaggerates the breadth of the area between. But on the present occasion, any thing like fancy in the latter respect would have been quite supererogatory. The streets were hardly passable. Here and there a pond or a morass gave pause to the pedestrian ; while the droski driver was only indebted to his daily renewed experience of the daily-changing aspect of the ground, for the comparative confidence and safety witli which he pursued his way. Tlie streets, in fact, were in the same predicament as the roads by which I had reached them ; they had thawed from their winter consistence, and their stones, torn up, and dismantled by the severities of CURIOUS WOODKN PAVEMENT. 69 the frost, had not yet been put into summer quarters. The greater part of the streets are what may be termed pebble-roads, a name which describes exactly what they are. At this moment, in the whole city, there are upwards of seven hundred and seventy-two thousand square sagenes* of these roads, while of stone pavement there are only nine thousand four hundred and fifty, and of wood six thousand four hundred. The wooden pavement, I believe, is peculiar to St. Petersburg, and merits a description. It consists of small hexagons sawed from a piece of resinous wood, and laid into a bed formed of crushed stones and sand. These are fastened laterally into each other with wooden pegs, and when the whole forms a plain surface, the interstices are filled with fine sand, and then boiling pitch is poured over all. This pitch from the porous nature of the wood is speedily absorbed, and on a quantity of sand being strewed above it, the operation is complete, and a pavement constructed which is found to be extremely durable, and which seems to me to suffer much less injury from the frost than the stone causeway. The honour of the invention is due to iM. Gourief ; and I have no doubt he will ultimately see it adopted in most of the great towns towards the north. It is the custom of the peasants to cut down the trees at some distance from the root, and thus a great deal of A sagene is seven feet. 70 A JOURNEY IN RUSSIA. wood will be turned to a useful purpose which would otherwise only encumber the ground. Every peasant^ besides, by means of his axe alone, is able to con- struct such a pavement, and in Russia hands are both plenty and cheap. The construction of the houses, although I have described them as mere outsides, in regard to archi- tectural beauty, is in general sufficiently solid. In the principal streets the outer Avail of the ground Hoor or rather the sunk floor, as the greater part of it is under-ground is either granite or poudorsk (a stone of equal value found near Ijora), and the roof of this compartment of the house is usually vaulted. The other Avails are of brick and deals, occasionally strengthened Avith iron bars. The flooring is of Avood, and frequently a layer of brick and mortar is placed above it, and a second Avooden floor laid over all. In some cases even a third floor, it is said, is added in the same Avay. The roof is always of sheet iron. When the houses are built, they are left to dry for a year or more, according to their situation, before they are painted or stuccoed. After all they are cold and damp, from the circumstance of lath- work being unknoAvn. If this Avas introduced as a lining to the outer Avails, as Avell as for partitions, I have no doubt that the houses Avould be dryer and warmer, and inhabitable in half the time. The general character of the place is not at all oriental, like that of the other Russian cities. There are a feAV buildings, indeed, that put you in PECULIARITIES OF ARCHITECTURE. 'Jl mind of the east one hardly knows why, for in reality there is nothing like them in Asia but as a whole, St. Petersburg is a jumble of classical forms, often badly imitated and badly arranged. The most striking of the exceptions are, perhaps, the church of St. Nicolas, and the Smolnoi Monastery. These buildings are two specimens of the ecclesiasti- cal architecture of Russia ; and the stranger, sur- rounded as he is by the orders of Greece and Italy, cannot look upon their numerous onion- shaped cupolas fantastically painted and gilded, without feeling that he is in a country where, in former times at least, some peculiar standard of taste existed. The strange thing is, that it is only in the roofs of such buildings in Russia that their peculiarity exists. Their fa9ades are usually clustered with columns and ornaments, taken from all sorts of classical models ; although, no doubt, the architect, by way of indem- nifying his patriotic feelings, indulges here and there in a little caricature or travestie. The churches within the city, and the log-huts without hose are Russian, those are national ; and they have nothing to do with St. Petersburg. I am now lightly touching upon the general character of the place, laying the dim and indistinct ground- work of my piece, before attempting to bring out the individual features. It is impossible to do this without noticing the living figures that give a human interest to the scene. The streets are never crowded, or else the spaces 72 A JOURNEY IN RUSSIA. are too large to appear so. Even on the occasion of a parade before the Winter Palace, when the troops are inspected by the Emperor in person, they and the spectators seem like a handful ; the former on the street, and the latter on the planted boulevard at the side of the Admiralty. Meanwhile the rest of the town, and even the great square, of which this forms a corner, remain in their usual state of quiescence. The streets are never disorderly, partly owing to the natural mildness of the Russian character ; and partly to the circumstance of a man, dressed in the coarsest and plainest garb imaginable, standing here and there with a pole-axe in his hand, to preserve order. It is true there is nothing terrible about these persons but their pole-axes, and they are not half so much soldiers, either in appearance or reality, as the "police /orce" of London; but still they are at least a symbol of authority, and a standing memento to the passers-by to take care of what they are about. These passers-by consist, as in all other cities, of the upper, middle, and lower classes ; for in Russia there is a middle class in appearance, although none in reality. The upper classes, when they ride, are usually in coaches drawn by four horses, the traces so long that a single equipage would take up no inconsiderable part of a street in any other city. Here, however, they are only in proportion with the space in which they have to move ; a space in wliich an English gentleman's carriage, \\ ith its two horses, COACHES AND DROSKIS. 73 cocking up their poor, maimed, miserable tails under the coachman's feet, would look mean and ridicu- lous. The English, however, although they have the bad taste and brutality to amputate their horses' tails, are the best coachmakers in the world. The carriages of Russia, principally made by German workmen, are inferior even to those of France. The traces, at least in St. Petersburg, are always of leather, but rarely clean, and never polished. The coachman is dressed in a caftan, reaching to his heels, generally blue, and confined at the waist with a red sash. His neck is bare, except where it is covered in front by a handsome beard ; and his head is surmounted by a small, low, sturdy-looking hat, considerably broader at the crown than at the brim. The postillion is a dwarfish urchin, dressed in the same fashion, and perched like a cock-sparrow upon one of the fore horses. When the equipage stops, the coachman leans back on his box and goes to sleep ; and the postillion descending, lays himself down under the horses' heads, in such a position that they cannot advance ^^'ithout stepping upon his body, and goes to sleep too. The droski is a still more common equipage : it is the hackney coach of Russia. It consists of a plank of wood, stuffed, and covered with cloth or leather, and hung between two pairs of wheels. On this machine the wayfarer mounts astride, and sits very comfortably there being a resting place for his feet, defended from the mud bv leathern bulwarks 7*1 A JOURNEY IN RUSSIA. till the vehicle begins to move. On this consumma- tion taking place, all is misery. The springs are bad, the pavement hideous ; and the tyro in such travelling, curses by his gods the infernal apparatus. But at a season of the year like this there is no alternative. He must employ a droski, or remain at home ; for although the trottoirs are tolerable, the crossings of the streets are altogether impracticable. The driver is rarely, if ever, provided M'ith a whip. He holds the bridle in both hands, that are widely separated, and extended before him ; and at the seldom time when he finds occasion, employs the end of the " ribbons " for the admonition of his horse. In general he occupies the same plank, only strad- dling a little in advance of his fare ; but sometimes there is a small coach-box for his special use. In either case, the gentleman-passenger, if he has a grain of sensibility, is ashamed of the scurvy figure he cuts, sitting, with his little pig-tailed coat, and naked chin, behind a full flowing caftan, and a manly beard. The military, however, are not unworthy of such an honour. An otticer in the army, sitting behind an isvo.scliik, fiying at the rate of ten miles an hour, with his ample grey cloak. distended at the shoulders by the epaulettes beneath, his cocked hat, and long feather fiduting behind, forms one of the most picturescjue and characteristic .N])ectacles to be seen in St. Petersburg. The pedestrians, indei)endently of the class (if ladies and gentlemen common to all Euro])e, are the native merchants, whom I have termed the middle MUJIK LABOURERS. /O classes, and the artizans and country people. The merchants have in general laid aside the sash, but the beard still flourishes, and the caftan still flows. Their wives are dressed in rich silk cloaks, lined with fur, yet with nothing on the head but a very small handkerchief. But artizans and labourers, with their sheepskin tunics, or omni-coloured caftans, their shirt of every gaudy hue worn over their trowsers, their long boots, or rag-stockings and shoes of the linden bark, are assuredly the most interesting figures of the whole. Their hair is cut round hori- zontally on a line drawn from about the middle of the nose, and most of the workmen wear a sort of chaplet, sometimes studded with little pieces of metal like the ornaments of a horse, to prevent it from falling into their eyes. In their sash are stuck their gloves, indispensable for eight months in the year, and their short-handled, large-bladed axe, which to a Russian artificer answers the purpose of almost every tool. You never see these men in a hurry. There is a measured gravity about all their motions which adds to the orientalism of their appearance. They look as if they were conscious of wearing a beard. The labourers generally appear in groups ; for the use of machinery is an innovation to which they have not as yet submitted. If a heavy article is to be moved, it is dragged by a dozen, a score, or a hundred men as may be requisite. If it is to be raised to the scaffblding of a house, it is rolled up an inclined plane constructed of planks for the purpose. Pul- 76 A JOURNEY IN RUSSIA. leys and blocks are looked upon as a sacrilegious interference with the evident intentions of nature and the rights of man. The same simplicity appears in their tools. The carpenter demands nothing more besides his axe, than a kind of rude chisel and a gimlet. His measure is a bit of wood which he picks up among the chips, or slices off at the moment from the nearest plank. Even in that simple but troublesome apparatus, which is requisite to enable plasterers and painters to perform their operations on the outside surface of a building, the Russians usually prefer risking life and limb to the multiplication of machinery. Their ladder frequently consists of a single pole, instead of two, furnished with transverse bars of wood for steps; and this pole is occasionally used not only as a ladder but as a support for a small stage, at one and the same time. When it is necessary to move a ladder of this kind, the workman disdains to descend for so simple a purpose. He places himself astride^, near the top, on one of the transverse bars, and shoving the machine from the wall, leaps with it, so to speak, to the required distance. At the same instant, a comrade below, watching his manoeuvres, moves adroitly the foot of the ladder, and the hero escapes being precipitated to the ground by an inch of space and an instant of time. Sometimes, however, the removal of the ap])aratus is inconvenient, or the stage is found to be too low to enable him to reacli the top of the wall : but these difficulties do not induce a true Russian to be STRANGE PECULIARITIES. /7 guilty of the folly of expending time in the construc- tion of one edifice for the purpose of painting or stuccoing another. In this case^ the wanderer of St. Petersburg, if he chance to turn up his eyes, sees a pole projected from the roof of the house in question, with a man lying all his length upon it, head doAvn- wards. If you marvel at the calm gravity with which the workman thus circumstanced uses his brush or his trowel under the eaves, you are told there is little or no danger, as a friend behind is doing him the kindness to hold him by the heels. During the intervals of labour, these men, like the coachmen and postillions, go to sleep wherever they happen to leave off work. But still, as if by a kind of natural perversity, they choose such situations for their repose, as seem the least adapted in the world for such a purpose. A mason, for instance, does not lay himself do\vn under the lee of one of the immense blocks of marble or granite on which he is working : he poises himself upon the extreme edge of the mass. Or, if there is a marshy place in the immediate neighbourhood (for he will not trouble himself to go far in search of it) he disposes of his body in instalments upon the stones, or planks; which protrude from the mud. Sometimes the parapet of a bridge is the chosen couch ; sometimes the outer ledge ; but if a piece of wood projects from the steps of the quay over, or upon, the river, this is too tempting an opportunity for indulgence to be missed on any account. The mujik in St. Petersburgh, however, is a II 2 78 A JOURNEY IN RUSSIA. solitary animal, so far as the women are concerned, and perhaps to this may be owing his habitual gravity. In spring he comes from his village far in the interior perhaps many hundred miles, and in autumn returns to his family with his little earnings. Each class of labourers comes from a particular government, often from a particular district in that government ; and hence in the city they appear to form so many distinct tribes. The finer sort of work, however, is always intrusted to foreigners. Tlie joiners, for instance, may be Russians, but the cabinet-makers are Germans. Xo nobleman would condescend to have his clothes made by a countryman of his own, or to eat of bread that was baked by native fingers. An exception, however, is made, in one respect, in favour of the fair sex. The wet nurses are taken from the peasantry, and are dis- tinguished in the streets by a kind of lofty crown, generally covered Mith gold lace. The waists of these women are scarcely shorter than usual, and yet the bosom is beneath, rather than above the girdle. This extraordinary })erversity of taste for the geography of nature is thus outraged systematically from their earliest youth we shall find, on leaving 8t. Petersburg, to be ccjmmon to the female peasantr}'^ of the whole of Great Russia. In most other European cities, the uj)per and lower classes are but little distinguished from each other in dress, except by the quality of the materials; ir in manners, except by the degrees of refinement or vulgarity. Here they form, to all appearance, two RE-ACTION OP PUBLIC FEELINGS. 79 separate and distinct races. Elsewhere the common people are partakers in the civilization of the gentry; they follow their steps, at a greater or less distance, in education and knowledge ; and are, to all intents and purposes, members of the same family of man. Here, on the contrary, there is hardly one idea in common between the two classes. This is the grand distinctive feature in St. Petersburg. This is the peculiarity in the Russian empire which makes it the most curious, and, to the philosopher, the most interesting, spectacle presented to-day in Europe. The cause of all the anomalies exhibited by the country may be traced to the suddenness with which civilization took its rise, and the celerity of its pro- gress. The great majority of the nation were in that state of barbarous dependence from which England, for instance, only emerged after many centuries of struggles. The nobles were awakened all on a sudden to a consciousness of their situation Avith regard to the rest of Europe. A re-action in their feelings even took place ; and from the extreme of barbarous pride and ignorant intolerance, they rushed at once to the opposite extreme of liberality. Strangers, who formerly travelled in their country with as much difficulty and danger as in China, were received with acclamations, and loaded with gifts and distinctions. They threw open their churches, Avhich had hitherto been hermetically sealed against heretics; and even permitted temples of every possible religion to flourish by the side of their own. They travelled abroad, for the first time, to see that world 80 A JOURNEY IN RUSSIA. which they had so long contempkitetl only through the mists of prejudice ; and imitating, or transplant- ing, whatever struck their imaginations most, they began to build a new Rome among the snows of the North. The mass of the people, in the meantime the cultivators of the fields, the hewers of wood, and the drawers of Avater could not possibly remain unin- fluenced by this spirit of revolution. A correspond- ing change took place among the peasantry. Ambition and pride were generated where nothing of the kind ever existed before; and to this moment, every day, every hour, some individuals are detaching themselves from the mass^ and rising into the rights and privileges of freemen. This is provided for by the laws of the country ; and this consummation, it is well known to all persons possessing information on the subject, is not only the earnest desire^, but the obvious personal policy of the Emperor. In a future chapter I shall oifer some remarks on the nature and extent of the change ; but at ])resent it will only be necessary to suggest, in reply to an anticipated (juestion, that the peasants of Russia form a mass of about Jijtjf niillions, and that, setting every extraneous obstacle out of the question, the pro- gress, both moral and ])()litical, of such a body is necessarily mucli slower than that of a body of a few hundred thousand. iSup])osing that a luiniber of the peasantry eqiuil to that of the whole body of nobilitv has been raised, in so short a space of time, to the benefits of civilization and the number is CITY OF NOBILITY 81 much greater still, in so vast a population, this must be imperceptible on a superficial view, and the distinction between the two classes of society must remain, to all appearance, as broad as ever. But with regard to our immediate affairs, St. Petersburg is a city of the nobles, built at their own cost, and according to their own taste. The common people either burrow in their shops under the dwell- ings of the great, or live, in the usual dirt and crowd, in the hollow squares formed by the houses for of course all the exterior must be clean, and showy, and glittering to the eye. As for the mujiks from the interior, who give so much of the foreign and picturesque to the show, they are only birds of passage, who come hither to pick up a few crumbs from the abundance generated by the wealth and wants of a great metropolis. CHAPTER VI. The Nevski Prospekt droskis and kibitkas the troika hero of the popular songs emblem of the Holy Ghost catholics and protestants Armenian worship remains of paganism monks popes manners of the clergy doc- trines of the Russo-Greek church the seven sacraments marriage predestination ceremonies for the dead secta- rians and their curious tenets Kazan church or cathedral of St. Petersburg exterior singularity of the plan magnificent colonnade interior distinctions of rank unknown in the temple where the Spirit of the Lord is there is liberty. The day after my initiative stroll through the city being Sunday, I resolved to devote a portion of it to the object of acquiring some notions relative to the churches and religious customs of the place. Betaking myself to the great square of the Admiralty, as to the centre from which all things proceed, and to which all things return, in 8t. Petersburg, I launched myself into the Nevski Prospekt, that great street which has l)een already so often mentioned. It is one of several avenues which radiate from the Admiralty, the gilded spire of which is seen along the vista, and serves so well as a beacon, that nobody can be oiit of his bearings THE TROIKA. 83 for many minutes together. The view annexed, looking downwards towards the Admiralty, gives an idea of the magnitude of this great artery of popula- tion, which is very nearly two miles and a half long. The avenue of trees on either side is refreshing to the eye, although as yet destitute of shade. On the right hand in the engraving, beside the group of peasants, is a droski, but the driver has not been fortunate enough to obtain a fare. On the left hand is a vehicle called a kibitka, which is frequently used for travelling with post-horses. It is without springs, and being constructed entirely of wood, and in the most simple manner, may be repaired at any village on the road. This is its only advantage over the more comfortable and more aristocratic britchka. The three horses by which this vehicle is drawn, are called the Troika, or the three, a name familiar to all travellers who pause in their journey to listen to the songs of the people. The post-master does not keep horses himself, but in obedience to the printed requisition handed by the traveller, hires them from the neighbouring peasants ; and the individual they send with them to drive, is of course the liveliest young fellow in their family. If the Troika drivers were professional post-boys, there would be nothing poetical connected with the name; but they are the Hower of the peasantry, and are further distinguished from the others by enjoying, or suffering, a greater proportion of the vicissitudes of life. Without recollecting this, the traveller will Avonder at the taste which selects such heroes for 84 A JOURNEY IN RUSSIA. the popular ballads, and lays the scene in an inn court, or on the highway. The highways, too, it should be remembered, are not a little romantic themselves ; being in general nothing more than wild and savage tracks formed only by carriage wheels and horses' feet. Keeping these considerations in view, even the most fastidious listener will hear sometimes with interest the fortunes of his postillion, commencing in a strain like this : " Away, away, along the road. The gallant Troika bound. While 'neath the dooga, sadly sweet, Their Valdai bells resound.'' The dooga is a sort of bow which arches over the neck of the middle horse, and with which almost all the Russian vehicles are provided. A bell is generally suspended from this bow, and those mentioned in the above stanza of a popular song are made at ^'^aldai, a village on the IMoscow road celebrated for the manufacture. But the engraving presents another peculiaritv more germane to the matter of the ])resent chapter. It is a flock of pigeons an indispensable part of a street view in this country. The pigeon is in some sense the Redbreast of Russia; but he is protected by a higher and holier prestige than poor Robin. To kill, or insult, a pigeon is an act of sacrilege as well as immorality ; it is, in fact, to lift the hand CATHOLICS AND PROTESTANTS. 85 against the third person of the Trinity for the dove is the emblem of the Holy Ghost. A Catholic chapel attracted my attention first, as I journeyed along churchward ; but, accustomed as I have been in other countries to the great temples of this modification of the Christian faith, I saw nothing in it worthy of remark. The congregation, however, was numerous and devout two circum- stances which rarely occur in what are called Catholic countries. In Ireland, where the Protes- tant is the " dominant " religion, the Catholics are as devout in their way as they were several centuries ago. This may arise from the fact, that they are that space of time behind the civilized world in civiliza- tion ; but how shall we account for the Protestant- ism of Ireland being at this moment identical in spirit, with that of the most ignorant and ferocious epoch in our history ? The strange thing is, that even those English Protestants, who take a part in Irish disputes, become embued all at once with the same fanaticism ! This is what the Catholics of the continent (with the exception of those of Spain and Portugal) cannot comprehend. They listen with shouts of laughter to our quarrels about the pope ; but when they hear of our actually cutting throats for conscience' sake, they are ready to conclude, that in spite of our excellence in cotton-spinning, and the extreme dexterity at which we have arrived in blowing people up into the air with steam-engines, we are still at bottom, Protestants and Catholics, a race of stupid and unteachable barbarians. 86 A JOURNEY IN RUSSIA. An Armenian church, almost next door, soon invited my attention, and I was surprised, I do not know why, to find less devotion among the congrega- tion than I ever witnessed in my life in a religious assembly. The genteel part of the audience con- sisted of a small number of ladies apart from the men ; and although they performed the same kind of genuflections and prostrations that are customary in the Greek church, these were so openly inter- mingled with nodding, whispering, and giggling, that the one might have seemed as much a part of the ceremony as the other. A young Armenian lady, whom I had the pleasure to meet with afterwards at IMoscow, explained this oddity, or at least apologized for it, in a very intelli- gent manner. " Although Armenians by descent," said she, "we are born in Russia, and intermingled from our birth with Russian society. We thus lose very soon, if indeed we ever acquire, the language of our country ; for it has no beauty, and no literature, to make it worth retaining. How, then, can you expect us to take an interest in the services of our church, hardly one word of which we comprehend, and which have nothing beyond the splendour of the priest's vest- ments to attract attention but on the contrary, as you must have observed yourself, are dull, drowsy, and monotonous to the last degree that is supportable by human patience ?" This description of the service is exact, and my only wonder is, that the Armenians do not attach CONVERSION OP RUSSIA. 87 themselves to the Russo-Greek church, the form of worship in which is nearly the same, and the language at least a little more intelligible. As for the dogmas of their faith, they are like thoseof every other sect of Christianity I know of, when fairly reported : very little, if at all, repugnant to human reason, and easily proved by the letter of Scripture. As I am now approaching the Kazan church, which is the grand cathedral of St. Petersburg, and where the external service presents nothing to the stranger but the grossest and most stupid idolatry, perhaps the reader supposing him to be unacquainted with the subject would like to know what the Russians really do believe. It is sufficiently well known, although somehow or other in speculations concerning Russia the thing is always forgotten, that the Eastern and Western churches were in the very zenith of their barbarous pride, when this nation began to be converted from the darkest heathenism to Christianity. It was not, in fact, till the eleventh century, till the close of the iron age in the rest of Europe, that the Christian church took root in Russia. Civilization began as usual to follow even so impure a Christianity as could be obtained from the poisoned fountains of that day and then the Tatar invasion came, to impose a yoke even upon the minds of men, and arrest the moral progress of the country. It was the middle of the sixteenth century before this incubus was thrown off; and it was not till the accession of the present dynasty, in 1613, that any 88 A JOURNEY IN RUSSIA. attempt was made to cleanse the Temple of the ruins of so many ages of darkness and terror ruins in the shade of which the people had reclined so long, that they had come to look upon them as essen- tial parts of the building. In the " Spiritual Regulation" promulgated by Peter the Great, we have evidence of the state of the church in Russia, which cannot be disputed ; and which is exceedingly interesting as showing that many remnants of paganism existed even in the seventeenth century. The Spiritual College is directed, in that curious performance, "to compare the history of saints, whether some of them are not lying devices, or fabu- lous and ridiculous stories." Such things are the rather to be discountenanced, " since especially the simple folk can scarce distinguish the right hand from the left, but firmly and pertinaciously main- tain whatever they see written in a book." The superstition, also, is condemned which forbids \\'ork- ing on Friday, "because Panitsa will be angry." This personage appears to resemble the A'^enus of the heathen ; and, even in the ecclesiastical processions of Little Russia, she walked at that time in the guise of a woman with dishevelled hair, and was led into the churches, and exposed for the worshij) of the people. It was believed, according to the same authority, that a man buried in the Pecherskoi monastery should be saved, even if he had died impenitent. In another place, it was the custou) to pray before PRIDE OP THE MONKS. 89 an oak ; and the pope, or priest, in blessing the people, shook the boughs over their heads. The college was especially directed to inquire into the " infinite number of fables " about holy relics ; and the conduct of bishops was loudly condemned, who, when in want of money, placed an image in a desert, and persuaded the people that it wrought miracles. Although this state of the church, however, re- sembled so much that of Catholicism in the darker ages, the manners of the priesthood were modified "by the peculiar position in which they were placed, and by the character of the nation. The upper clergy, being all monks of St. Basil, and eligible to the highest offices in the church, were taken exclusively from the better classes ; and they were true " lords spiritual," with only the usual faults of their order pride and ambition. As a specimen of the height to which these qualities had attained, it may be mentioned that an annual procession took place on Palm-Sunday, in which the horse of the patriarch was led by the bridle by the Tsar in person, in his imperial robes and crown. At the close of the ceremony, the priest presented the monarch with two hundred rubles for his trouble. " The bishop," says the regulation of Peter the Great, " ought to command his servants to behave them orderly and soberly in the cities and monas- teries which he visits, and to commit no outrage; especially not to exact from monks and popes too great a quantity of meat and drink for themselves, or of provender for their horses; especially that they i2 90 A JOURNEY IX RUSSIA. attempt not to rob, on the pain of being severely chastised : for the servants of bishops are usually a dissolute herd ; and when they observe their lord to have any authority, like wild Tatars, they impu- dently fall to pillage." At the time of Peter the Great, the spiritual pride engendered by such power became so trouble- some that, on the death of the patriarch Adrian, in 1700, instead of appointing a successor, he named, pro tempore, an exarch, or viceregent. Having thus felt his way, he allowed the office to drop alto- gether^ appointing in lieu the Holy Synod, of which he constituted himself the president; thus becoming, like the King of England, the head of the national church. As for the high clergy, they murmured very little. Carried on by the stream of civilization, they are now, like other persons of their class; but with this difference, that, being monks, they do not mix in general society. The lower clergy, the priests, or popes, as they are called, are not only permitted, but enjoined to marry, and they are ineligible to the higher offices. This being the case, they, of course, originate from the peasantry, and their vices are those of the vulgar. Their duty requires only the arts of read- ing and writing ; the sacred language is Slavonian, little different from the dialect of the common people ; and their families being intermixed with those of other persons of the same origin and station, they belong essentially to the inferior order (f society. Earlier travellers, Avho are surprised at DRUNKEN MARRIAGES. 91 "the degraded state of the church," forget these circumstances. The character they give of the popes is precisely the character they give of the common people, and it must necessarily be so. By the " Spiritual Regulation" already quoted, I find it was the custom for the choristers to sing several hymns at the same instant by way of saving time ; and for priests, when summoned by sick per- sons of little consideration, to send them their prayers in the hat of the messenger ! " A preacher has no need to tug and heave as though he were tugging at the oar in a boat. He has no need to clap his hands, to set his arms a-kimbo, nor to bounce or spring, nor to giggle and laugh, nor any reason for bowlings and hideous lamentations." Surely, this beats Hamlet's direc- tions to the players ! It A^'as a very common custom for men to marry in fits of drunkenness ; and, in cases of this kind, the repentant sinners were admonished not to pre- sume to espouse a second wife till they had laid the disaster before a pope : " but if the priest himself,'" goes on the Regulation, " happen to be in the same predicament, the matter must go before the Spiritual College." Many, it seems, thrust themselves into priests' orders for no other reason than to revel and debauch with impunity ; and the bishop was especially desired to ascertain, before ordaining priests, that they were not superstitious, nor vagrants, nor buck- 92 A JOURNEY IN RUSSIA. sters of saints.* Further, " they are not only to observe whether priests and deacons, and the lower ecclesiastics, frequent the stews, or, being drunk, hollow in the streets, or, what is worse, in their drink whoop and hollow in the church, &c., but, what is intolerably shameful, whether they fight in the boi- kulachni." This climax of immorality was a sort of sparring match with gloves fought in the streets, of which the peasants were till lately extremely fond. Such were the manners of the peasants and the peasant-priests a very short time ago. During three months which I spent in Great Russia, frequenting industriously every kind of assembly of the people, I did not see above half a dozen instances of intoxi- cation ; and I never, on any occasion, saw an eccle- siastic otherwise than respectable either in his dress or conduct. This, however, is the progress of civi- lization unconnected with religion. A priest is not the more esteemed because he is sober ; and he is no more admitted now than he Avas formerly to the tables of the upper classes. The Russo-Greek church believes in the doctrine of the Trinity, but differs from the Catholic with regard to what is called the procession of the Holy Ghost. The Holy Ghost, according to it, is derived ' These persons were dealers in Ilie pirlnrcs of saints, which lhe> were permitted to dispose of by way of barter, but not to sell for money. Late travellers say, that this restriction is still in force ; but I saw no (litterence in such respect, even in the " Holy City," Moscow, between the s;od-market and the fish-market. GODS OF THE PEOPLE. 93 from the Father alone, and not from the Father and Son united ; a question that has been fiercely and abundantly argued; and one very important, no doubt, to the casuists. The invocation of saints is enjoined, as mediators, subordinate to Christ; and the use of pictures per- mitted, for the sake of the ignorant, and to assist the devotion of all. This " permission," however, it must be observed, has nothing to do with the essentials of the religion. The well-informed alto- gether disapprove of such baubles; and, even in the time of Peter the Great, his Synod petitioned to have them taken down from the walls of the churches. Peter, however, daring as he was, did not venture on such a step it was as much as his crown and life were worth. Nicon, the patriarch, was destroyed by his interference with the gods of the people ; although it went only the length of correcting a most laughable abuse. It was the custom at that time for pictures to be brought to the churches, and nailed to the walls by private individuals, who still, however, insisted upon retaining a spiritual property in the god. They placed him there merely that he might enjoy a suitable temple, and had no notion of his dispensing his favours to other people. When they detected a neighbour, therefore, in the fact of adoring him, they were indignant at the dishonesty ; curses and revilings were sometimes followed by severer ven- geance ; and they even sought to recover damages for the pious roguery in the courts of law. 94 A JOURNEY IN RUSSIA. These pictures were at length got rid of, on account of the scandal they caused ; and the more enlightened party in the church consoled themselves with the idea, that those which they were still obliged to endure did not come within the meaning of the second commandment, not being graven images. The mysteries, or sacraments, are seven in num- ber. Baptism takes place on the eighth day, and is held to be so important, that if a priest cannot be got in time, it may- be administered by any body, and it is never, on any account whatever, to be repeated. Chrism is an anointing with oil immediately after baptism, and is called " the seal of the gift of the Holy Ghost." The priest, in anointing the child, makes the sign of the cross on his forehead, eyes, nostrils, mouth, ears, breast, hands, and feet, say- ing each time, " the seal of the gift of the Holy Ghost." The child's hair is then cut cross-wise, the priest wrapping up some locks in wax, and throwing them into the font. In seven days the new Christian is brought back, and is publicly washed by the priest. In the Eucharist the doctrine of Transubstantia- tion is held. The wine, however, must be mixed with warm water, the bread sopped in the lifjuid, and both given together with a spoon. The priests, however, take the elements separately. The napkin spread upon the holy table must be consecrated by SACRAMENTS. 95 a bishop^, and must have some small particle of the reliques of a martyr mixed in the web. The other sacraments are. Confession, Ordination, Marriage, and the Holy Oil, or Extreme Unction. IMarriage is divided into two parts, now usually performed consecutively, the Espousals, and the ^Matrimonial Coronation. At the former, the priest places rings upon the fingers of the two parties, with many prayers, and the paranymphus exchanges them from one to the other. At the latter, the priest crowns them (formerly with flowers, now with a silver or tin crown belonging to the church), saying, " The servant of God is crowned for the handmaid of God in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost." The mutual cuji is then given ; and, walking three times in a circle, their crowns are taken oflf, and they salute each other. In eight days they return to the church, and their crowns are " dissolved " by prayer. The doctrine of predestination, which has so remarkable an effect on the Russian character, is pretty nearly the same as the dogma in the seven- teenth article of the Anglican church. The prayers and service for the dead are merely a kind of commemoration of departed friends. There is no purgatory, no indulgence, no dispensa- tions. When a Russian dies, the priest comes and reads a service over the body ; but in the case of a wealthy person, a succession of priests and clerks read the gospel and psalter all the time it remains in the house, night and day. Funerals always take 96 A JOURNET IN RUSSIA. place in the morning, and the mourners kiss either the body or the coffin. It was formerly tlie custom to provide this mute traveller with a pair of shoes for the journey, or a white handkerchief to wipe his face after arrival. These observances are now done away with ; although in the Swedish provinces I believe it is still usual among the peasantry to put a piece of money into the coffin. As for the passport with which the dead is furnished by the priest, the story has been refuted so often as to make it hardly necessary to say, that the paper contains merely a prayer and confession of faith. Some of the Russian dissenters are peculiarly wild in their notions. One sect forbids application to worldly labour, that its members may always be ready to receive the Holy Ghost when it comes. There is another in which each man baptizes himself, from an idea that there is no one left on earth lioly enough to perform the office. Some think that Anti- Christ is come, and has put an end to all righteousness in the church ; others consider it meritorious to terminate their lives by fasting : but the most numerous are the Old Ceremonialists and the Anti- Ceremonialists those who wish to incorporate the rites of Judaism with the doctrine of the New Testament, and those who wish to deprive Chris- tianity of every external form whatever. The Anti-Ceremonialists, who have, to a certain extent, existed in all Christian countries in one shape or other, are the descendants, as they inform us, of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, the SECTARIAN DOGMAS. 97 three "children" who were thrown into the fire because they would not fall down and worship the golden image of Nebuchadnezzar. They will have no ikons, no ceremonies, no churches, no appointed days ; for all times, all places, are alike holy. They meet in one another's houses and sup together, like Christ and his disciples ; praying, singing hymns, and expounding the Word. The women preach as well as the men ; and when they pray, they pray standing, or sitting, or kneeling, or lying, just as fancy, convenience, or accident directs, for all pos- tures are alike holy. They possess all things in common ; and the only punishment they inflict is expulsion from their society. If any one seeks this voluntarily even if a wife wishes to leave her husband, or a husband his wife, they give them a share of the public property, and bid them go in peace. The history of the Saviour is entirely symbolical : it has no meaning but in a spiritual sense. He must be begotten in us, be born in us, grow up in us, teach in us, suffer in us, die in us. Baptism is identical with re- generation, and it takes place inwardly. The Communion is received when the Word of God, Avhich is Christ, sinks into the heart ; and as for bread and wine, it is absurd to suppose that this can be of use to any thing but the body. Fasting from food is folly : to abstain from sin is the true fast of the righteous. iMarriage is not a sacrament : it is merely a verbal contract, by which a man and a woman promise to live together. K 98 A JOURNEY IN RUSSIA. When seduction takes place, and the promise implied by it remains unfulfilled, the recusant party is expelled. Death is merely a change, and is no subject for mourning. The good will be rewarded and the bad punished in a future life. After this brief review of the religion of the country, we may proceed with our as hasty glances at the churches of St. Petersburg. In ascending the Nevski Prospekt, we arrive at a superb semicircular colonnade, surmounted in the middle by a compara- tively pigmy dome. This is the Kazan church, the cathedral of the city, and in some respects one of the most beautiful modern buildings in Europe. In the view, in which the reader will admire the consum- mate skill of the artist, a bridge, on the opposite side of the street is interposed, without impairing the effect of the principal object. The body of the church lies parallel with the Nevski Prospekt, in the form of a Latin cross ; and thus one of the arms is towards the street, or towards the reader in the engraving. This was not the fault of the architect, for it was necessary that the altar should point to the east ; and yet, for the sake of the architecture of the city, it was also necessary that the grand facade should face the street. Disregarding, for this reason, the form of the edifice, Veronikhin boldly attached his colonnade to the northern arm of the cross ; where, therefore, is the great door of the church, approached through the majestic avenue of columns, entered at either side by a superb portal. KAZAN CHURCH. 99 If the relative position of the principal parts of the building could be seen at once from the Nevski, the effect would be destructive of that idea of order which is indispensable in edifices of this kind ; but fortunately, or perhaps intentionally, the columns are so thickly set as almost to conceal the body of the church, and thus there is very little to disturb our impressions of fitness and beauty. The misfortune is, however, that the architect, whUe thus changing his plan to suit the nature of the ground, forgot to consider the effect which the alteration would have on the general proportions of the work : for I cannot help imagining that the columns Avere an after-thought, suggested not with reference to the church but to the street. The dome, therefore, which would have been somewhat too small at any rate, when viewed as the centre of the vast colonnade becomes altogether ridiculous. The colonnade is formed of two double rows of Corinthian pillars of polished granite, the bases and capitals of which are of cast iron. The pave- ment, to which you ascend by steps, is of red granite within the columns, and of grey without. The portico is adorned with a bronze statue at either side, one of the archangel Gabriel, and the other of Michael ; and the door, imitated from that of the Cathedral of Florence, is likewise of bronze, and very beautiful. But the natural entrance of the building is by the western door, and there the interior presents itself in its greatest magnificence. The vault 100 A JOURNEY IN RUSSIA. is semi-circular, and rests on a gilded cornice, supported by fifty-six Corinthian columns and forty pilasters of red granite of enormous size, and of a polish equal to that of marble. The bases and capitals of these columns are of burnished brass ; while those of the pilasters, with that mixture of paltriness and grandeur Avhich is con- spicuous throughout the whole city, are made to correspond with yellow paint ! At the farther end, the ikonastas sparkles brilliantly with gold and gems, and pretty faces of female saints looking out of draperies of gilded metal, richly framed. The doors and rails are of massive silver. There are few pictures, and none remarkable for either merit or demerit. The dome still appears small, but not nearly so much so as when viewed from the outside. The pavement beneath, and, indeed, throughout the church, is among the most beautiful I have ever seen, and is entirly formed of the jaspers and marbles of Olonetz and Siberia. The walls in different places are hung with banners and other trophies taken in battle. No description in words, however, can convey any definite idea of such a scene, and the pen willingly transfers the task to the pencil. In this magnificent temple all who come to worship stand intermingled. In most other coun- tries the distinctions of human society are as jealously kept up in the churches as in the palaces ; and there the house of God may truly be THE MUJIK AND THE PRINCESS. 101 likened to the kingdom of heaven, for in it are many mansions. Here the lord and the bondman meet on equal terms, as men and brethren. The mujik turns his glowing eyes towards the altar through clouds of matted hair ; some rough sounds of prayer come in whispers from his lips ; and, falling down upon his face, he strikes the marble pavement with his forehead. The drapery of another devotee mingles with his coarse garments in the crowd ; another brow touches the earth on the same spot ; the breath of prayer and praise from other lips blends with his, and rises to heaven at the same instant. The drapery is of silk ; the brow sparkles with gems : his fellow- worshipper is a princess. The two leave the temple side by side ; the one as conscious as the other that in the holy place there is no master but One. At the door the scene changes instantaneously. They are again in the world. The princess raises her haughty head, or bends it with graceful condescen- sion ; and the poor mujik, clasping his hands upon his chest, bows his body almost to the earth before her who but a moment before was his equal and his sister. On leaving the Kazan church, I am enabled to present the reader with a view of a portion of the colonnade, and one of its portals, which taken in conjunction with the last engraving, will enable him to form a good idea of the localities. k2 CHAPTER VII. Monastery of Saint Alexander Nevskoi its origin singular colouring description of the principal church stupendous silver shrine of the saint the cemetery and its monuments Russian monks and nuns the Neva and the Neva water Smolnoi monastery singular mixture of the mean and the grand Taurida palace gigantic hall half a mile in circum- ference Catharine II. and Potemkin Marble palace the fortress and the church of Saint Peter and Saint Paul extraordinary exploit of a mujik. The Nevski Prospekt, setting out from the Admiralty Square, forms the cord of a bow, or rather the base of an irregular triangle, made by one of the windings of the Neva. Its length is nearly two miles and a half, and during a considerable portion of this distance it is lined with distinguished buildings. Towards the end, where it is just about reaching the river again, stands the Monastery of Saint Alexander Nevskoi ; to whose shrine I bent my steps after leaving the Kazan church. SAINT ALEXANDER NEVSKOI. 103 Alexander laroslavich was Grand Duke of Nov- gorod in the thirteenth century, and the Swedes were at that time the " natural enemies " of the country. In 1241 King Eric the Great sailed up the Neva in a fleet conveying an army composed of Swedes and Livonians, the latter being the forces of the Brothers of the Sword. At the confluence of the Neva with the Ijora he was met by Alexander, and totally defeated. The conqueror after his death was canonized by the church, and received the title of Nevskoi Saint Alexander of the Neva to per- petuate the memory of his victory. When Peter the Great had performed similar exploits at the same place, and against the same enemies, it is no wonder that he recurred with profound respect to the memory of Alexander that the bones of the Saint were brought with distin- guished honour to the banks of the Neva and that a rich monastery soon rose upon the spot. Peter, however, did not remember, nor do I find the fact alluded to by subsequent Avriters, that at the epoch of this victory, although the Russians were fighting against the Swedes, they were the abject slaves of the Tatars ; and that after Alexander's accession to the crown, no prince could be more abject than he. Within the walls of the monastery there are ten places of worship, although many of them hardly deserve the name of churches. In three of these service is regularly performed ; and the principal temple is a very remarkable edifice. It forms the centre of one side of an almost square figure, the 104 A JOURNEY IN RUSSIA. utlier side consisting of low buildings which are the rest of the churches, the palace of the Archbishop of Kazan, and the cells and halls of the monks. The fafade of the church is chaste and beautiful, with u simple Doric portico ; and above these rise two thick towers, with a large dome behind. The towers are ornamented with square, and the dome with round pilasters ; the Corinthian capitals of which are jet black, while the rest of the building is snow white I The other sides of the square, with the exception of the window cases, which are Avhite, are blood red ! On entering the church, however, you forget these oddities without. It is strikingly elegant, and wants only more space to be grand. Its form is, on a small scale, that of the cathedral, but the dome is better proportioned to the size of the building. The gates of the ikonastas are of gilded metal, in open work, richly interspersed with small paintings. Tlie sanctum, unlike those of the other Greek churches, is entered also by side avenues patent to the public ; but they disclose little else than the customary pyx on its ornamented table, surmounted by the periste- rium. Behind this is a semicircle of huge columns, and a painting of little value by Raphael jMengs. In the open part of the church, on the right as you face the altar, is the tomb of Saint Alexander, with a large sarcophagus of silver, sculptured in bas relief with battle pieces. At each side is a trophy of military arms, and behind an altar the whole of silver. In all this the details are so minute, and LILLIPUTIAN PERE LA CHAISE. 105 the ornaments so light and numerous, that the effect is frittered away into mere gaudiness. With such a prodigious mass of silver to work upon, an artist of taste would have made one of the most splendid monuments in the world. A silver chande- lier, notwithstanding, hanging from the roof near the door, is a masterpiece of elegance. The columns throughout the church are handsome, and of as beautiful marble as a painter, with a pot of white and blue paint, can be reasonably expected to manufacture. Near this building, there is a small church where are the monuments of many illustrious Russian families ; and close by, a churchyard thickly strewn with the bones of the mighty dead and of the mean. The area is small, but so crowded with little monuments of the ambitious class, that it looks like a Lilliputian Pere la Chaise. These monuments consist of columns, urns, sarcophagi, statues, &c. &c., few of any merit, but all of great pretensions. IMost of the marble and granite of which they are composed is already splitting and crumbling away ; as if the friends of the beloved dead had studied economy in the materials as well as in the execution. The monks, clad in black robes, with a black veil hanging down from the back of the cap, look well fed and respectable. They had a listless and idle gait, however, like men who were fatigued with doing nothing. I do not know how far the regula- tion of Peter the Great was carried into effect, " that the archimandrite by no means suffer monks 106 A JOURNEY IN RUSSIA, to be idle, but find them some daily business ; and it were not amiss to teach them a trade, to wit, joiner's work, or painting of images, and the like, which a monk may be allowed to do ; and monkesses, or nuns, to knit, sew, or weave, lace, &c." A few nuns are occasionally seen in St. Petersburg ; but these are all from the interior. They stand at the doors of the churches, begging mutely for their convents. Having left the monastery, instead of returning to the centre of the town by land, I took a boat and descended the Neva. This glorious river is perhaps the only object in St. Petersburg whose beauty and grandeur are wholly unmixed with meanness and bad taste. Even the granite quays, the most magnifi- cent in Europe, seem to be a proof that the architects of the city received a peculiar influence from the genius of the Neva, and were afraid to approach the stream with any thing fantastic or ignoble. To drink the water of the river is worth a journey to Russia of itself. It is the most delicious draught imaginable, and has besides a medicinal property favourable to most constitutions. Strangers, indeed, are cautioned against using it too freely ; but in my own case, although I drank of it almost to excess, I found no bad effects whatever. It is found SMOLNOI MONASTERY, 107 engraving presented itself, and I was tempted to land for the purpose of visiting the Smolnoi Monas- tery. This building is seen at a great distance, and the voyager on the river is tantalized by its apparent propinquity long before he approaches it. The body of the edifice resembles a single tower of enormous thickness, surmounted by one large dome, and four small onion-shaped cupolas, all glittering with golden stars on a blue ground, and their spires, or spikes, covered with golden ornaments. The effect notwith- standing is far from being vulgar ; for the temple is as white as snow, and all this finery is in keeping. I observed here a very curious instance of the mixture of the mean and gorgeous, which I have noticed in a greater or less degree in almost all the public buildings of the metropolis. A balustrade runs round the top of the main building, at least in front, and appears to form part of the stonework. This, hoAvever, is nothing else than a thin board, painted and shaded so as to resemble the bulb- shaped rails common in similar works. Having ascertained that I was not mistaken, it occurred to me that this strange ornament might have been put up in a temporary manner, merely with the view of trying the effect ; but, unfortu- nately, it exactly corresponds in apparent age and colour with the rest of the edifice. The interior was undergoing some repairs which prevented me from entering ; but I understand it presents nothing remarkable. From this main point, vast curving wings extend at either side, till 108 A JOURNEY IN RUSSIA. they almost meet at a considerable distance from the body of the edifice. The whole is now occupied by the Communaute des Demoiselles Nobles^ an estab- lishment of education already amply described by former travellers. As the winding of the Neva at this place pre- sented nothing of interest, I dismissed my boat, and walked onwards from the monastery in a straight line for nearly half a mile. I was here arrested by the appearance of a building fronting the river at a little distance from the brink, with a very long, low fafade, a simple Doric portico, and a large dome. This I was told was the Taurida Palace ; and very different, indeed, did it appear, from the gigantic associations that were connected in my mind with the name. On entering, however, I was completely re- assured ; and I felt that the eulogiums of travellers, however incorrect in detail, were not exaggerated with regard to effect. The vestibule of the y:rand hall is a circular apartment, with the dome for its roof, supported by white columns. From this you pass into the hall itself, not by a door, but between the columns, and a scene opens, such as probably the visitor never before beheld, and never will again. The hall, at the side of which you enter, is two hundred and fifty-one feet long, the roof supported by sixty-four columns of the Roman Ionic, more than ten feet in circumference. These columns are disposed in a double row running along each side ; HALL OF HALF A MILE. 109 but, when your eye comes to calculate the breadth, it loses itself in an area beyond the opposite row as great as the one within. These two spaces have been described by travellers as the Hall and the Winter Garden ; but, in reality, they form a single gigantic apartment, only divided by the pillars that were necessary to support the roof. The breadth of the whole, from the vestibule to the farther side of the Winter Garden, is one hundred and sixty-seven feet. To go round this apartment, therefore, is to walk within forty-four yards of half a mile ! The ceiling unfortunately is flat. A vaulted roof, or, rather, two vaults meeting at the columns, Avould have made the Taurida Palace not merely grand and noble, but sublime. Storch says, that the columns are under the form of palm-trees, which is a mistake. In the compartment called the Winter Garden there are poles placed among the trees, surmounted by crimson-coloured glass lamps ; but the " extensiveness " of this garden, and its " winding and undulating walks," are manifestly exaggerations, altogether uncalled for. The "mag- nificent lustres of cut-glass," described by tra- vellers, have now dwindled into chandeliers of wood, ornamented with tin leaves ; and the silken curtains, festoons, and mirrors, mentioned by Tooke, have altogether disappeared. The Garden is not semi-circular, as this writer asserts, but of the same form as the Hall, only wayiting the semi-circular ends. The statues still exist, and are in general indifferent copies of the antique ; and in the vesti- L 110 A JOfRNEY IN RUSSIA. bule may still be seen^ " mingled," as Sir Robert Ker Porter says, "in monstrous association modern ill-fashioned Cupids, negroes, fantastic heads, and hideous pedestals of fifty-coloured marble." This palace was built by Catharine II. for her lover Potemkin ; and it was here he gave a feast to his imperial mistress, which has been often de- scribed. On this occasion, the illustrious savage Avas on the pinnacle of his glory, beyond which hope itself could not soar. Catharine, enchanted with the wonders of the scene, and desiring to evidence her friendship for its master, had remained long after her usual time of retiring from public. On a new swell of music, as a hymn to her own praise ])urst upon her ear, she turned round in emotion to the prince. Potemkin sank upon his knees, seized her hand, and wept. They were, perhaps, the first tears which those proud and stern eyes had ever shed. But now, all was accomplished : his destiny was fulfilled ; he felt as if he had lived long enough. He left St. Petersburgh soon after, with a presentiment that he should never return. At the Congress of Yassy he was attacked with an epidemical fever ; and, on leaving that place, he alighted from his carriage in the middle of the road, laid himself down under a tree, and died. In proceeding to the centre of the city in a straight line from the Taurida Palace, the next remarkable building which arrested my progress was the JMarble Palace. MARBLE PALACE. Ill 3Ir. Rae Wilson says of this palacej that it may be ranked in point of elegance next to the imperial one : but the imperial one, he tells us, is " by no means an elegant specimen of architecture." Other writers, however, are more complimentary. Its grandeur, they say, is unparalleled in Europe ; and Tooke declares its magnificence to be such, " that it never fails to remind the beholder who sees it for the first time, of what he has read in the Arabian Nights, fairy and genii tales, and the like." This edifice forms three sides of a quadrangle, the central one surmounted by a sort of belfry, with a clock. The door is small, mean, and paltry, to the last degree, and certainly would not be considered at all ornamental to a respectable private house. The lower story is of granite, and the superstructure of grey marble, adorned with columns of red marble. Were it not for the door, however, Avhich is singu- larly poor, it might justly be termed, on a front view, a handsome building : but I cannot say more. The windows are unusually flat, the glass being very little removed from the surface of the wall ; and this, together with the form of the edifice, makes it appear, when viewed from any other direc- tion than the front, like a huge, square box. In the interior, every thing is petite. The entrance- hall is not so spacious as that of most gentlemen's houses ; the multiplicity of columns and statues there, and on the stairs, rather injures the effect than otherwise. These are of marble, and the walls 112 A JOURNEY IN RUSSIA. scagliola, but the latter so much injured from damp and neglect as to look like common plaster. The hall and staircase are entire ; the rest of the interior ruins. I ascended without any other interruption than a stare of inquiry and surprise from the sentries stationed with fixed bayonets in the court and at the door ; and the flapping of wings above my head proclaimed that doves, if not owls, now roosted in the chambers of princes. During the reign of Paul, the Marble Palace was inhabited by the King of Poland till his death. I am only surprised that the progress of decay has been so rapid in so short a time. It is rather odd that the front of so costly a building should not have been made to face the river, close to which it stands. The view from this spot is very fine ; and the Fortress directly in front, on the opposite side, appeared so tempting to my curiosity, that I took boat and embarked again. As a fortress, this place can be of no practical utility; but its strong walls, notwithstanding, rising from the water's edge, serve to give a military cha- racter to the scene. The church of Saint Peter and Saint Paul within the precincts, is remarkable as containing the tombs of the emperors ; and it is also remarkable for its spire, the loftiest in St. Peters- burg. The opposite view is taken from a point where the Exchange stands ; a corner of wliich building you observe on the left, with one of the rostral columns. Just beyond this column, an arm of the ST. PETER AND ST. PAUL. 113 river sweeps past the Exchange, to enter speedily the Gulf of Finland ; and in front, at some distance, rising from the main body of the stream, but near the bank, is seen the fortress, and the tall, slender spire of Saint Peter and Saint Paul. An anecdote connected with this church, and not yet known, I believe, out of Russia, is too remarkable to be omitted. It places in a conspicuous point of view that spirit of almost absurd daring which I have already mentioned as one of the peculiarities of the national character ; and, in fact, the incident could not, I think, by possibility, have occurred in any other country. The spire, which rises " lofty, and light, and small," and is properly represented in the engraving as fading away almost into a point in the sky, is, in reality, terminated by a globe of considerable di- mensions, on which an angel stands, supporting a large cross. This angel, less respected by the weather than perhaps his holy character deserved, fell into disrepair ; and some suspicions were enter- tained that he designed re-visiting, uninvoked, the surface of the earth. The affair caused some un- easiness, and the government at length became seriously perplexed. To raise a scaffolding to such a height would have cost more money than all the angels out of heaven were worth ; and, meditating fruitlessly on these circumstances, without being 1.2 114 A JOURNEY IN RUSSIA. able to resolve how to act, a considerable time was suffered to elapse. Among the crowd of gazers below, who daily turned their eyes and their thoughts towards the angel, was a mujik called Telouchkine. This man was a roofer of houses (a slater, as he would be called in a country where slates are used), and his speculations by degrees assumed a more practical character than the idle wonders and conjectures of the rest of the crowd. Tlie spire was entirely covered with sheets of gilded copper, and presented a surface to the eye as smooth as if it had been cme mass of burnished gold. But Telouchkine knew that it was not one mass of anything ; that the sheets of copper were not even uniformly closed upon each other ; and above all, that there were large nails used to fasten them, which projected from the sides of the spire. Having meditated upon these circumstances till his mind was made up, the mujik went to the government, and offered to repair the angel, without scaffolding, and without assistance, on condition of being reasonably paid for the time expended in the labour. The offer \\as accepted ; for it was made in Russia, and by a Russian. On the day fixed for the adventure, Telouchkine, provided with nothing more than a coil of cords, ascended the spire in the interior to the last window. Here he looked down at the concourse of ])eople below, and up at the glittering " needle," as it is called, tapering far away above his head. But his EXTRAORDINARY EXPLOIT. 115 heart did not fail him, and stepping gravely out upon the ledge of the window, he set about his task. He cut a portion of the cord in the form of two long stirrups, with a loop at each end. The upper loops he fastened upon two of the projecting nails above his head, and placed his feet in the others. Then, digging the fingers of one hand into the interstices of the sheets of copper, he raised up one of his stirrups with the other hand, so as to make it catch a nail higher up. The same operation he performed on behalf of the other leg, and so on alternately. And thus he climbed, nail by nail, step by step, stirrup by stirrup, till his starting- post was undistinguishable from the golden surface, and the spire had dwindled, and dwindled, and dwindled in his embrace, till he could clasp it all round. So far, so well. But he had now reached the ball a globe of between nine and ten feet in circumference. The angel, the object of his visit, was above this ball, and even concealed from his view by its smooth, round, and glittering expanse. Only fancy the wretch at that moment, turning up his grave eyes, and graver beard, to an obstacle that seemed to defy the daring and ingenuity of man ! But Telouchkine was not dismayed. He was prepared for the difficulty ; and the means by which he essayed to surmount it exhibited the same prodi- gious simplicity as the rest of tlie feat. Suspending himself in his stirrups, he girded the 116 A JOURNEY IN RUSSIA. needle with a cord, the ends of ivhich he fastened round his waist; and so supported, he leaned gradually back till the soles of his feet were planted against the spire. In this position he threw, by a strong effort, a coil of cord over the ball ; and so coolly and accurately was the aim taken, that at the first trial it fell in the required direction, and he saw the end hang down on the opposite side. To draw himself up into his original position ; to fasten the cord firmly round the globe ; and with the assistance of this auxiliary to climb to the summit Avere now an easy part of his task ; and in a few minutes more Telouchkine stood by the side of the angel, and listened to the shout that burst like sudden thunder from the concourse below, yet came to his ear only like a faint and hollow murmur. The cord, which he had now an opportunity of fastening properly, enabled him to descend with comparative facility ; and the next day he carried up with him a ladder of ropes, by means of which he found it easy to effect the necessary repairs. CHAPTER VIII. The Exchange and the rostral columns Academy of Sciences Museum cast of the face of Peter the Great taken after death sign of the Czar of Muscovy, public-house in London Academy of Arts Bruloff's celebrated picture of the last days of Pompeii Admiralty Square monu- ment to Peter the Great Admiralty camel for floating ships of the line down the Neva Winter Palace Hermi- tage paintings Catharine's dining-room rules of her society Alexandrine column. Instead of returning directly across the river from the fortress a corner of which presents itself in the opposite view the reader is requested to proceed by water to the Exchange, that columned building in front. The fa9ade is formed by a vast and beautiful Doric colonnade, surmounted by a suitable entabla- ture ; but this is encumbered and crushed by what 118 A JOLRXEY IN RUSSIA. looks like the roof and part of the wall of an enormous house. The interior, however, is grand and imposing. A rostral column at each side near the river, from which the edifice retires a little way, is to my taste a grievous deformity. Near the Exchange, proceeding along the quay, is the Academy of Sciences, founded in 1720 by Peter the Great ; with a IMuseum which must be considered still in its infancy, and even with this apology is by no means worthy of the country. A cast of Peter's own face, taken after death, is perhaps one of the best things in it. The severe sagacity of expression of this wonderful savage, seems to have been tamed and softened by the touch of a still grimmer king than he, and the change gives more of human interest. There is besides a portrait, by "an out-of-doors artist" the sign-board of a public house in Tower Street, London, where Peter went sometimes to drink on his way to work. The landlord, whose name was Edward Wild, on discovering the rank of his guest, hung up his portrait at the door, and re-baptized his house " The Czar of Muscovy." I believe it was the Emperor Alexander who devoutly trans- ferred the relic to St. Petersburg. A huge elephant, brought to the Tsar in 1713 by the Persian ambassador, is seen here stuffed, and in good preservation. When coming through Astra- kan, the astonished people fell down before this undreamed-of monster, and worsliipped him as a tfod ; but soon after arriving in Russia his mortal THE MAMMOTH AND THE GIANT. 119 nature was sufficiently proved by his falling a victim to the climate. The mammoth standing near him, in the skeleton, did not prove to be so enormous an animal as I vras prepared to expect. It must be recollected, however, that he wants the thickness of the muscle, flesh, fat, and skin enjoyed by his neighbour. Perhaps it is needless to say, that he is not quite a genuine mammoth. Many of the parts are manufactured from analogy with the others : but still, from the numerous specimens both here and at Moscow, it is impossible to doubt that a great portion is now found of this creature, who has vanished away, leaving only his bones for a monument to tell that he once lived, and moved, and had his being upon the earth. After the elephant and mammoth may be mentioned the giant of Peter the Great, who, like the former animal, is stuffed in his skin. This hideous and horrible object is now stowed away in a dimly-lighted cellar where only such prying persons as myself are likely to find him. One of the objects, and the first, I believe, which was presented to the institution, is the branch of a tree in the form of a bow with the cord and arc distinct. This, however, is common in the forests of Russia. I have myself repeatedly seen pines with but one stem for several feet from the ground, then separating into two for many feet more, and then uniting again, and forming one tall majestic tree. One might imagine that there were two vege- table lives in a single body, striving to separate, and 120 A JOURNKY IN RUSSIA. for a time effecting their deliverance, yet eventuallv compelled by an irresistible fate to re-unite. Occa- sionally, however, the efforts of imprisoned nature are more successful. The two particles of life shoot up in one trunk till they have gained a certain degree of strength, and then slowly and gradually diverge into distinct trees. I wished much to see the stem of one of these double trees when sawed near the ground, but never had an opportunity. The Academy of Arts to which I had the advantage of being conducted by M. Sincofski the well known journalist is at some distance farther on, and is generally reported by connoisseurs to be the most perfect building in this city. With sub- mission, however, I think that the Doric portico in the centre is not in proportion with the rest of the edifice. Had the curved line which it forms been produced in its whole length horizontally, this discrepancy would not have existed ; but as it is, unless the spectator stands very near, his eye cannot make allowance for the real magnitude of the por- tico, and thus the effect of the whole is injured. Let any one stand on the op])osite bank of *-lie river, which is the proper point of view, and this circum- stance cannot fail to strike him. The only remarkable work of art I observed in the place, and perhaps the only remarkable specimen of Russian art in existence, was Bruloff's famous picture of the Last Days of Pompeii. It is easier to abuse a piece of this kind than to criticise it. It bruloff's celebrated picture. 121 belongs to the romantic school of art ; and the conventional language of connoisseurship only applies to the classic, for and by which it was formed. There is nothing like this picture in existence. It stands alone for good and bad ; and the conception is not more remarkable in both ways than the execution. The foreground is illumined by lightning, and the back ground by fire ; but you see the one through the other, and both become more ghastly by the union. The technical objections to this mode of lighting the scene I do not understand, as I am not a connoisseur ; but it struck me that it was not sufficiently evident how and whence came the pre- ternatural glare shed over the figures. There are three groups of these that seem to stand out of the canvass. On the left a man and a woman crouching, as they iiy, under a cloak to preserve them from the burning, withering shower ; ia the middle a dead mother, and her beautiful child looking round in innocent consternation ; and towards the right a man and a boy piously engaged in carrying an old man away with them from the fatal spot. The limbs of the last group present the most extraordinary specimen I ever saw of the effects which may be produced by colours alone, without the aid of artificial light. Even when within a very few feet from the picture you can hardly persuade yourself that it is a plain surface, or that you cannot " catch the strong fellow by the leg." This most daring and original work is in many places Ji 122 A JOURNEY IN RUSSIA. slovenly and unfinished ; but with all its faults and their name is legion it bears the stamp of genius, and the connoisseurs may say what they will. Between the Academy of Sciences and that of Arts, the Isaak's bridge leads across the river to that grand centrical square, round which I have been hovering so long. It is usually divided into three squares, or places (plochchad in Russian), that belonging to the palace, to the Admiralty, and to the statue of Peter the Great ; but as the whole form a single oblong square, without any real divisions, it is better for the sake of simplicity to regard it as one the heart of the city. This immense oblong area runs parallel with the river, which forms one of its sides ; while the oppo- site side is bound in by the palace of the Etat Major, the War Office, and the new Isaak's church. The north-eastern angle is closed by a canal ; and the north-western by the palace of the Senate, and that of the Holy Synod. Within the area, and built upon the river side, stand the Admiralty, the Winter Palace, and the Hermitage ; the first of these buildings occupying the greater part of the entire length. On landing from the Isaak's bridge and the word landing is well applied, since it is a bridge of boats the monument of Peter the Great arrests the attention; and the visitor, on entering the finest quarter of St. Petersburg, does homage to the founder of the city. ;. I ^ ^, N^ MIRACULOUS ROCK. 123 In the view annexed, the statue is seen on the left of the bridge, appearing in relief against the distant columns of the new and unfinished Isaak's church. Still farther to the left are the vast build- ings of the Admiralty, which occupy the whole of the rest of the space. The monument of Peter, every body kno\vs, derives a great portion of its reputation from the rock which serves as a pedestal for the equestrian figure. It is in the form of a precipice ; and the horseman, who has just attained the summit, sits calmly and majestically on the saddle, while his steed is careering on its hind legs. Beneath, trampled under foot, is a huge serpent, which, being connected, although hardly percep- tibly, with the flowing tail of the animal, assists in maintaining the equilibrium of the statue. The rock was found near the village of Lachta in CareUa, eleven versts distant from St. Petersburg. It lay, huge and solitary, in a morass on the Gulf of Finland. No other stone was near, nothing which could account for its presence, or claim geological kindred with its substance. It was a curiosity and a wonder in itself; and looked as if it had been turned out of the hands of nature, expressly for the monument of a giant. It was chiefly formed of granite ; but contained besides crystals, agates, to- pazes, cornelians, amethysts, &c. &c. in short it was a miracle. No vestiges of these riches, it must be owned are now to be seen at least thay are not discernible from the rails which surround the monument ; but in corroboration, I may mention 124 A JOURNKY IN RUSSIA. that IVIr. W. Richardson, wlio travelled there in 1784, informs us that onyx earrings, sleeve-buttons, &c. were made from the fragments of this stone, and were very beautiful from the high polish they took. The original dimensions were forty-two feet long, twenty-one high, and thirty-four broad. These I receive from Tooke, since he is invested with historical dignity ; but travellers are not agreed in this case any more than others, even in matters of fact. A road was made from the spot where the colossus lay to the water's edge ; and then brass slips were inserted under the stone, which was to roll upon cannon balls in metal grooves. In this manner was a weight of between fourteen and fifteen hundred tons, conveyed to the Gulf, drawn by windlasses worked by five hundred men ; and there it was embarked for St. Petersburg in camels, a species of vessel which will be hereafter described. If the French artist Falconet had let this work of nature alone, simply placing his own on the summit, all would have been well. It was necessary, how- ever, to cut, and to carve, and to polish, and to make so rude and savage a mass look pretty and polite. The consequence ^vas that the stone was irreparably spoiled. Its size, in \\liich consisted a great part of its grandeur, was much diminished ; and the effect of this paltry and effeminate chisel has been, to give the rock the appearance of having been scooped and sliced with a knife. Nothing, of course, can restore the magnificence it has lost ; but MONUMENT OF PETER. 125 if somebody was to round the edges of these scoops and slices, on and beneath the summit, it would become less precise, and look like a cliff which had been Avorn away by the waves. It is usually said that this pedestal is formed of a single block of stone. In reality, however, it is in three pieces ; although the middle one contains the vast bulk of the mass. It is sufficiently evident that the fragment at what may be called the tail of the stone, formed originally a part of it, and was broken by accident ; but the other, in front, an immense mass under the summit of the cliff, appears to me to exhibit a considerable difference in com- position and even in colour. With regard to the figures, I can only join in the eulogium bestowed by other travellers. The metal of which they are formed is principally copper, with some tin and zinc, and the weight of the whole is forty-four thousand and forty-one pounds, not including ten thousand pound weight of iron in- serted in the hinder part of the horse to preserve the equipoise. The figure of the Emperor is eleven feet high, and that of the horse seventeen feet The cost of the whole work amounted to eighty-five thousand pounds. On one side of the space in which the monument stands, are the palaces of the Senate and Synod; and on the other, the south-western wing of the Admiralty. The two former buildings are chiefly distinguished for those Brobdignagiau dimensions which in general characterize the public offices of M 2 126 A JOURNKY IN RUSSIA. this colossal empire. In the conference-hall of the Senate there are preserved in a silver shrine the laws of Catharine II., said to be in her own hand- \vriting. The Admiralty is not only the largest but perhaps the finest building in St. Petersburg. The immense length of the principal fa9ade, however, rather injures the effect than otherwise ; and, in fact, it might serve to form three distinct fa9ades, one in the middle, and one at each end. The middle is neither so simple, nor to my taste, so beautiful as the others ; but it is massive and im- posing, and even the colossal statue at each side of the gate, bearing the celestial and terrestrial globes, are not out of keeping. Above the gate is a massive Doric entablature ; from which rises the tower, surrounded by a gallery supported by Ionic columns, and surmounted by a dome, cupola, and spire, the three last covered with plates of fine gold. The facade at either end (still to consider them distinct) is separated from the centre one by a range of buildings only one story high, with attic, and of immense length. They consist of a Doric portico for the centre-piece, with a pediment orna- mented at each angle with a statue, and on either side a Doric colonnade. The whole is chaste and elegant ; but perhaps the pediment is a little more charged which sculpture than suits the graceful simplicity of the order to which it belongs. This, however, is a fault so common, even in buildings of the highest rank, as scarcely to be considered one at WATER-CAMEL. 127 all. The pediment seems naturally to belong to the sculptor as a field for the exercise of his art, without reference to the buildins: of which it is a component part. The Admiralty was formerly defended by a ditch and ramparts, but instead of these, there is now a promenade, planted with small trees, and called the Boulevards. When Peter the First determined to make St. Petersburg a great naval station, he seemed to treat with equal contempt the obstacles interposed by nature and by man ; and his successors, either from pious respect to his memory, or from royal obstinacy, adhere to this day to his plans. Ships of the line are still built at the Admiralty which a vessel drawing nine feet of water can neither approach nor leave ! A late writer says seventeen feet, which is perhaps a mistake of the press. When the ship is built, the question is how to get her down the river ; and the task is always difficult and expensive, although performed with great ingenuity. A vessel is brought to the build- ing-yard, called a camel, and which may be described as a huge hollow box. It is then filled with water, and sunk so far that on its sides being opened its enormous cargo may be floated into it. The box, which contains the entire bottom of the ship, is then screwed up, and pumped. As the water goes out the machine rises ; till at length it floats so high as to be able to get over the bar, and deliver this strange passenger in triumph to the Gulf of Finland. 128 A JOURNEY IN RUSSIA. After traversing the line formed by the fa9a(le of the Admiralty, and which would of itself form a very tolerable forenoon's walk for a lady, the Winter Palace presents itself opposite the north-east side of the former edifice. This imperial abode may be called antique for St. Petersburg, having been built by the Empress Elizabeth ; and it is remarkable for its size, its dingy colour, and its bad taste. It consists of two stories above the vaults, ornamented with columns nearer the Composite than any other order ; the upj)er resting on a huge square block of stone, and the lower with scarcely any base at all. The interior of this palace is truly Avorthy of a monarch. It has been fully described, however, by a writer who is fond of kings and courts, and in whose eyes emperors and empresses, and all things pertaining thereto, are something more than earthly. I question whether there is any prince in Europe better lodged than the Emperor of Russia and certainly no one can have a finer crown. Such a blaze of brilliants I never saw before ! The im- perial chapel, although a little gaudy, is exquisitely beautiful. Every thing here worth seeing and that is to say the whole house was pointed out to my atten- tion by General S , whose kindness was unre- mitting during the whole of my visit to Russia, and whose influence I afterwards felt sensibly in my reception even at ^Moscow. If in the course of my tour, I say any thing and I fear I shall say very many HERMITAGE. 129 things to shock his noble enthusiasm in favour of his country and his Emperor^ I trust he will try to pardon me. The Hermitage, the favourite haunt of Catharine II. when she wished to retire to as much solitude as an Empress surrounded by a brilliant court could desire, is connected with the Winter Palace by a covered gallery. It is now chiefly remarkable as being the repository of a museum of paintings, greater, I should think, in the numerical meaning of the word, than that of the Louvre and Luxembourg put together. I entered, with the intention of taking rough notes of the more remarkable works of art, or rather of the impression they produced upon me ; but I speedily found that more days than I could afford hours would have been requisite for such a task. The counterfeits are said to be numerous ; and in so vast a collection this must necessarily be the case. The first thing that struck me was a work of Ruysdael, which is either the original, or one of several copies. It consists of a piece of water covered witli weeds, and aquatic flowers floating on the surface. It is lighted through the trees behind, and so breathlessly still, that one is afraid to speak. A Europa by Guido Reni drew my attention by its exquisite delicacy united with the most luxurious beauty. The complexion is inimitable. A young lady playing the piano, by Carlo Dolce. She is drawn in satin, sparkling with gold, and while touching the keys, without consciousness of 130 A JOURNEY IN RUSSIA. music, is turning round a most lovely face to notice the effect produced by her charms upon the com- pany. This young lady, by the halo round her head, I discovered to be Saint Cecilia. I could not admire the Rafaelles, whether genuine or not, although I thought it my duty to try ; but a small picture hanging near, with the name of Solario, gave me infinite pleasure. A young mother is suckling her child, and gazing upon its face with a truly radiant joy ; while the babe in an extacy of pleasure is twisting up its limbs, and pulling lustily one of its little great toes. The Corregios appeared to me to be very indiffer- ent. There were plenty of Teniers ; but those I am not connoisseur enough to admire. The care with which every uncouth figure is finished may be very praiseworthy, but it does not make the figures pleasing. Surrounded by the cocks and hens of Winart, there was the exquisite Kuyp, or else a copy just as good. A group of cattle, standing in a hazy sun-set beside a sleeping sea : such are the simple materials of this delightful picture. There were numberless Rembrandts, and some very fine. For my part, I looked longest at a Vir- gin and Child, watched by angels all natives of Holland ; the holy mother with lier feet upon a chauffe-pied, and various tools hanging against the wall to show that her husband was a carpenter. This differs from the Russian tradition of the Vir- gin, which is more poetical, if not more scriptural. TRADITION OF THE VIRGIN. 131 According to this account, JMary was a servant of the Jewish temple, and being a child, was admitted behind the sanctum. She grew up in the beauty of holiness, till, having attained the age of fifteen, this became no longer proper ; and it was decided by the aged priests, who had come to love her as their own daughter, and who dreaded the idea of parting with her, that one of them should make her his wife. The lot, accordingly, fell upon Joseph, who was then eighty years of age. The French gallery has many good pictures. There is one of Vernet, which struck me as being the best I have seen of the artist. It is, as usual, a water-piece. The moon is shining on the sea, and her silvery light is beautifully, and not extrava- gantly contrasted with that of a fire kindled on the beach, and of a torch at the prow of a fishing-boat. The Russian gallery is small and meagre. The Spanish, on the contrary, is highly interest- ing; although the warm glare of almost all the pic- tures, which seems the livery of the Spanish school, gives a sameness to the aspect of the room. I had before only known, or only recollected, Murillo as the painter of low Spanish life; but here are several pieces of another cast, particularly the Nativity, and the Repose in Egypt. The latter is astonishingly lovely ; and the Virgin, is, indeed, without excep- tion, the most beautiful of the very few beautiful Virgins I have seen. The colouring is admirable, although warm and rich to excess. I was struck also with a female figure by Gaspar 132 A JOURNEY IN RUSSIA. Becerra. The face possesses infinite beauty ; and the large dark eyes beam with an expression almost too voluptuous. Of the English school, there is one specimen. The piece;, which could not have made a strong impression upon me, since I already forget wliat it was, is inscribed " Thomas Jones." It was painted for the Empress Catharine, and engraved also by her order. There is likewise in the same collection, but not exhibited to the public, a picture painted for her majesty by Sir Joshua Reynolds. The subject the infant Hercules strangling the serpent involved an allegory which the empress perhaps did not wish to flaunt in the eyes of the world. The infant Her- cules, some people might have interj)reted infant Russia, \vhile every tyro knows that the serpent is the type of the universe. In the dining-room of this Hermitage of the vo- luptuous Catharine, no servants attended ; the dishes rising on small tables tlirough trap doors. When a person wished to change his plate, he placed a paper upon it, inscribed with -what he wanted, and striking it on the middle, it immedi- ately disappeared, and almost as immediately another re-appeared with what was demanded. At other signals, every thing vanished, and a new course made its appearance. The amusements here ^^'e^e derived from the fine arts, 5v:c. books, paintings, statues, curiosities, models of inventions, gems, music, billiards, cards, and winter and summer gar- dens. In the winter gardens, as at present, t!ie Catharine's rules. 133 fruits and flowers of the south were gathered in the dead of the year ; and the birds which lived in this perpetual summer were prevented from escaping into winter by minute wirework. The rules by which she governed the society admitted into her paradise, are hung up in a corner, and covered with a small curtain. Captain Jones gives the original of these rules, in French, and translates it into English. The original, how- ever, is in Russian, and his French is only a para- phrase. The following translation was made for me, as literally as possible, by Mr. J. C , to whom I am indebted for many more kindnesses. Catharine, I may remark in passing, was still more an enemy to ceremony at the palace of Tsar- kocoelo; for there, any lady who rose up on the empress entering or leaving a room was fined in a silver ruble. RULES, By which all who enter these doors must conduct themselves. I. To leave every kind of rank at the door, like- wise hats, and above all, swords. IT. Disputes about prerogative, pride, and such like, should any exist, to be left at the door. 134 A JOURNEY IN RUSSIA. To be lively ; but not to spoil, nor to break, nor to bite any thing. IV. To sit, to stand, to walk about, as each thinks proper, without regard to other people. V. To speak with moderation, and not too loud, that the ears and heads of the rest may not ache. VI. To dispute without warmth or passion. VII. Not to sigh, nor to yawn ; and so entail tedium and heaviness on the rest. VIII. Any innocent game that one may project not to be found fault with by the others. IX. To eat of the sweet and the savoury, but to drinlc with moderation, that each may always find his feet on going out of the doors. X. All \vrangling to end in the room ; and what goes in at one ear should go out at the other before the party goes out of the door. ALEXANDRINE COLUMN. 135 Should any one offend against the aforesaid on testimony of two witnesses^ for every fault the offender must drink a glass of cold water, not excepting the ladies^ and read aloud a page of the Telemachid. And whoever offends against three clauses in one evening shall learn six lines of the Telemachid by heart. And if any one offend against the ten, he must be no more admitted. Opposite the Winter Palace, and midway between this edifice and the palace of the Etat Major, where the military business of the empire is transacted, stands the monument commonly called the Alexan- drine Column, from its having been erected to the memory of the late emperor. This object has a truly noble and majestic appear- ance from whichever point of view it is beheld. The shaft is formed of a single block of marble brought from the quarries of Finland, and, exclu- sively of pedestal and capital, is eighty-four feet high. The pedestal is of granite, with allegorical bas-reliefs in bronze; and on the summit stands an angel, holding a cross with the left hand, and point- ing to heaven with the right. The inscription, on the side of the pedestal next the palace, is nearly as simple as that of the monument of Peter the Great. It contains merely these words : To Alexander I. grateful Russia. On the eleventh of September, 1834, the conse- 136 A JOURNEY IN RUSSIA. cration of tliis column took place ; which jMr. Vickers^ with his usual power^ describes to the eye of the reader in the next page. The day before, much anxiety and uncertainty had prevailed in St. Petersburg; for it seemed as if Heaven itself was about to interpose. The beautiful, but terrible Neva, forced back by the waters of the Gulf of Finland, had risen upon her granite quays, and threatened once again to devour the city which so often before had been the victim of her wrath. The alarm-cannon were fired ; and the population, already looking forward with intense longing for the scene of to-morrow, were thrown into dismay. The Neva, however, was more placable than on former occasions ; her swoln waters retired majes- tically ; and that important morrow dawned upon the metropolis in peace. If the reader will only remember the description which I have attempted to give of the gi'and square where the ceremony was to take place, he may form some idea of the scene it presented. Estrades were formed all round that immense area; and these, with the boulevards of the Admiralty, were crowded with spectators. The windows, in like manner, were stuck full of human heads ; and the flat roofs of the houses swarmed with their inhabitants. But in the middle space, from side to side, from end to end, nothing was to be seen but the glitter of arms and the waving of military plumes. At ten o'clock, the troops assembled at their quarters; and, at eleven, on a signal from the guns CONSECRATION. 137 of the light artillery, already planted at the corner of the boulevards, they all debouched at one moment by the several issues appointed, and drew up in the square. This imposing mass was formed of eighty- six battalions of infantry, and one hundred and six and a half squadrons of cavalry, with two hundred and forty-eight pieces of artillery. AU these various bodies were drawn up, facing the Alexandrine column, the pedestal of which was concealed from their view by flags. The Emperor, who had attended divine service at the monastery of Saint Alexander Nevskoi, soon appeared upon the scene, with the Heir of the crown, and the Grand Duke Michael, and sur- rounded by a brilliant staff. All eyes were then turned towards a large verandah, in the form of a tent, at the window of the palace above the great gate, directly opposite the column, and provided with a flight of stairs descending to the street. There already stood the high civil functionaries, the members of the diplomatic body, the marshals of the nobility, and the deputies of commerce ; and, precisely at noon, the high clergy were seen filing into it in procession, from the grand chapel of the palace, with their crosses and banners displayed, and followed by the Empress and the whole court. The business of the day then commenced. The moment the procession appeared, the Em- peror gave the word of command; and the whole array of troops presented arms like one man. The priests then thundered forth the Te Deum ; and n2 138 A JOURNEY IN RUSSIA. emperor, empress, court, soldiers, spectators every living soul in that mighty concourse of human beings sunk upon their knees. After the hymn, and a prayer for the imperial family, the archdeacon recited prayers for the soul of the Emperor Alexander ; and, as he pronounced the last words, the flags which had hitherto con- cealed the pedestal of the column fell, and disclosed the monument. At this sight the troops again pre- sented arms ; a tremendous hurra rose from every lip; and a burst of military music shook the square, almost drowTied by the thunder of the artillery, and the deep roar of the cannon of the fortress. Prayers were then recited for the Russiaii army; and, when these were concluded, the clergy, followed by the Empress and her whole train, descended from the balcony. They walked in procession round the column, the metropolitan sprinkling it with holy water. The troops then defiled before it, and the ceremony was finished. CHAPTER IX. Progress of civilization in Russia condition of the nobles till Peter the Great domestic imprisonment of wives brutal treatment of them marriages ugliness punishable with the whip corresponding want Of refinement in the v^^smen drunkenness painting age of Catharine II affranchisement of the nobility by Peter III. private Chancery of Nicolas business habits of the Emperor form of government code of laws administration of the laws. Maltebrun says that Russia "lost only its beard " by the reforms of Peter I. This is nothing more than a French bon mot ; but still, taking it as literally true, it was a great deal to lose at one blow. With their beards, however, the boiars parted with prejudices as bristly, and almost as numerous as the hairs they contained ; and not- withstanding the bloody struggles in which they were so constantly engaged, they became, in a space 140 A JOURNEY IN RUSSIA. of time unparalleled in the annals of civilization what they now are. It would be a curious study to trace the progress of Russian civilization, and its history would be far from difficult to write. The space of time is brief, the materials few, and the testimony conclusive. In the latter half of the seventeenth century, the author of the " Relation des Trois Ambassades," informs us, that " most men treat their wives as a necessary evil, regarding them with a proud and stern eye, and even beating them often." Olearius says that it was a prodigious civility for a man to allow another to see his wife. When this favour was to be accorded, the lady walked into the room after dinner, splendidly dressed, and presented a cup of distilled spirits to the guest, drinking off one herself. On one occasion the traveller was even invited to salute his hostess ; but astonished at sucli an offer from a Russian, and dreading, no doubt, that some insidious plan lurked under it, he endeavoured to excuse himself. Dr. Samuel Collins, physician to the tsar about I67O, consoles his readers with the intelligence that the custom of tying up wives by the hair of the head, and flogging them "begins to be left off." This, however, he accounts for by the prudence of the parents, who make it a provision in the marriage contract that their daughters are not to be whipped, struck, kicked, &c. &c. Some disorders neverthe- less still took place, even in such an improved state of society. One man, indeed, " put upon his wife a 3IATRIM0NIAL DISCIPLINE. 141 shirt dipped in ardent spirits, and burnt her to death." But let us hope that this was not a very common case. The man, however, if we are to believe the doctor, was not prosecuted, there being *^'no punishment in Russia for killing a wife or a slave." On the other hand if a lady made away with her tyrant, she was buried up to the neck in the earth, and so suffered to die. When no provision was made in the contract, according to the same authority, they were accus- tomed " to discipline their wives very severely." At marriage the bridegroom had a whip in one boot, and a jewel in the other, and the poor girl tried her fortune by choosing. "If she happen upon the jewel," says Collins, " she is lucky ; if on the whip, she gets a lash." The bridegroom rarely saw his companion's face till after the knot was tied ; but if he absolutely insisted upon this privilege, it was sometimes contrived that the lady passed through a street where he was stationed at a window. " If she be ugly, she pays for it soundly, may be the hrst time he sees her." The women, it may be presumed, did not grow up into especial refinement under such discipline. Drunkenness was esteemed a very lady-like vice, if indeed, it was considered to be a vice at all. The day after a lady was at an entertainment, the hostess was accustomed to send to ask how she got home ; and the prescriptive reply was this : " Her hospi- tality made me so tipsy that,, indeed, I do not know how I got home !" I mav add that Tooke, whose 142 A JOURNEY IN RUSSIA. heroine is Catharine II., declares that "for a lady to be drunk was no reproach;" and we all know what sort of scenes took place at the court of Elizabeth. It may be supposed that women, in whom ugliness was criminal, and punishable with the whip, were at great pains to disguise it. They painted to such excess that the beauty of their teeth, according to Collins, Avas completely destroyed ; and hence came the custom of staining their teeth black. In the time of Olearius it was usual for the bridegroom to send a present of paint to his bride. This traveller, in 1636, saw the Grand Duchess and her ladies on horseback, astride, and " most wick- edly bepainted." What will no doubt be considered, however, as the very climax of barbarity, is a fact recorded by Tooke : that the women did not begin to wear stays till the commencement of the present century ! With regard to the men, their character up to a very late period, is treated with still less ceremony, if that be possible, by all travellers. According to them, they were the most ignorant and barbarous people in the world, destitute alike of moral prin- ciple and common decency. Even the representa- tives of the states assembled so pompously by Catharine who died only in 1 796 although com- posed no doubt of the first men of the various governments, went immediately on receiving the commemorative medal struck on the occasion, and sold it to the goldsmiths ! PROGRESS OF CIVILIZATION. 143 The rules of Catharine^, given in the last chapter, sufficiently evidence the low state of politeness even at court ; but with these it is necessary to take in conjunction the occupations and amusements of that very assembly^ the objects of refinement by which they were surrounded, and the purer tastes which were thus engendered or gratified. If we do this, the whole picture will be found to represent the triumphant struggles of civilization in a contest which was no longer doubtful. But let us remem- ber at the same time, that from the death of Peter the Great to that of Catharine II., there elapsed an interval of only seventy-one years ; and that from the death of Catharine II. to the present moment, there is a space of only thirty-nine years. For Russia that united period stands in lieu of nine centuries; since it can be proved to a demonstration if I have read historians and travellers aright that Russia, before Peter, was not farther advanced in civilization than the rest of Europe in what is called the iron age. The nobility were not aflfranchised till 1761 by Peter III. They were then permitted to wear arms or not as they chose, and to travel abroad. Catha- rine, his successor, allowed this ordinance to subsist, because as the nobles were obliged in etiquette to ask leave before setting out, she might (and did) refuse it when she chose. The same state of things remains at the present day. Leave is asked, and granted or not, as circumstances may determine. I was told that above eighty families or 144 A JOURNEVr IN RUSSIA. individuals of respectability had petitioned for the boon last year, and that about half the number had obtained it. The Russian nobility live well enough at home, but generally speaking, they have no money to spend abroad. If the restriction were withdrawn, there would in my opinion be fewer applications. No man now thinks of wearing a sword except when on military duty ; but if an oukaz Avere issued prohibiting men from doing so without having asked and obtained permission, petitions would shower in from half the nobles in the empire. The base and cowardly conspiracy against the life of the present emperor has retarded a good deal the progress of public liberty among the nobles ; although, as I shall explain in a future chapter, it has been proportionably beneficial to those myriads of peasants who will one day be called the people. The severity of the above restrictions on travelling (now only beginning to be relaxed), and that of the censorship on books, are part of the punishment infiicted on the nobles for the misconduct of a fe^'. This, considering the relative condition of the two countries, and the important nature of the Russiuii conspiracy, is not nearly so harsh as the laws no^^' promulgating against the liberty of the press in France, on pretext of the attempt of a single mean and companionless scoundrel. In no other country, however, on the face of the earth, would a conspiracy of such a nature have been so leniently punished throughout On the FRIGHTFUL INQUISITION. 145 occasion of the revolt of the strelitses^ Peter the Great, besides causing many hundred other executions, cut off eleven heads Avith his own hand ! The same difference is observable in the new institutions of Russia as compared with the older and one of these institutions is so remarkable in itself, and so peculiar to the country, that this brief notice of the progress of civilization would be incomplete without it. A Private Chancery existed in Russia from an early period, and must exist under every absolute government ; but the one more especially known to history was erected, as some writers say, by Alexis the father of Peter the Great, although an imperial oukaz of Catharine II. attributes it to the latter. The crimes brought under the cognizance of this horrible tribunal, which is well described by Tooke in his life of Catharine, were at first attempts against the life of the emperor, against religion, and against the state : but all criminal cases came at length to be comprehended. The process began with the imprisonment, and occasionally with the execution of the accused. When the accuser failed in proof he was knouted three several times. His declaration was then received. The accused might in like manner suffer the knout instead of pleading, an occurrence which of course often took place, since it must have been impossible to prove his innocence of crimes alleged so mysteriously. If the judge Avas not convinced by either party, they were both knouted again; and then their guilt or innocence came o 146 A JOURNEY IN RUSSIA. to be determined by the constancy with which they suffered the flesh to be torn from their backs. Station^ age, and sex all were alike unspared and undistinguished. The slightest accusation was listened to. To "cry the word " meant to denounce; and at this sound " the word !" uttered in a crowd, all fled as if from the plague. If "the word " was spoken by a servant against his master, the latter, even if the first lord in the land, was obliged to hasten to the next guard-house, and demand that they should both be sent to prison together. This flourished under the reign of the clemoit Elizabeth, as she is usually called, on account of her having made a vow never to punish with death. Even an inferior magistrate was permitted to tor- ture an accused by dislocating his shoulders, and tongues were cut out, and their owners banished to Siberia on the slightest whisper. People were taken from their beds, without trial, and thrust into a dungeon, sometimes a subterranean one, fre- quently for life. The clement Empress, who reigned from 1741 to \']i'A, shut up, it is supposed, in this private manner, upwards of 20,000 of lier subjects. Peter III. recalled 17,000 of her exiles ; but of those of the Empress Anne, her predecessor, supposed to be equally numerous, three-fourths were never heard of more. When the last-mentioned prince, the afl^rancliiser, as we have seen, of the noble.s, went one day to the senate, and found nol)ody there to attend to the business of the country, he sent for the senators. PRIVATE CHANCERY. 147 and reproved them sharply. His grandfather, Peter the Great, had already done more : he caned each of them soundly. Nicolas, the present emperor, took them by surprise in like manner ; and, finding that neither words nor bloAvs had been of any use, he organized, like Peter or Alexis, a Secret Chancery. This is the plan by which the Emperor corrects the evils of the form of government, or rather, of the abuses inseparable from it. In Russia, it is not the people who are rebels against the constitution, but the emperor. He is engaged in a perpetual struggle against tyranny and misrule. The very comprehensive plan adverted to, is not a part of the administration of the laws, but a part of his own business as an individual ; and the institution is called, "the Private Chancery of his majesty the Emperor." It is divided into four branches ; one watching over the great offices of the state, such as the senate, another over the courts of law, a third, over the police, and the fourth, over the charitable insti- tutions. Through these different channels, com- plaints and abuses reach the ear of his majesty in- stantaneously. He is acquainted with the official conduct of each of his ministers ; he is even aware of the regularity or irregularity of the attendance of the senators. It is needless to say, that the inquiries instituted there take place, not in form of law, but according to equity ; they, in fact, answer the pur- pose of the nightly prowlings of the caliph Haroun Alraschid and his grand vizier. 148 A JOURNEY IN RUSSIA. But Nicolas is not a man who would refuse to perform these nightly prowlings in his own person, were they practicable through his vast empire. I felt intense curiosity with regard to the real character and c(mduct of an individual placed in so awfully responsible a situation ; and, unless all Russia con- spired to deceive me, I think I have been able to form some tolerably correct ideas on the subject. No fatigue is too harassing for this " Barbarian," par excellence, of the north ; no object is too great to be grasped by his vision, or too small to esca])e it. The gravest fraud in a report, and the minutest error in its grammar, are alike detected by the imperial censor ; and this is the more startling to the reporter, as his delinquency, either in honesty or elegant composition, is in general brought home to him the very next day. To effect this, Nicolas condemns each day to bear its own burthen. After coming home, perhaps from the theatre, he sits down to work; and he never thinks of going to bed till all is finished, if he should sit up till four o'clock in the morninii. With re Alexander 422,891 1825 J 433,112 1831 Nicolas 448,221 1832 449,368 This population of 449,368 souls is distributed as in the following table. p2 162 A JOURNEY IN RUSSIA. Clergy 2,188 Nobility 34,079 Soldiers 39,437 Merchants 10,833 Bourgeois 36,725 Inscribed in Corps de Metiers 27,279 Domestics 94,009 People of all trades 66,366 Peasants 127,867 Strangers 7,199 Inhabitants of the suburb of Okhta 3,386 449,368 The distribution of the sexes, however, is the most extraordinary feature in this mass of population. In the above grand total there are 294,468 men and only 154,900 women ! a discrepancy which merits explanation. Of the hundred and tAventy-seven thousand peasants, there are from fifty to sixty thousand who reside only a part of the year in the city. These are the mujiks from the interior, wlio travel many hundred versts to seek employment for the spring and summer, leaving their wives at home to manage their little farms. The Hay JMarket, a view of which is annexed, is the best place to see these specimens of the genuine Russian. This is one cause of the deficiency in the female population. 'f \X STRANGE DISCREPANCY. 163 Another is, that, of the remainder of the peasantry the ninety-four thousand domestics and the sixty- six thousand trades-people or artificers resident in the city, a very considerable number have left their families at a distance, and only visit them on a rare occasion. In addition to these causes, it may be mentioned that the high clergy are all unmarried, being monks, and that a very great proportion of the nobility are employes of the government, and others, who flock to the metropolis in quest of fortune before they think of looking out for a wife. As for the great and steady increase of the population, this must be attributed, firstly, to the number of workmen, who, tired of their migrations, and perhaps deprived by death of the charm of that ark to which they were accustomed to return, sit down every year as residents in the city ; and, secondly, to the colonies of natives and foreigners attracted by the policy of the emperors to the capital. It is necessary to look for the increase in these causes alone ; for, startling as the fact may appear, the population does not increase of itself. From 1770 to 1790, which is reckoned a favour- able period, the difi'erence between births and deaths was only 3630, while the increase in the number of inhabitants for the same period was 20,000. In the first ten years of the present century there were born 41,887 and 39,223 girls, while there died 68,082 males and 37,372 females, leaving on the side of mortality a balance of 25,344 individuals. In this period the population was increased by 65,000. 164 A JOURNEY IX RUSSIA. In 1832 the births were 10,167, and the deaths J 5, 197 a difference of 5,720 in one year. From all this one would imagine the city to be frightfully unhealthy ; and even M. Bachoutsky, to whom I am indebted for many details Avhich a stranger could not readily come at, seeks to explain a part of the mystery by the suicidal stays^ bands, &c. of the women of quality. These women, how- ever^ form so trifling a ])ortion of the population, that if they were all to die together, the loss would hardly he perceived by the statictician. The cause must be sought for in the preceding paragraphs, where it is clearly explained. The balance in favour of mortality is owing to the vast numbers of males, either resident or migratory, who, without having added to the births, lay their bones every year in the cemeteries of St. Petersburg. To take, for example, the first ten years of the pre- sent century, in Avhich there were born 39,223 girls and 41,887 hoys, we find the deaths 37,372 females and sixty-eight thousand males. If you make the number of male deaths correspond in the usual ratio with that of the female deaths, you leave the natural surplus in favour of the increase of human life. The births here are as one to fifty- two of the population ; ^\hile in Paris they are as one to thirty- one ; but taking the above circumstances into ac- count, the balance is in favour of St. Petersburg rather than otherwise. For the last few years the average number of women compared with that of men is as forty-five CLIMATE. 165 to a hundred; but unhappily the marriages do not take place even in proportion. From 1811 to 1821 the number was one to every 200 inhabi- tants ; but this has gone on diminishing until it is now one to 340 ! Suicides bear a proportion of one to 20,360, which is pretty nearly the same as in Paris. In St. Petersburg, however, these crimes are usually committed in a paroxysm of passion ; while in the French capital they take place upon reflection, and proceed from what young ladies call a philosophical despair. The climate of St. Petersburg is delightful for a short time in summer. There is then no night. The soft glowing evening is met midway by the rich dawn ; and at this season the Neva, with its green islands, is inexpressibly beautiful. Of the rest of the year, the reader may form some judgment from the following observations made by Count Sternberg during two hundred and thirty-two days. In that period there were a hundred and nineteen days when it froze consecutively, and only twenty-five when it did not freeze at all. In a hundred and seventy-three the barometer stood below the freezing point. In sixty-nine it snowed, in a hundred and twelve it rained, in fifty-one there was fog, and in two hail. The springs appear to be getting worse. On the nineteenth of I\Iay it was extremely cold, the ground covered with snow, and although by no means sensitive on such points, I was obliged to order my bed-room to be heated as in winter. The 166 A JOURNEY IN RUSSIA. inundations of the Neva in general take place between the seventeenth of August and the twenty- third of November and they too appear to be getting worse, as the following table of the rise of the waters will show. Yean.. Feet. Inches. Years. Feel. Incliei 1721 7 4 1756 7 3 1723 7 7 1777 10 7 1726 8 2 1788 7 5 1729 7 1 1802 7 5 1744 7 1824 13 7 1752 8 5 I have now given a hasty sketch of St. Petersburg, or rather of its more prominent details, leaving alone as much as possible the objects enlarged upon by other travellers. The annexed view of the Admiralty from the quay, by moonlight, will suffice as a parting glance. CHAPTER XI Departure from St. Petersburg the one thing needful to a traveller inns and living peasantry on the road musical instruments national songs the Korovoda curious rem- nant of paganism dress of the women dances architec- ture of the villages alarming property of wooden houses agricultural customs Novgorod Valdai Tver Toijok its staple manufactures of veal cutlets and morocco slip- pers military road Russian soldiers arrival at Moscow. "An English traveller," saith ^Ir. Josiah Conder, in his Modern Traveller, " who had visited the most remote and desolate parts of the Scottish Highlands, even half a century ago, would be ill- prepared to encounter the inconveniences, discom- forts, and privations, to which he would be exposed in journeying from one capital of Russia to the other, if he did not carry along with him the means of preventing or remedying them. The representa- tions of Dr. Clarke with regard to the condition of 168 A JOURNEY IN KUSSIA. Russia must be taken with much caution and quali- fication ; yet he speaks but the language of all other travellers in this country, when he advises that no- thing should be expected from inns, or houses of entertainment, not even clean straw for a bed. He enumerates the following articles as forming an indispensable portion of the traveller's baggage : a pewter tea-pot ; a kettle ; a saucepan, the top of which may be used as a dish ; tea, sugar, and a large cheese ; loaves of bread made into rusks ; if in the winter, frozen meat ; wine in the cold dis- tricts, vinegar in the hot. Thus prepared, he may safely encounter this long journey." This cruj viatorinn was not held forth in the days of Peter the Great, but in the year 1 82a ; and, nevertheless, I had the courage to get into the diligence at St. Petersburg, without any other provision for so tremendous a journey than a bottle of Cognac. The advantage of providing myself with the said Cognac ^vas twofold. In the first place, the article which is well-known to l)e the only orthodox comforter of wayfaring men is ditficult to be had on this road ; and, in the second j)lace, the wine which is oifered as a substitute is not sold in small bottles : and I hope the reader agrees \\ ith me that a large bottle would be too much at a time if taken very often in the day. I found the road excellent ; the inns, with few exceptions, exceedingly comfortable; and the living, good or bad as I chose : for the traveller dines by the carte, and has the best wines of France and THE TEA QUESTION. 169 Germany at his command. I should like to see a gentleman going into one of these establishments with a large cheese under his arm, and the lid of a saucepan by way of a dish. As for his kettle and pe\vter tea-pot, they would excite a universal cachinnation, spreading from village to village ; for almost every hut is provided with an immense tea-urn of burnished brass. In fact, the only discomfort or privation I suffered, or, at least, was about to suffer, was in the way of tea. I, ilii my unhappy ignorance, fancied the article to be exceedingly good ; but a Russian merchant, one of my fellow-travellers, held my hand in time, warning me that it was destitute of the true oriental aroma. At every station he produced a secret hoard of his own, and insisted upon treating the company. They drink much finer tea in Russia than in England ; but the difference, I suspect, does not lie in the land or sea carriage. In the former country, you meet with no such thing as five, or six, or seven shilling tea in a respectable house, whether public or private. The lowest price is ten or twelve rubles a pound and the Russian pound is smaller than the English from which rate it ascends to a guinea. At these prices I have a notion the tea is as good in London as any where else in the world. The villagers between the two capitals must not be taken as a fair sample of the Russian peasantry. On this great highway, many circumstances contri- bute to enrich, and many to demoralize them. The women are often handsome, setting aside the Q 170 A JOURNEY IN RUSSIA. peculiarity of shape which I noticed at St. Peters- burg, but, with hardly an exception, they are given to the odious practice of painting their faces. This blackens and destroys the teeth, and makes an otherwise pretty face altogether unapproachable. The custom, so far as I know, is entirely laid aside by the nobility. Every day appeared to me to be a holiday. In the evening nothing was to be heard but music, and nothing seen but groups of peasant-girls, magnificently dressed, dancing and singing the Korovoda. The musical instruments in the hands of the Russian peasants are all extremely simple, and such as correspond with the condition of a rude people. Antiquarians trace most of them to the Greeks ; but the musical instruments of one country may resemble those of another, and yet be original in both. Almost all nations, for instance, have in- vented a drum and a flute ; because these simple contrivances for the production of musical sounds will be stumbled upon accidentally, if the inventive genius does not exist. The ancient Greek music is in the same way said to be re-produced among the forests of Russia ; but, in fact, the Russian melt- dies bear a still greater resemblance to the national airs of the Scots. However, the learned Thebans behold the Cetra of the ancients, described by Ovid, in the bdla/ai/ka of the Russian peasant. It is a sort of guitar, made of hollow Mood, the barrel part extremely small, and furnished sometimes with two, sometimes with three NATIONAL MUSIC. 171 strings. It is neatly formed, but may be bought in ^loscow for sixpence. The Doudka is a flute. The Gelaika is a double flute, resembling the one described by Horace. The Gusli is a kind of piano, laid upon a table ; and is furnished with steel chords touched by the fingers. These, with the Pandean pipes, are all the ancient instruments of the Russians ; and it does not appear that any attempt was ever made to improve them. The vocal music resembles very much the Scottish, but has still less variety. The peasants go on for hours together ringing the changes upon a few notes, which would a])pear ridiculous if set down in the musical score ; but when sung by them are touching and pleasing in no ordinary degree. In the article of bells, however, their taste is very extraordinary. They appear to have no idea of ringing harmony from such machines. They have a kind of music in which each performer takes only a single note, and thus a complete whole, instead of being woven to- gether, is produced by separate and distinct sounds : yet it does not seem to occur to them that harmony may be extracted in the same manner from the con- flicting tones of bell-metal. To live in the neigh- bourhood of a church in this country is distracting ; for three or four bells, all of difl'erent calibres, are set clattering, and jarring, and thundering at the same instant, and will continue at such barbarous amusement for an hour together. 172 A JOURNEY IN RUSSIA. If Dr. Collins is to be believed, the change in musical taste since his time is not the least remark- able part of the revolution which has taken place in manners. "In short/' says he, "if you would please a Russian with musick, get a concert of Billingsgate nightingales, which joyned with a flight of screech owls, a nest of jackdaws, a pack of hungry wolves, seven hogs in a windy day, and as many cats with their carrivols, and let them sing Lacrymae, and that will ravish a pair of Russian luggs better than all the musick in Italy, light ayres in France, marches of England, or the jigs of Scotland." In the present day, the music is rich and pathetic, and the voices that sing it almost always rich and sweet. I am tempted to introduce here the follow- ing translation (as literally as it could be rendered) of a popular song. For this translation, also, I am indebted to Mr. J. C . The white day is waninc;, the ni<;ht conieth on, The night cometh on, anil tlie twilight is fading ; And to ine, youtlifiil one, my beloved sendeth. My beloved sendeth, and then cometh himself. " Art at home, my beloved, my own precious delight ?" And I, youthful one, starting up in a flutter, I leap from my bed, and put on my shoes. Just to go into the balcony, just to wliisper a word. I asked him first of his health my dear, my beloved. And then I told liim all, all his poor girl's grief. " O my bright falcon, my beautiful youth ! Is it thus we must part ! even so must thou leave me '.'' " Even so, even so ; and whilst thou, my charmer. Clasping thy hands, rainest tears on my face !" " Farewell, my beloved ; farewell, my precious one!" KOROVODA SONG. 173 And I, youthful one, have a little green garden ; And in my little garden there are three trees. On one tree there are sweet apples, on another green pears, And the third, it is a bitter, bitter aspen. On the aspen, there singeth a cuckoo among the branches. Hark how the cuckoo singeth " My sweet one complains, .She liath lost, she hath lost, him whose lips did kiss her ! She hath lost, she hath lost, him whose arms did fold her!" Farewell, my beloved! Farewell, my precious one! In this, however, there is too much poetry to allow me to think that it is a genuine song of the peasantry ; and, besides, it is destitute of allusion to their peculiar customs and avocations. The fol- lowing is a literal version of one of the Korovoda songs, which I heard so often as to make me fami- liar with many of the words, as well as with the A KOROVODA SONG. " 'Tis millet we've sown, 'tis millet we've sown, Oi Dida and Lado, have sown, have sown ; And tlie millet we'll tread, and the millet we'll tread ; Oi Dida and Lado, we'll tread, we'll tread." " But with what will you tread ? Oh, with what will you tread Oi Dida and Lado, with what will you tread?" " With horses let loose, with horses let loose ; Oi Dida and Lado, with horses let loose. And the horses we'll catch, the horses we'll catch, Oi Dida and Lado, we'll catch, we'll catch." " But, with what will you catch, with what will you catch I Oi Dida and Lado, will catch, will catch?" " Oh! with nets of silk, and with nets of silk Oi Dida and Lado, with nets, with nets. Or the horses we'll buy, we'll buy, we'll buy ; Oi Dida and Lado, we'll buy, we'll buy." q2 174 A JOURNEY IN RUSSIA. " But with what will you buy? with what will you buy ' Oi Dida and Lado, will buy, will buy ?" " We'll give you a hundred, a hundred rubles ; Oi Dida and Lado, a hundred, a hundred." " A thousand wo'nt do, not a thousand will do, Oi Dida and Lado, a thousand, a thousand!" " Then we'll give a young lass, a fair young lass, Oi Dida and Lado, a pretty young lass.'' " Thai that is the price 'tis that we must have, Oi Dida and Lado, 'tis that we must have." The above simple ditty is not only connected with the every-day avocations of the peasantry, but with their ancient paganism. The festival of the Slavonian goddess Dida, and her son Lado, was cele- brated by the songs of the devotees as they circled round a birchen-tree in one of the slow dances of their country. The tree was hung with ribbons, which were afterwards thrown into the river, and auguries drawn from the forms they assumed in floating down the stream, In performing the Korovoda, the peasant girls join hands in a circle ; but, instead of a birchen- tree, they have the smartest lass, or best singer in the village, in the middle. The motions of the dance, if dance it can be called, are slow and lan- guid, and the air is extremely h:imple and almost melancholy. The song, notwithstanding, appears U> amuse the performers very much ; the most waggish smiles and glances are interchanged; and, at the conclusion, when the priestess selects another young FINERY OF THE PEASANTS. 1 75 girl, and draws her into the middle, the men who are looking on invariably hail the consummation with a loud laugh. I must add, that the heathenish names of Dida and Lado are beginning to be omitted in some districts; the priests having admon- ished their simple flock that to pronounce them is a sin. I was very much surprised by the holiday garb of the peasant girls on this road ; which was as rich in appearance as it must have been expensive in reality. Some wore s garment resembling the large cape of a man's cloak, drawn in or not at the waist at the fancy of the wearer. This was always of silk or satin, lined with lambs'-wool as white as snow. Some looked still better in the national sarafan, likewise of the same rich materials ; and, in this case, their shirt sleeves, very full and dazzlingly white, reaching to the wrist, gave them the appear- ance of ladies of the court. Sometimes these gar- ments were embroidered with gold lace ; and almost always the shoes either glittered with spangles, or were made of morocco leather of different colours. Their ear-rings were generally in the form of a triangle, and of real pearls a fact which at first I could hardly bring myself to believe. The curiosity I expressed appeared to gratify these simple girls very much ; and, with a kindness and politeness native to the Russian female, they allowed me to examine their ear-rings and capotes as much as I chose. The men rarely joined in the amusements of the 176 A JOURNEY IN RUSSIA. women, although they sometimes crowded round them to look on. Singing in parts seemed to be their own favourite recreation ; but sometimes they performed the strange dance peculiar to their coun- try. This was described by Olearius as consisting of various slow movements of the head and shoul- ders, while the feet remained almost stationary ; and, to the present day, no alteration whatever has taken place. The individuals who appeared to me to be the fondest of this amusement were the soldiers ; and a circle of these men, wTapped in their grey cloaks, watching with the deepest interest the per- formance of a single comrade, formed a highly curious spectacle. The women, in the meantime, only a few yards off, pursued their Korovoda, neither party taking the smallest notice of each other. IMaltebrun says, after some traveller, that the Russians are as great dancers as the French ; but this is altogether incorrect. The houses in the villages, with a very few exceptions, are of wood, that is to say, built of pine- trees, stripped of the bark, and laid horizontally upon each other. They are generally of two stories, standing with their gable-ends to the road, the roof projecting some distance, and often ornamented with rude sculpture. At each story, there are two, three, and even four small glazed windows, placed in a line. A strong prejudice prevails in favour of wooden houses, which are said to be warmer and wholesoiner than those of brick or stone. At one time of the year, however, a stranger AGRICULTURK. 177 to their peculiarities runs some risk of getting a severe fright. When a sudden thaw takes place^ a terrific noise is heard throughout the buikling, giving the idea, if it occurs in the night time, of a band of robbers attempting to burst into the house. A friend of mine, Mr. F of Moscow, on one occasion of the kind, leaped from his bed, armed himself with his pistols, and remained in great alarm for a considerable time. In 1804 there were eighty-seven millions of pines in Russia fit for building ; and at the same period there were eight millions proper to be used for masts. Till reaching Novgorod I found the agricultural habits of the peasants pretty nearly the same as those in Finland. During a part of the route they dry the grain in the same way, and are thus able to keep it, if necessary, for fifteen or even eighteen years. The custom of burning the trees for the sake of manure is also the same. 1 have myself repeatedly seen the operation in the governments of St. Peters- burg and Novgorod.* In some districts they throw the seeds into the almost hot ashes as soon as the fire is extinct. The time chosen is when the dew of the evening falls ; and, going over the ground with nothing else than a slight plough and a wooden rake, it sometimes pro- duces, it is said, even a hundred fold. It is remarked * Not on the present journey. I was subsequently on this road, and have thrown the observations made at both times into one. 178 A JOURNEY IN RUSSIA. that the peasants, as is natural in the case of igno- rant persons, are so fond of these large and quick returns, that they leave uncultivated the really good land. Their triumph lasts, however, only for three years and in some cases the crops are pretty good even for four or five years ; but after that, the land which has thus been manured with its own ashes, and fed upon its own substance, is good for nothing for twenty years to come. Novgorod is a very interesting city to the Russian antiquary if Russia can be said to have any thing to do with antiquity at all. It must be studied, however, in its history, not in its monuments, Even when worth preserving, the perishing nature of the materials sets it out of the question ; and the traveller will be perfectly well satisfied with the space always too ample allowed him by the con- ducteur of the diligence for inspecting the remains of Novgorod the Great. The cathedral of Saint Sophia is considered one of the oldest churches in Russia ; and there are also several others built of brick. The city was once a Hanseatic town, and contained a population of four hundred thousand souls. It still occupies a large area of ground ; but its inhabitants amount only t( six or seven thousand. Its grandeur began to decline at the commencement of the fifteenth cen- tury ; and the foundation of St. Petersburg destroyed all the little consequence it had then left. Valdai is a small town which stands in one of the VEAL CUTLETS. 179 best situations on this road. The country around may even be said to be romantic ; and the place itself is celebrated both for its bells and belles ; the former having the sweetest tones, and the latter the fairest faces in this part of the country. Tver is an important town, where the barks pass into the canal of Vichney-Volochik for the Volga. But I must not forget to say, that at Torjok I had the satisfaction of eating the finest veal cutlets in Europe. Every body knows the veal cutlets of Torjok, and the French lady who manufactures them ; and every body has heard her account of the praises bestowed upon them by the whole world. This praise, indeed, was so loud and long, that the empress herself burned with curiosity to taste them ; and madame had the honour of being brought to St. Petersburg express, to make veal cutlets for majesty. Another celebrated manufacture of Torjok is that of morocco slippers, caps, &c. &c. The leather is in different pieces of different colours, stitched together with silk, and forming various agreeable figures ornamented with gold and silver lace. I do not think that on this road the scenery is so bad, or the route so uninteresting as travellers in general assert ; but I have a great deal to do within the little space that is left to me, and must hurry on to Moscow. It ought to be said, however, that the road itself is excellent from beginning to end. At regular distances it is severed by a deep and wide trench, which is crossed by means of a wooden bridge, making a sharp turn to the right or left. IHO A JOURNEY IN RUSSIA. This bridge, in case of the march of an enemy, could either be destroyed or defended ; and, from the great number of such interventions occurring in the space of four hundred and eighty-seven miles between the two cities, a serious annoyance would be opposed to the progress of the invading force. There is also to be seen at the road-side every few versts an object less easily comprehended by the stranger. It is a small but handsomely painted house, with an esplanade carefully rolled, and an unarmed soldier standing sentry like a statue at the door. On the esplanade there is a large wooden triangular machine, brilliantly painted, and the traveller, not knowing what else to do with it, sets it down as some unheard-of engine of punish- ment. Its real purpose, however, is merely to clear the road of the snow ; and the whole military establishment is devoted to similar objects. The Russian soldiers are far from being formi- dable in appearance. At St. Petersburg, the Guards, who are in general almost the only force there, are drawn in at the Avaist like wasps, till they can hardly breathe ; and so helpless do they seem, that the idea occurred to me when looking along the line, that by means of a single good buffet on the ear of the nearest man the A\liole rank misht be floored. Out of St. Petersburg, tliey are, taking them in the mass, small, mean-looking, shuffling fellows. Tlieir undress is peculiarly un- becoming ; and even in warm weather you see them shambling along, buttoned up to the throat in MILITARY. 181 coarse grey greatcoats. When they spy an officer on the road, even at a considerable distance, they puU off their bonnet, and do not presume to put it on again till they are far beyond his reach. The officer on his part, however low be his rank, and although when in undress almost as shabby as the men, hardly ever deigns the smallest salutation. When a peasant is enlisted he becomes nominally free, and may even rise to promotion ; but before this takes place, he appears to me to be looked upon by his superiors rather as a peasant than a soldier. This is partly owing, no doubt, to the scantiness of his pay, which obliges him to undertake any menial job he can get. In the towns a general fund arising from such resources is under the care of one of the officers, and divided by him among the men. When on military duty, however, these fellows change their character. In St. Petersburg they march on the pavement, not in Indian file, but as many abreast as will exactly fill tlie space, and compel the other passengers to flounder in the mud of the street. This is an intolerable hardship in the spring, when it is impossible to cross a street without wading ankle-deep. I had one day the misfortune to meet an entire regiment in this way ; and when I insisted upon planting myself at the wall, while they passed, instead of in the mud, they seemed astonished at my impudence. I arrived at IMoscow on the fourth night after leaving St. Petersburg; and as it was too late R 182 A JOURNEY IN RUSSIA. to obtain entrance into the hotels, I availed inyself of the hospitality extended to travellers by govern- ment, and stretched myself upon a sofa in the post- honse. CHAPTER XII. Ancient and modern Moscow the Holy City devotion of the natives on approaching it distant view change in the appearance of the site general character of the scene churches and palaces construction of the houses scarcity of stone historical anecdote streets population native and foreign Russian merchants merchants' wives mer- chants' sons and daughters mujiks pilgrims monks and nuns Tatars, Persians, and Armenians interest excited by the emperor's arrival the kiss domestic habits of the imperial family character of the emperor and empress Nicolas and the Jew. From almost the earliest epoch of its history, Russia formed a kind of federation of States^ very slightly connected in a political sense^ but yet all feeling that they belonged to the same country. The princes of these states vied with each other for the empty title of grand or supreme prince ; a name which, during the long period of the Tatar domination, simply meant, first slave and vassal of the IMongol. The wars of these petty chiefs are uninteresting in 184 A JOURNEY IN RUSSIA. the sameness of their atrocity ; and here it only needs to be said, that in the latter half of the fourteenth century, the title in dispute seems to have become definitively attached to the dukedom of Moscow. In 1432 the first prince was crowned in that city, and Vladimir, where the coronation cere- mony had hitherto taken place, fell from its rank of capital. In 1547 Moscow was already a great city, since it lost in one conflagration upwards of seventeen hundred lives. It was then built of wood ; and even the inclosures of the gardens being of the same material, the very trees were converted into char- coal. In 1602 it had waxed prodigiously; for then it was able to lose a hundred and twenty-seven thousand individuals by a pestilence. In 1636, according to the testimony of Olearius, it was " one of the greatest cities in Europe," containing no fewer than two thousand churches. The streets Avere very broad ; but the houses being of wood, fires were so frequent that men were stationed every where with pole-axes to cut down, in case of need, the adjoining buildings. Such is the origin of the watchmen of to-day. Under Alexis, the father of Peter the Great, the houses were stiU almost all of wood, sometimes tapestried with Flemish leather. The foundation of St. Petersburg eventually deprived the city of much of its ancient importance ; and in 1812 it was almost totally destroyed in con- sequence of the invasion of the French. The Moscow of to-day, therefore, is a new city ; THE HOLY CITY. 185 with fragments here and there of the ancient skeleton, enough to plunge the traveller into a reverie, and fill the busy precincts around him with the shapes that in general haunt only tombs and ruins. I cannot account for the circumstance ; but since I have heard the same thing remarked in conversa- tion by others, I may venture to mention, that if I had left Moscow on the second or third day after my arrival, I should have pronounced it to be far inferior in interest to St. Petersburg. It did not at first strike me with the surprise I should expect from the novelty of its details when I now remember them ; and I turned away almost with weariness from a view, exhibiting at one instant between thirteen and fourteen hundred domes, spires, and cupolas. If this is strange, the forcible manner in which the scene afterwards took hold of my imagination is still stranger. Day after day, hour after hour, it fixed, and grappled, and clung. I wandered, like an unquiet spirit, about the streets ; I gazed from the esplanade of the Kremlin from the tower of Ivan Velikoi from the Shivoy Gorka and still the cravings of my curiosity were unsatisfied. After a residence of six weeks, I left INIoscow with the sacra fames unappeased ; and to this day the Holy City rises upon my dreams like a vision of poetry or romance. Moscow may have been injured in its trade by the foundation of the new metropolis ; it may have ii2 186 A JOURNEY IN RUSSIA. been shorn of its wealth by the invasion of Napo- leon : but so long as the Russians retain their cha- racter as a distinct people, so long as they worshij) the gods of their forefathers, it will still be the dearest haunt of their steps, it will still be the Holy City. Its soil is enriched with the blood of martyrs ; its temples are filled with the bones of the saints. It is the East of the soul, to which men turn in prayer. When St. Petersburg herself desires more especially to sanctify her ceremonies and processions, she sends to this elder sister to borrow some of those inestimable relics, without whose presence the sparkle of gold and gems would be less than nothing and vanity. To see the look of the wandering peasant when he approaches IMoscow ! when, yet afar off, the sound of her thousand bells is wafted upon his ear ! when the proud and beautiful spectacle of her towers, and domes, and spires, unfolds itself to his eye ! He pauses he, this untamed savage, this creature of the senses of the perishing body in a tumult of awe, affection, and delight! He pulls oft' his hat, makes the sign of the cross upon his brow, shoulders, and bosom, clasps his hands upon his chest, and bows his body to the earth. He advances another step towards the Holy City ; and then sinks upon his knees, and falls down upon his face, touching the ground with his forehead. On the Sparrow Hills, where the French army saw for the first time the devoted city, a splendid view is obtained perhaps one of the richest views FIRST VIEW. 187 of the kind in Europe ; but too extensive for an ordinary sized engraving. Mr. Vickers^ therefore, has chosen a part of the Nieskooshni gardens. The Moskva is in front, with one of the long rafts of the country floating down the stream ; and, in the dis- tance, the city rises above the horizon, with the tall tower of Ivan Velikoi overtopping the whole. From this place the ground on which it stands appears to be almost a flat ; but, as Ave advance towards it, from the rising and falling of the parts of the picture, we perceive that, in reality, the city stands upon lofty ground, swelling from the water's edge, and variegated with numerous eminences. The nature of the site alone gives it an advantage over the new capital ; for, every now and then, as you wander on, a difi^erent point of view is obtained, and the town presents itself in a diflferent aspect. These aspects, however, are diff"erent only when you have been long enough here to recollect your- self. For the first day or two you are bewildered, probably fatigued, by the mass of domes and cupo- las rising on all sides around you. It is not till you recover from this confusion of mind, and are able in some degree to arrange and classify the objects around, that you feel the whole eflfect of Moscow. But, when you approach these buildings, which so astonish you in the mass, a new sensation alto- gether is produced. You find yourself perhaps, for the first time, however much you may have travelled in a strange and far-away land, in such a 188 A JOURNEY IN RUSSIA. place as hitherto you have only seen in the clouds, when a ricli sun-set brings out in sharp light and sliadow, a thousand gay, gorgeous, grotesque, and unworldly forms. To describe in words the innumerable temples of of the Holy City, or any one of them, is altogether impossible. A new language would be required, a new nomenclature. They possess nothing in com- mon with the other temples of the world ; or, some- times, even with one another. In this case, the pencil is worth a thousand pens ; and a glance at the opposite page will do more to enable the reader to form an idea of a INIuscovite church than a whole volume of description. But still the imagination must have its share of the employment, as well as the eyes. A great part of the effect produced by the architecture of JMoscow lies in the colouring ; and you must daub that fantastic pile all over with red, yellow, blue, green, silver, and gold, before it looks half as fantastic as it is. This, however, is not a common specimen taken at random from the mass. It is ultra-Russian in taste. It is the famous cathedral of Vassili Bla- gennoi ; with which its founder, Ivan the Terrible, was so much delighted, that he is said to have put out the architect's eyes, in order that it might remain the chef d'ceuvre of his art. This story, however, I do not believe. The church was founded in 1554, in memory of the conquest of Kazan, and the tsaritsa Anastasia did not die till 1560. Ivan had not yet become the Terrible to his own subjects ; for his HOUSES. 189 good angel, that amiable and lovely princess, had not yet taken her flight to heaven. Another class of buildings are the palaces of the nobility, and the hospitals and hospices. These are in the taste of St. Petersburg, and they imitate in the same way the classic models. They are all of some light and delicate colour. Between are fre- quently small, or undistinguished houses ; but these, too, are painted to correspond. The effect of the city, therefore, is unique in the whole, al- though as difi^erent as may be in'its separate parts. The houses are in general low ; in very rare cases containing more than two stories, and very often consisting entirely of a rez de chaussee. In the part of the town called the Zemlenoi-gorod, and in the faubourgs, they are usually built of wood ; but every where else brick is the material, interspersed with deals as at St. Petersburg. For the founda- tions, however, stone is used ; a very scarce and dear article. It is brought either from the quarries of Tartarovo, which are already nearly exhausted, or from IMitchkova, several leagues from the city. We find the scarcity of stones existing even in the time of Alexis, father of Peter the Great. When the famous boiar Matveef was at length persuaded by his friend the emperor to build himself a new house, the work was at a stand for want of materials for the foundation. As soon as this was publicly known, the citizens assembled, and Matveef saw carts arriving from all quarters filled with stones. He demanded the price. 190 A JOURNEY IN RUSSIA. " These stones," said they, " are not for sale. We have taken them from the tombs of our fathers to present to our benefactor !" " What shall I do, my prince ?" said the boiar, in agitation. " Take them," replied the tsar ; " were such a gift offered to me, God knows how proud I should be to accept of it !" The tomb of ]\Iatveef is in the street of the Armenians, where it was erected by Count Roman- zof, one of his descendants. It is too simple, for it wants the magnitude which makes simplicity grand. The illustrious boiar, after having been banished by court intrigues to one of the dreariest districts in the country of Archangel, found, on his return, the whole capital convulsed by the revolt of the Strelits ; and he fell by their hands, a victim to his courage and loyalty. Before the conflagration of ^Moscow in 1812, there were nine thousand one hundred and fifty- eight houses, of which six thousand three hundred and forty-one were destroyed. In another place will be seen a table containing a statement of the present number of buildings, by which it will be observed that the city has already in the space of twenty-five years regained more than it lost. The pavement of the streets is formed of pebbles taken from the bed of the iMoskva, and comprising specimens of jaspers and other stones interesting to the mineralogist, but peculiarly obnoxious to the pieton. There are in general trottoirs, however, MERCHANT AND HIS WIFE. 191 more carefully paved, even when the same in materials. The pietons are in general far more interesting than those of St. Petersburg. We see here the Russian merchant in all his glory. He still belongs, indeed, to a caste separate from that of the nobility, but he is no longer ashamed of it. He does not live in a city of the nobles, where he must find himself the slave of their wants and wishes ; for the number at IMoscow is comparatively small, and they are in general invested with so much historical dignity that the reverence they demand involves no degradation. This idea assumes no form in the merchant's brain, but he is conscious of it notwith- standing;. He begins to talk of "his order." On great occasions he walks majestically through the streets in a uniform covered with gold lace ; for the emperor, with a far-sighted policy worthy of Peter the Great himself, has offered a premium upon pride. The merchant's wife is rarely seen in the streets ; but when she is, you make room for her with involuntary respect. She is dressed in a robe of silk or satin so rich in the materials, and so ex- quisitely delicate, or so gorgeously bright in the colour, that it might serve for a queen. Her face is beautiful, for she is painted with such art that one requires to approach very close indeed to discover the counterfeit ; and her dark bright eyes wander about, or rest upon yours, with all the curiosity which is natural in a recluse. In order that you 192 A JOURNEY IN RUSSIA. should not mistake her for a noblewoman, she wears upon her head a little sad-coloured silk handker- chief, put on with such artful simplicity, that the very ties are concealed. The merchant's son is a tall good-humoured looking fellow, sometimes with a smoothly shaven chin, and sometimes with a little beard that offers a compromise between his own modern taste and his sire's antique prejudices. He wears no sash, and his caftan begins to sneak stealthily into the Euro- pean frock. The merchant's daughter is a little girl with a French bonnet, a muslin gown, and bishop's sleeves. You can see with one eye that she reads French novels and plays the piano. She does not walk beside her papa and mamma, but either after or before them. Neither does she take her brother's arm. She has a pensive air, like one who thinks much ; and sometimes, in a iit of abstraction, will allow her eye to rest upon yours for half a minute at a time. The artificers of the town are like those of St. Petersburg, and generally wear long boots ; but almost all the other mujiks are in shoes of the linden bark. The Avomen of this class are almost as numerous as the men ; for if they do not come in from the country to work, they come to pray. Nearly every day there are processions of twenty thirty forty or fifty peasant women passing through the streets, dressed in coarse gowns of u drab colour, with wallets at their back and long staves in their hand. These are pilgrims ; and FEMALE PILGRIMS. 193 after worshipping in the Holy City, it is probably their intention to go on to the famous monastery of Troitsa, at a distance of eighty versts. In this case in addition to the linden shoes on their feet, they have a pair dangling at their waist ; for they must walk every step of the way, or lose the benefit of their devotion. These women are of all ages above fifteen or sixteen, and of all complexions ; but their shapeless gown, and their short petticoats displaying rags wrapped about their legs instead of stockings, confer upon them an appearance altogether unat- tractive. In a city of temples like this, the monks and priests, it may be supposed, form no inconsiderable part of the population ; but in addition to them there are here numerous nuns. These are not shut up in their convents as in Catholic countries ; but, dressed in black from top to toe, with high conical caps, and unveiled faces, they form rather an interesting part of the street picturesque. All the above classes are natives ; but the foreigners are so numerous as to play a very prominent part in the show. At St. Petersburg they are distin- guished by their pig-tailed coats, jerking gait, and smooth chins ; while here we see every modification of the oriental physiognomy, costume, and manner. The Tatars, Persians, and Armenians are the most numerous, great multitudes of them residing habitually at Moscow, where they have places of worship of their own ; but in addition to these the Turkish provinces, the Krimea, the Caucasus, all s 194 A JOURNEY IN RUSSIA. have their representatives. This central city of Russia is a point of union between the White Sea and the Frozen Ocean on the North, and the Euxine, the Sea of Azof, and the Caspian on the south ; between the Sea of Okotsk on the east, and the Baltic and the Gulf of Bothnia on the west. Merchants congregate here from all quarters ; and travellers meet, to stare at one another, from the Thames, the Nile, the Ganges, and the ]Mis- sisippi. On my arrival, the Avhole of this variegated population were stirring like the inhabitants of a bee- hive. There seemed to be a " sensation " in the town, as if something prodigious had happened as if another Alexandrine column Avas erecting itself in the Kremlin. " The emperor is come !" this was the cry ; and the nobles were yoking their coaches and four, the droskis flying, double loaded, along the streets, and the mujiks, male and female, rushing like a whirlwind after. At St. Petersburg, where the emperor habitually resides, he is a man of con- siderably upwards of six feet ; but nothing more. He reviews his troops before the palace, goes out to walk with his wife and children, strolls along the English quav, and although every hat is moved that is in the way, very few come on purpose to move. And whv ? because they can come at any time. In ^Moscow he is a rarity ; in ^loscow, A^hich is a Rnss'uni city, he is beloved almost to idolatry. " Our little father !" cry the mujiks, looking up IMPERIAL KISS. 195 into his face with devoted affection as he struggles through them. " Come now, make a little room for me/' says the emperor, passing on with his hand raised to his hat, "do, brother, stand out of the way!" The occasion is like a fete through the whole town, and the Krem- lin, to which every body has access, is like the scene of a great fair. The palace, defended from the people by no enclosure, is surrounded by a dense crowd of men, women, and children, from morning till night. Sometimes a beautiful little boy, one of the young princes climbs up to the window to look out, and all heads are instantly uncovered as if he was Nicolas himself. One day the imperial mother of this really fine family was sitting at the window, looking down upon the crowd, when the emperor coming behind her, put his arm round her neck and kissed her. No one unacquainted with the Russian character can conceive the effect of this simple act. The general shout that came from the lips of the people arose from the holiest depths of their heart ; and I venture to say, that there was no man of that vast concourse who would not have laid down his life for the Tsar, and no woman who would not have urged her son or husband to do so. I have mentioned the arrival of their majesties, only as it was connected with the more than usually picturesque attitude in which I found the town ; but perhaps it may be as well to conclude this chapter with the very little I mean to say on the subject of 196 A JOURXKY IN RUSSIA. their private character. It was my wish to have been presented to the emperor btj chance ; but a circumstance unknown to the kind friend at St. Petersburg who furnished me with letters of recom- mendation for that purpose, prevented my ambition from being gratified. Prince S. G , however, had the goodness to offer me a formal presentation through the governor-general ; but the ceremony, uninteresting in itself, has been described so often that I did not think it worth the suit of uniform it would have cost. The emperor, who is a very tall and a very handsome man, is naturally of a lively disposition. He is always dressed with great precision, and every one understands that it is necessary to appear before him both well dressed and with a cheerful counte- nance. He is easy of access; and seems to think an appearance of state almost unnecessary. At St. Petersburg, however, at each side of the door which leads to the imperial apartments, stands a black man gorgeously dressed in eastern costume. There are twelve of these men, who relieve each other alternately in the duty of opening ahd shutting the door, and announcing the name of the visitor. After breakfast the emperor's first care is to go t( the nursery to see his children, and ascertain how they have slept. He takes each of them up, kisses them, romps with them for he is full of frolic, and glad to be a boy again when the cares of the world will let him. Their majesties dine at three o'clock (the general EMPEROR AND EMPRESS. 197 liour for the upper classes in Russia) with perfect simplicity ; and towards the conclusion of the meal, the Grand Duke Alexander and the younger child- ren come in to kiss their parents. When they rise from table, the emperor bestows upon his consort, also, some hearty kisses. He calls her " his wife ;" but the empress, who is a Prussian, never alludes to him but as "the emperor." She speaks English extremely well ; but Nicolas only indifferently. " The character of the emperor and empress," writes an English friend to me, " is such that it is difficult to speak of them without exciting in stran- gers a suspicion that the description is overcharged. It is no exaggeration to say, that I never saw a family where more affection and harmony existed, and that I believe the examples to be very rare indeed where so much can be discovered. I have frequently seen these illustrious individuals sur- rounded by their children, and have partaken of the influence every one receives who witnesses the scene ; and I can say, that in their domestic virtues they are worthy of being held forth as a pattern nut only to all sovereigns but to all mankind." At St. Petersburg, Nicolas has frequently gone liome in a droski when it rained ; and once having no money in his pocket, the isvoschik, ignorant of his quality, detained his cloak till he sent down the fare. A better anecdote, however, is told of the contact he sometimes comes into with the lower classes. One Easter on coming out of the palace he s2 198 A JOURNEY IN RUSSIA. addressed the sentry with his usual familiarity, in the form of salutation prescribed for that day " Christ is risen !" Instead of the usual reply, "He is indeed," the fellow answered gravely, " He is not indeed !" "Hey? how? what is that?" said the emperor, " I said, Christ is risen !" " And I replied. He is not !" '' Why, who and what, in God's name, are you ?" " / am a Jeiv." CHAPTER XIII. Origin of Moscow Kremlin bazaar town white town earthen town holy gate nunnery of the Ascension tower of Ivan Velikoi cathedral of the Annunciation grand cathedral Virgin of Vladimir convent of Miracles curious superstition general effect of the scene treasury catalogue raisonne of street dainties rarity of drunkenness excesses in tobacco committed only by the genteel. In ancient times, say the antiquaries, the banks of the Moskva at a certain place were covered with a gloomy forest. In the middle of this forest was a marsh, and in the middle of the marsh a little island, where a hermit whose name was Boukal built him- self a hut. In process of years the hermit dis- appeared, and there arose on the spot a krcmle, which is the Tatar word for fortress, and his hut was replaced by a palace. 200 A JOURNEY IN RUSSIA. The Kremlin, forming an irregular polygon sur- rounded by lofty walls, flanked by towers at the angles, was the original Moscow. It was sur- rounded by a ditch, formed of the waters of the little river Neglinna, Avhich came hither to discharge itself into the Moskva. This stream is now con- demned to find its way in the dark, being vaulted over ; and above its bed, the citizens wander, or recline, in the most beautiful promenades that were ever seen in the centre of a great city. Numerous shops and markets speedily arose to the east of the future metropolis, and without the walls ; and in 1534 these were considerable enough to be surrounded by a ditch, and in the following year by a wall of their own. This portion of the town, which is called the Kita'i-gorod, stands together with the Kremlin, on the left bank of the Moskva, where the river forms a broad serpentine fold. A still more extensive faubourg arose on the same bank of the river, embracing the whole breadth of the angle, and surrounding the two former portions except at the water side. It is called the Beloi- gorod, or white town, probably from its walls having been built of a white stone. They have now dis- appeared, and are replaced by a planted boulevard. The last faubourg was the ZemlenoT-gorod, or earthern town, so called from a rampart which sur- rounded it, and which is now replaced by planted promenades. It forms a complete circle round the others on both sides of the river. KREMLIN. 201 The streets and houses which extend beyond this quarter^ and to which no general name is attached, although they are surrounded by a rampart, form a very irregular figure ; making the greatest length of the city thirteen versts and two hundred and thirty feet, its greatest breadth eight versts and two hundred and ten feet, and its circumference about forty versts. The Kremlin, although the smallest quarter, is undoubtedly the most worthy of attention ; and as the engravings that accompany these pages relate almost exclusively to this extraordinary mass of architecture, the reader will be able to form almost as good an idea of the place as if he was himself on the spot. In filling in the colouring, however, he must not be so lavish as I have recommended on a former occasion. The buildings of the Kremlin are with few exceptions white, and the domes and cupolas of the churches golden. For this reason, as well as from their form, the fantastic character of the scene is united with wonderful lightness and elegance. The walls are faithfully and beautifully described in the series of engravings. They are embattled in their whole length ; and it will be observed, that however odd and original are the towers by which they are flanked, the prevailing order is Gothic. In the plate annexed the Spasko'i, or Holy Gate, con- ducts us direct into the middle of the group of palaces and cathedrals. Every one who enters by this gate must take off his hat while traversino- the 202 A JOURNEY IN RUSSIA. passage for the place is holy. The origin of the custom is uncertain ; some dating it from the last pestilence, and some from the deliverance of the city from one of the Tatar invasions : but the Russians hold fast by it with religious zeal, and the stranger who errs from ignorance is instantly admonished by the sentry. On entering the gate the scene is splendid beyond description. On the left the view is open. A part of the esplanade is railed in for the exercise of the troops, and beyond them, at a great depth, you see the thousand domes of the city. On your right stands the convent of the nuns of the Ascension, adjoining the new palace, and in front are the tall tower of Ivan Velikoi, and a numerous group of other buildings surmounted by gilded domes and cupolas. The convent contains two churches, one of which is modern, and forms a nameless jumble of the Grecian and Gothic. The establishment was founded in 1389, and contains the tombs of thirty-five grand princesses, I have seen here one or two nuns who might be called almost pretty ; and that is far more than can be said of the rest of the holy sisters in Moscow. If the dress were made a little more becoming, I have no doubt that we should see in the nunneries a little more of the beauty of holiness. On passing the convent and the new palace, there are three buildings exactly in front. The one on the left hand is the cathedral of Saint ^Michael the Archangel ; that on the right is Our Lady of Pechersk, founded in thanksgiving for a victory CATHEDRAL OF THE ANNUNCIATION. 203 over the Tatars ; and that in the middle is the church of Saint Nicholas, with the tower of Ivan Velikoi. The tower is isolated from the other buildings. It was erected in 1600, in the time of a frightful pestilence, by the poor of the city, who received bread in return for their labour. It is two hundred and sixty-six feet high, not including the cupola, which is thirty-seven, or the cross, which is eighteen. The cupola is plated with fine gold, the cross with gilded copper. These buildings may be said to form one side of a square, the opposite side of which is formed by the palace of the tsars, the imperial palace, and the angu- lar palace, Avith the cathedral of the Annunciation, and the grand cathedral of the Assumption between. The former cathedral was almost renewed by Catharine II. in 1770 ; but its origin goes back to the end of the fourteenth century. Its appearance is " high fantastic ;" and its roof and nine cupolas being richly gilded, the whole presents an aspect of barbarian splendour unequalled even in Moscow. It is said, but I know not with what truth, that the cross of the centre cupola is of solid gold. The interior is small and dimly lighted, but full of the tawdry richness of the Greek church. The whole of the walls, both of the church and vestibule, are covered with frescoes representing sacred subjects. The saints, however, are mingled with the heathen philosophers, distinguished by their names ; and the latter hold in their hands little scrolls, written with 204 A JOURNEY IN RUSSIA. sentences of the gospel ! There are nine images, remarkable for sanctity and splendour; and these, as well as the other ornaments of the church, contained forty years ago upwards of eleven hundred pounds of silver, and upwards of seventy-seven pounds of gold. The pavement is of square agates. The church of the Assumption is the grand cathe- dral of Moscow. It was founded in 1325 ; but the present edifice dates only from 1475, when it was constructed by a Bolognese architect. It has no- thing Italian, however, in its form, and very little in its ornaments. The artist appears to have studied for his models, at least in general effect, the Rus- sian monuments; although a A^Titer in the Quarterly Review discovers the Saxon and Norman taste throughout. In the interior, a view of which is annexed, the walls and columns of the church are covered with frescoes ; but an image of the Virgin of Vladimir, painted by the evangelist St. Luke, is the grand ornament. A solitaire worn by this precious lady is valued at eighty thousand rubles, and the whole shrine at two hundred thousand. There are many images which, independently of their religious value, are highly curious as monuments of the arts. Here, also, were once the tombs of the patriarchs ; and near the southern door is the ancient throne of the tsars. The ikonastas, ascending to the vaults, is one blaze of gold and vermilion. Here are performed the most imposing ceremonies of the Greek church ; and, if the tower of Ivan CONVENT OF MIRACLES. 205 Velikoi is the centre of the city to the eye, the cathedral of the Assumption is of the same dignity to the heart. So much has been said about the Great Bell in the space opposite that tower that I shall do nothing more than mention it. It is buried in the earth, and the place covered over with wood, through which you descend by a trap-door. To the right of the bell, as you look towards the tower, and adjoining the new palace, is the Convent of Bliracles. One of its churches is dedicated to Saint Michael, and the other to Saint Alexis ; and both are handsome of the kind. On the outside of the wall there is a picture of the Trinity, which, on a front view, represents a dove, the symbol of the Holy Ghost. If you look from the right, you see a portrait of the Father ; if from the left, one of the Son. In one of these churches there is the dead body of the saint, with the skull exposed for the benefit of the faithful. I pressed forward, as usual, with the crowd, but was satisfied with a look. I turned away in horror from one of the most foul and dis- gusting objects I ever saw in my life; while my neighbours, male and female, kissed it with all the eagerness of an earthly attachment. I was happy hoAvever to be kept in countenance by the little children, who, when held down to print a holy salute upon the black and nasty-looking bones, signified by their squalls how distasteful it was. In these churches, as well as several others, some of 206 A JOURNEY IN RUSSIA. tlie images are to all appearance, if not in reality, graven images ; the figures being raised in metal from the ikonastas in a kind of bas-relief, without painting. It is here, also, where the carved repre- sentation of the crucifixion which I have mentioned is to be seen with a candle burning before it. In the little church of Saint John the Forerunner, at the western angle of the Kremlin, a curious superstition is permitted. There is a stone under- neath the shrine of Saint Ouar, in which children are laid down who have some mortal disease. If it is the will of God to spare their lives, they recover : if not, they die instantaneously. Above, the stone is hung a bunch of small crosses, such as are tied about the necks of children at their baptism. These, I was told, were gifts to the shrine from those who had thus miraculously escaped from the jaws of death ; and I found, on counting them, that there were between thirty and forty. I was not satisfied, however, with the story. I was loath to write doAvn so grave an accusation against the Russian church at second hand ; and I determined to witness the ceremony myself. An opportunity was not long of occurring. On going there one morning, I saw no fewer than six women with children at their breasts, waiting for the priest. On the arrival of the holy man, each woman went in in turn, heard a short prayer, kissed a crucifix which he held out to her, and held it to the wan lips of the infant. The priest's part was then over. He stepped aside to wait for another customer; THRONE ROOM. 207 while the mother, laying down her charge upon the mystic stone, prostrated herself before the shrine. Her devotions over, and they did not occupy more than a minute, she took up the poor babe again, and retired. The church, therefore, I can say, takes no active share in this most paltry superstition ; it merely permits and encourages it. The name of the saint means heavy ; and this is satisfactory enough reason for their having furnished him with a large stone. One of his old teeth, hoAv- ever, cures tooth-ache ; for what reason is not so plain. Saint Ouar suffered martyrdom in Egypt, in the year 296. The palace of the tsars, and the angular palace, are buildings of the fifteenth century ; but they are rather grotesque than magnificent. In fact, it would be equally useless and diflUcult to give a minute description of the edifices of the Kremlin. It is the effect of the whole picture which is admir- able the towers, the domes, the cupolas, the golden roofs, the staircases, the balconies, the ornaments, Grecian, Gothic, Saxon, and Russian, all mingled together in wild confusion. The only apartment worth mentioning in any of the palaces is the throne room in the angular palace ; and this is worthy of mention only for its antique, heavy, and lugubrious air. The vault is supported by a single column in the middle, so thick and massive as to obstruct the view ; and the sovereign seated on his throne must be concealed by it from very many of the company The great hall in the preceptory of the Teutonic 208 A JOUBNEY IN RUSSIA. Knights at Marienburg is on the same plan ; but how different in execution ! There the roof is formed by a group of shallow vaults all meeting in the middle, and the support is a single granite pillar, small, delicate, and beautiful. It is impos- sible to give an idea in words of the effect produced by this union of the slender shaft with the depend- ing vaults. The pillar is like the slight stem of a flower, surmounted by that delicate, yet gorgeous cup, whose lips seem to widen that they may catch the dews of the morning as they fall ; and the waving margin of this exquisite cup is caught, as it rises, in the circles of the arches, and mingled inextricably with the roof. The treasury of the Kremlin, contained in the new arsenal, is a very remarkable and complete col- lection of historical objects. The portraits of the tsars, their crowns, thrones, sceptres, globes, and jewels, form part of this unique museum ; but a multitude of less important articles, such as canes, goblets, paternosters, &c., which belonged to the various princes, are likewise arranged in their res- pective order. The whole is highly curious to the student of historical manners. But the grand attraction of the Kremlin is its whole as a picture ; and, united to this whole, when standing on the esplanade, the spectator sees a great part of the city lying at his feet. In the annexed beautiful view, the tower of Ivan Velikoi, and the cathedrals are in front. On the right, is a corner of the new palace, at the window of which STREET LUXURIES. 209 the emperor shows himself to his subjects. A crowd of figures resembling these may be seen every day on the same spot^ but generally mixed with coaches and droskis. Among the group in the foreground are itinerant venders of luxuries, not only for the populace, but, strange to say, for the rich also. I have seen ladies, waiting there in their coach and four to see the emperor on parade, purchase bread or cakes from the hawkers, and eat them with much appetite : the identical cakes having just been fingered, and pinched, and pressed to the noses of the lowest rabble before their eyes. The other dainties exposed for sale are sausages, red-herrings, apples preserved in quass, stewed pears spitted in dozens upon a stick, nuts, oranges, dried plums, gingerbread, small rings of bread called crindles, and kalatches, a species of roll with what looks as if intended for a handle. The last-men- tioned bread is peculiar to Moscow, where there are upwards of ninety establishments that bake nothing else. When the emperor presented his son, the crown prince who was born here, to the citizens, he called him " his Moscow kalatch." There is also bleenie, carried about hot on wooden dishes, and covered with a bason. This is a kind of pancake made of buck-wheat, about the size of a saucer, and strewed with crumbs either of boiled egg or raw onions. It is eaten with hemp- oil. Another cake of a similar kind called karavai, the invention of which is due to the Tatars, is made t2 210 A JOURNEY IN RUSSIA. also of buck-wheat, but in a conical form. It is cut down the middle, dipped in oil, and clapped into the mouth. We are also treated with great quanti- ties of dried mushrooms, cooked in hemp-oil. They are of quite a different kind from the champignons, and, when well-dressed, I found them more agree- able. The Russians are great eaters of oil ; but not of train-oil, or lamp-oil, as they will have it in England. The liqueurs for the refreshment of the crowd are, in the first place, quass. This is a substitute for small beer, and is drunk even at the tables of the nobility. It is sourish but undecided, and is disagreeable to most strangers, both in taste and flavour. It is not only used as a drink, however, but as a soup. In the latter state it receives the addition of onions, leeks, &c., and is eaten with raw fish ; but I once saw it enriched, also, with olives, capers and brown sugar. On the occasion alluded to, a German lady expressed her entire satisfaction with the dish, both by words and deeds. In the former state I met with it at the tables of the first nobility. I was once betrayed into tasting it ; but I think I could not " sup full of horrors" of the kind to save my life. When quass is carried about the streets, it is either in large globular glass bottles, or in small casks. In the former it is drunk in tumblers ; in the latter it is supped with a wooden spoon, which answers for a measure. There is a superior kind called kislis- chee, which is eflFervescent, and tolerably well- RUSSIAN WHISKEY. 211 tasted^ resembling something between soda water and ginger beer. Sbeeten is made of boiling water, capsicum, honey-j laurel leaves, and cloves or cinnamon ; and is carried about hot in brass kettles. Tea is also a common drink in the streets, and becoming more so every day. A porter will fre- quently ask for money to get a cup of tea, instead of a glass of spirits. The only sort of spirits to be seen in the open air, is votki, commonly described as a kind of brandy, but in reality a modification of whiskey. It is distilled from grain, and is not stronger than the common gin of London. It is entirely abandoned to the common people ; and I could only taste it at all, by prevailing upon Mrs. Wilson, my hostess at St. Petersburg, to send for some on purpose. It resembles whiskey disguised a little with juni- per, but is much milder, and sufficiently agreeable in the taste. Within the city of Moscow I never saw above two or three examples of intoxication, and I would say, that the lower classes of the Russians are now decidedly more sober than the English. The change also with regard to tobacco is extraordinary. In 1 663-4 the author of the " Relation des Trois Ambassades," informs us that they were addicted to the use of this narcotic to a frightful degree. They smoked through a cow's horn, and so furiously that a few whifFs were sufficient to empty the bowl, when they fell to the ground in a kind of swoon. 212 A JOURNEY IN RUSSIA, Towards the close of the last century the liabit, according to Tooke, was altogether eradicated ; and now, the only great smokers are a few of the uj)per classes, who perhaps at first gave themselves into the practice as a matter of fashion. CHAPTER XIV. Nikolskoi gate of the Kremlin bazaar Russian cafe, or tavern public walks baths whether favourable or unfa- vourable to the health bearded merchants description of a grand dinner at one of their houses apartments saluta- tionsdress of the company division of the sexes repast toasts kissing adjournment to the drawing-room merchants' wives in the summer-gardens promenade of the Marina Rochcha promenade of Petrovski. The traveller who enters the Kremlin by the Holy Gate, and makes such a tour as I have indicated by touching slightly on the more prominent objects, will find himself, after inspecting the Treasury, at the Xikolskoi gate. Annexed is an exterior view of this gate, with its beautiful Gothic tower. The latter is altogether modern, having been rebuilt after the destruction of the city in 1812; and the artist, without outraging the kind of uniformity preserved 214 A JOURNEY IN RUSSIA. throughout the whole, has contrived to make it the most elegant of all. Above the entrance is an inscription, by which we learn that, at the great ex- plosion, when a considerable part of the arsenal and the gate were destroyed, a lantern before the image of Saint Nicolas (seen in the engraving) had not even its glass broken. At the bottom of the picture is the fantastic church of Vassili Blagennoi already mentioned ; to the left of which lies the bazaar, one of the most enormous collection of shops in the world, from which the Kitaf-gorod, where we now are, takes its name. The bazaar is divided into twenty-five galleries, almost all devoted to the sale of some particular merchandise, and the number of shops is consider- ably upwards of five thousand. The most interesting species of barter, however, goes on in the open air. Its objects are old clothes, old arms, old every thing ; and the street where it is conducted resembles a fair. Here also is the place where the merchants con- gregate, and where you may see all the costumes of the east mingling with those of Europe. Opposite the exchange is a cafe, or tavern, which the stranger should not fail to visit. The Avaiters are clothed in white linen from top to toe. When the guest demands a pipe, it is brought to him in the shape of a long thin branch of cherry tree, to which is affixed a small earthen bowl. The waiter always takes the trouble of lighting the pipe with his own moutli, and then hands it to his employer. KREMLIN GARDENS. 215 Some sit sipping tea, with their elbows planted luxuriously upon the table, and a bit of sugar in one hand, which they suck as they sip. Some call for wine, which is brought to them, as they usually desire it, in very large glasses ; but others treat themselves and a friend to a bottle of Russian champagne. This excellent wine is made in the Krimea ; and is sold for three rubles the bottle : but most of the upper classes, I do not know why, prefer giving twelve rubles a bottle for French champagne. This part of the town contains also the various tribunals, and two public printing offices. The Beloi-gorod, surrounding the Kremlin and the Kita'i-gorod except on the water side, contains the principal streets, the hotel of the governor, the bank, the university, the foundling hospital, &c. &c. The Kremlin gardens separate it from the Kremlin on the west, and form the finest promenade in this city of promenades. The place, however, is comparatively deserted. The citizens prefer walk- ing on the open boulevards, in the midst of the noise and bustle of the street ; while the nobility parade themselves in one which seems their own by patent, and where they are to be seen every evening, the ladies with a footman walking behind them, even when escorted by gentlemen. The Kremlin gardens extend to the river, very near the Stone Bridge. This is as yet the only stone bridge in Moscow; and, therefore, it has no other name. In the opposite view it is seen from 216 A JOURNEY IN RUSSIA. the right bank of the river, and the buildings of the Kremlin appear advantageously surmounting it with their numerous spires. A little lower down than the bridge, on the same side as the Kremlin, is an immense bathing estab- lishment frequented by half the population of IMoscow. The custom of bathing has gone very much out of fashion among the upper classes ; but the others still take a grand scrubbing every Saturday. Each bath costs them only twelve kopeks, or little more than a penny ; but from that sum the price ascends, for those who insist upon luxury, to five rubles, about four shillings and two pence. These high-priced baths, however, are of hot water ; the lower of steam. In either, an attendant is necessary to rub the epidermis off the sufferer with birch twigs. It is usual for a man and his wife to go publicly into the same bathing-room together ; a custom which of course brings the baths under suspicion as a place of intrigue, and may probably in the end ruin them altogether. It was this, still more than the introduction of the use of linen, which contri- buted to do away with such establishments in the rest of Europe. They became a resort for the idle and dissipated of both sexes, who met there daily to gossip and retail news ; and at length their character became so bad, that in many parts of France, for instance, priests were forbidden to go near them. When the respectable classes were thus banished, it is PARBOILING. 217 easy to see that the poor could not long maintain them; for society has little respect for things peculiar to the poor, more especially when they are of a vicious tendency. As for the Russians, they cannot yet be said to enjoy the blessing of clean linen, and therefore they must continue yet awhile longer to boU their skins in steam and perspiration. The lower classes wear their shirt ostentatiously over their trowsers, where it hangs like a kilt ; and as for the higher, including even many persons in good circumstances, I was assured that they are satisfied with a change once a month provided they have o, front (a false collar and breast) for Sundays and holidays. I do not think that the Russian bath, even when frequently taken, is unwholesome. I attribute the premature old age of the women entirely to the unnatural atmosphere in which they live for eight months of the year, I know one distinguished lady in IMoscow who uses the bath so hot that she requires several attendants, that they may relieve one another alternately. Her daughter, on the other hand, has such a horror of this sort of parboil- ing, that she advised me strenuously rather to " burst in ignorance " than make the experiment. Of these two, however, the older lady is to all appearance by far the stronger and healthier. The public baths are frequented chiefly by the peasants and the mercantile class ; at least they are the resort of very few of the ladies of the higher 218 A JOURNEY IN RUSSIA. ranks. These, generally speaking, have given up the practice of bathing altogether, or when they do continue it, as in the case of the lady alluded to above, they have the bath in their own houses. I regret that I am unable to give all the informa- tion I could wish with regard to the customs of the merchants. Indeed, I found almost as great a diffi- culty in getting an introduction into the family of a real Russian as into the harem of a Turk. The highest class of merchants have entirely laid aside their national peculiarities, and in fact are very little, if at all, distinguished from the nobles. It is the lower class they who still rejoice in a beard and a caftan, who are the true Russians. They frequently purchase, from ostentation, the house of a nobleman ; but they inhabit only the worst corner of it, retaining the rest for show. On the occasion of a grand dinner, the guests are received in the hall by several bearded servants, and conducted into the ante-room, where cloaks and shawls are to be deposited. These servants, toge- ther with the lacqueys who wait at table, are hired for the occasion. The next room you enter is probably the dining- room, where you see the tables spread out for the expected repast. Through this, and possibly one or two more, you are conducted into the drawing-room. It is painted a deep and bright blue colour ; for this is a favourite colour with the Russians. The walls are covered with family portraits, for the merchant has begun to pique himself upon his family, and FESTIVE ASSEMBLY. 219 with other large pictures, original in one sense of the word. In a corner is the household god decorated with ribbons, Easter-eggs, and artificial flowers, mingled with the faded palms of the preceding Easter tide. Before the image hangs a lighted lamp of many-coloured glass suspended by a brass chain. Here are seated a party of ladies in the nervous silence of expectation. The gentlemen as yet arrived do not muster strong enough to attack this citadel of beauty : we have left them caballing in small groups in the dining-room and intermediate rooms. Being strangers we bow profoundly ; the lady of the house graciously : but one of us, who has the good fortune to be on more intimate terms, steps up to where she is sitting. He salutes her hand, and while raising his head she kisses him on the brow ; and the little ceremony strikes us as being at once the most kindly and graceful we have ever seen. Reassured by this transaction, and feeling a sort of confidence that the meeting is not for the purpose of an execution, we turn round, and bowing several times to the fair circle, the individuals of which all bow several times too, we stand aside to watch the progress of events. The company now come rapidly in, and the malcontents in the other rooms, take the opportu- nity of slinking in under convoy. The ladies kiss each other vociferously, and the gentlemen inter-hug also, and probably kiss too, although the sound is lost in their wilderness of beard. 220 A JOURNEY IN RUSSIA. The ladies are in general fashionably dressed, but somewhat overdone. This is the distinction between them and the nobility. " Is that the Princess ?" said I one day to a friend, pointing to a lady whose back was turned towards me. " It is very like her," he replied, " but no : she is too well dressed that must be a merchant's wife." On the present occasion the small handkerchief which they wear on the head in the streets is in most cases laid aside, except by the older ladies. It is always of some soft indefinite hue, and is occa- sionally bound with a narrow gold border. The rest of their attire consists of a gown of very rich thick silk, generally of the deepest crimson, or some other flagrant colour. As for the men, they are almost all in beard, caftan, and boots, a dress which is never changed even for mourning. The few who appear " German-fashion " that is to say, in the European pig-tail appear beside the others the most miserable and insignificant little devils imagi- nable. It is proper to say, that after the first salutations are over, the gentlemen fall back, and take up a defensive position in another part of the room ; while the ladies, as if disconcerted by the prudence of the enemy, after a few faint attempts at conversa- tion, sink again into a profound, but not tranquil silence. This is interrupted by the servants bringing in what in England would be called a " snack," REPAST. 221 or whetj consisting of caviar, anchovies, smoked salmon, salted herrings, cheese, onions, &c. &c., with small pieces of bread, and liqueurs of different sorts. The same custom prevails in the houses of the nobility. All do justice to these good things ; and the ladies, invigorated by the refreshment, are able, on dinner being announced, to fall into rank, defile before the gentlemen, and march with a show of considerable firmness through the suite of rooms. The gentlemen, on their part, wait till the last rank and file have cleared the door ; and then after holding a brief council, in which precedence and command are settled, follow gallantly to the field. The dinner is absolutely the same as that which you meet with at the tables of the nobility. It is prepared by French artists hired for the occasion, and the glass, earthenware, plate, knives and forks, &c., are all obtained in the same way. The table is decorated besides with gilded temples crowned with artificial flowers, and bronze candelabras. When the guests are seated, the two hostile lines facing each other, the master and mistress of the feast remain standing. It is their business to attend to the wants of the company themselves,* and to see that the servants do their duty. Nothing can escape their observation. Your plate does not remain a moment empty, nor your glass a moment either empty or full. At length a toast is proposed. It is " the Emperor !" At that instant a door flies open, and a burst of music sweeps in from the next room, the guests joining their acclamations to the L' 2 222 A JOURNEY IN RUSSIA. sound. The new national h\inn follows, " God save the Emperor !" and receives additional power from the practised ears and voices of the company. Other toasts speedily follow, such as " the Ladies " " the Gentlemen," and are done honour to in flowing bumpers of champagne. Many other French wines are on the table, as also madeira, which is much esteemed by the Russians, and a bottle of port set down expressly for the Englishman. Soon, however, the wine appears to grow dis- tasteful ; and one of the company, with a knowing look to his compeers, declares that he thinks it wants sweetening. At this signal the master and mistress of the feast exchange a hearty kiss, and the drink goes down as before. But in a few minutes another malcontent raises his voice, and thus the complaint passes from one to the other " This wine is not sweet enough !" the host and hostess kissing each time, till they are ready to faint. The lady, however, takes her revenge. She fixes an inveterate eye upon the glasses, which must be emptied within a given time, and filled as soon as emptied. The lights at length begin to misconduct themselves. They twinkle, if they do not absolutely hop. As for you, you are no doubt deadly sober ; but willing to remain so, are desirous of making your escape. You seize the opportunity of the hostess's back being turned, and vanish from the room ; but alas ! you are caught on the middle of the stairs, and conducted back a prisoner. At her own time she gives the signal, and all get merchants' wives. 223 up from the table. The ladies must have been conquerors in the pitched battle^ for in the march to the drawing-room, they again take precedence of the lords of the creation. The latter, indeed, show some little symptoms of the confusion of defeat ; but these are completely dissipated by the refreshment of a cup of coffee. In fine, the company take their leave with abundance of bows, kisses, and thanks ; and when you get into the street, instead of " Hold your tongue," to the challenge of the pole-axe man, you reply with ineffable good humour, " Go to the devil, my fine fellow I" The merchants' wives, as I have said, rarely leave their houses, except to go to church, or to the pro- menade. They live in a kind of eastern seclusion, which appears to be the only remains of the frightful state of bondage to which their grandmothers were condemned. They are said to amuse themselves from morning till night with drinking tea, of which they swallow forty or fifty cups in the day. They thrive upon this beverage as the English do upon ale ; for they are in general fat which, to a Russian of this class, means beautiful. I went to the promenade of the Summer Garden for the express purpose of seeing them collectively, and I was not disappointed. The splendour of the costume, the beauty (real and artificial) of the women, and the solemnity with which the intermi- nable procession marched along the walks all formed such a mixture of the odd and agreeable as I have rarely seen. They were almost all dressed in 224 A JOURXEY IN RUSSIA. cloaks of the richest silk, remarkable either for the intensity or delicacy of the colour : for the time was just midway between summer and winter, when the hues of either season were not out of the way. Their ear-rings were in general of pearls, and they wore gold chains. Their complexions afforded some of tbe most extraordinary specimens of painting ever witnessed. The mechanical part was admirable, but the design too ambitious to deceive ; for a woman with a natural face resembling many of those I saw, would have been " An angel ready made for heaven V All seemed conscious that they were dressed and painted to their utmost that they were there not to take a walk, but to form an exhibition ; and the earnest gravity with which they thus marched in procession, looking neither to the right, nor to the left, was the best part of the entertainment. Another promenade, in the IMarina Rochcha, or Mary's wood, was of a different kind. Here were assembled representatives of all the classes of society, and the tout ensemble was the most striking that can be imagined. Carpets were spread here and there beneath the trees, with large brass tea-urns, and other materials for this essential beverage. Turks, Persians, and Tatars were squatted every where around, intermingled with the families of the Russian merchants. Some were walking in groups, PROMENADE. 225 some playing at a kind of battledore and shuttle- cock, and some listening to the military music sup- plied by government. Here a troop of Gipsey girls screamed the airs of their unknown nation ; there a circle of Russian lasses performed the Korovoda ; and close by, three or four mujiks, surrounded by a crowd of spectators, danced a kind of hornpipe with a wildness of extacy which I have never seen equalled. This scene was exhibited on one side of the carriage-way ; while on the other there were tents, booths, taverns, with fields and groves between. The principal amusement here was a race of two men and a woman, or two women and a man, the third party endeavouring to prevent the other two from meeting. But the business was the sale and purchase of votki. In some tents it was distributed by wholesale only, in large square bottles ; but in general it was doled out in small measures, the purchaser spilling a portion into a tub as the per- quisite of the waiter. The carriage-way was crowded with the equipages of the nobility ; but at an early hour these disap- peared, and left the scene of merriment to the multitude. At the promenade of Petrovski I saw the nobles in all their glory ; but the scene was not half so agreeable, or so amusing as either of the other two. The double line of carriages was immense, but most of them were untidy, and many shabby ; the harness was dirty ; and the horses, although frequently good, far from having the appearance of being well cared for. 226 A JOURNEY IN RUSSIA, In this respect the studs of the merchants are by much the best. The Cossacks on guard between the lines were mounted on horses, that in the cant language now obsolete in England, were " rum ones to look at, though good ones to go." They seemed as if they had been taken for the occasion from a little country cart after a hard day's work. Behind, on the turf, were posted at regular distances the corps de lanterne, dressed in coarse grey cloth, and looking like parish paupers. The emperor was there on horseback. The Kremlin gardens, both within and without the walls, ought to afford a promenade every evening ; but the latter especially is a complete solitude in the heart of a great city. Annexed is the view enjoyed from the declivity of the esplanade leading down into the gardens. CHAPTER XV. Charitable institutions foundling hospital crown colony- technological school literary education maternity wards question of the morality of the institution hospice for widows statistics of the Foundling Lombard bank Alexandrine orphan institution Simonov monastery ceremonies of the monks nunneries Tatar mosque description of the service Russian prostrations Tatar prince . The foundation of the civil hospitals dates from 1682 ; that of the military from the time of Peter the Great. At present, they amount in number to seventy-one, and include by far the most splendid houses in the city. They are in general similar to those of St. Petersburg, which have been minutely described by another writer ; but a few are peculiar to jMoscow. 228 A JOURNEY IN RUSSIA. The Foundling Hospital is one of the most stu- pendous institutions of charity in the world. On entering it, the stranger finds himself in a town, and yet in a single house, containing six thousand inhabitants ! The infant is received here without a single question being asked, and a number hung round its neck, a duplicate of which is given, if desired, to the person who brings it. That person, probably the mother of the child, is permitted to remain as nurse if she chooses, when she is fed and clothed at the expense of the institution, and receives fifty kopeks a day. After a certain time, the woman carries away the child to her home ; or, if this is not convenient, a new nurse is provided, who takes charge of it for seven or eight years, commencing at the rate of five rubles a month. It is then brought back to the hospital, and its education begun. When a little lad of this age discovers a natural incapacity for learning, he is sent to what are called the colonies of the crown. He does not, however, become exactly a crown-peasant, for he cannot be drawn as a recruit. At the proper period he is married to any girl he may fancy belonging to the establishment, and destined for the same way of life. Every thing requisite for the marriage is pro- vided a cottage, ready furnished, to receive them ; a horse, a cow, a few sheep, &c. They pay no im- posts, not even the capitation tax, for the first three years ; but, after that, they pay as government peasants. The colony is provided with a school, a FOUNDLING HOSPITAL. 229 doctor, and a church ; and thus these children of shame or misery sit down in comfort for life, witli every thing around them necessary for the soul or body. The children who exhibit a turn for handicraft trades, are sent to a branch of the institution called the technicological school. Here I saw them at work according to their different tastes or ages ; the younger children busily employed at toy-making, and the others at cabinet-work, carpentry, smith- work, &c. At the dinner hour they washed and dressed, and, marching into the room in file, sat down to a comfortable meal, at which they used silver plate. Those boys or girls who exhibit a capacity to learn are put into regular classes in the House. The boys are taught Russian, Latin, German, French, history, geography, natural philosophy, and mathematics. Some are then sent to the Academy of Medicine, where they take degrees; others to the University ; and others are entered in the body of licensed teachers. The girls, in addition to most of the above branches, learn music and dancing ; and they are then placed out as governesses. Even when they lose their situation, they still remain under the care of this extraordinary institution ; and, when insulted or oppressed, they apply direct to the governor of jMoscow, who acts as their guardian. But the house extends its charity still further. It provides for the child even before its birth, by receiving the mother during her confinement. There X 230 A JOURNEY IN RUSSIA. are two wards of this kind ; one for indigent mar- ried women who come openly, and one for females who wish to wrap this epoch of their lives in mystery. In the latter case no question is asked : the patient may even conceal her face with a mask if she chooses. The question of morality connected with this subject has been frequently discussed. The advo- cates of the Foundling Hospital say, that, even admitting its existence to increase the proportion of enfans trouves, still the lives of an immense number must be saved by it. This becomes properly a question of statistics, and it is difficult to answer in a country like Russia. I do not think, however, that the number of infanticides is greater to any considerable degree in the provinces where no Foundling Hospital exists. Shame has rarely this effect in Russia. The dreadful mortality among the young children of the peasantry still goes on, and it proceeds principally from neglect. " God will take care of my child," says the mujik's wife, " if it is his will that it shoukl live ;" and, laying it down in its cradle to be swung by the angels, she goes out to her labour in the fields. This is the true reason why the Russian peasantry are so strong and healthy; for, in reality, only those gifted by nature with an iron constitution survive the tender years of infancy. Among persons of this class, three children are considered a large family ; while double, and sometimes tre])le the number, grace the board of the nobilitv. But, if SISTERS OF CHARITY. 231 the peasant woman is careless of her offspring, she is, in like manner, careless of herself; and both are equally fatal to the child. The next day after the infant is born, she resumes her work in the fields as if nothing had happened, and is thus often ren- dered incapable of acting the part of a nurse. In the secret maternity ward there are two thou- sand cases every year, while in the public one there are only fifty. There is, also, connected with the Foundling Hospital, a hospice for the widows of civil or mili- tary officers. They retain their children till the age of eight years for the boys, and eleven for the girls ; when they are put, at the expense of the institution, into the proper seminaries of education. Some of these widows take the oaths as Sisters of Charity, and devote their lives to the duty of ren- derins; gratuitous assistance to the sick. The Foundling Hospital was founded by the Empress Catharine II. in 1764, and opened on her birthday, the twenty-first of April. The first child was christened Catharine, and the second, Paul. In that year, 523 children were received ; in 1834, 8312. The following is a classified table of the number under the care of the institution on the day of my visit. Males. Females Grown-up children, including those in the classes . . 432 445 ]MidwiferY Students . . 48 232 A JOURNEY IN RUSSIA. Children at the breast At widows' alms-houses Under the parents' care In the infirmary At nurse in the villages Colony at SeratofF At the Technicological School In sundry places Males. Females. 299 357 34 51 1691 1492 19 38 10781 13579 412 411 196 106 60 13,970 16,481 Total 30,451 The funds of this vast establishment are pro- vided and managed by the Lombard Bank ; an institution which receives deposits of money at five per cent, and lends on personal and other property at six per cent. It enjoys a tithe of the gross receipts of the theatre, and other public places of amusement, besides a variety of other bimuses ; and its revenue is much more than sufficient to clear the expenses of the Foundling Hospital. Independently of the branches I have mentioned, there is the Alexandrine Orphan Institution, which derives its funds frcmi the F'oundling Hospital. It was founded in 1831, under the auspices of tlie empress, for the orphans of individuals who had died of the cliolera. It is now, however, thrown open, and receives one hundred and fifty boys, and one hundred and fifty girls, tlie orjjhans of civil and ]nilitary officers. SIMONOV MONASTERY. 233 The boys who are educated here will go to the university attended by a tutor ; and the girls, after receiving the education of accomplished wonaen, will themselves become governesses in distinguished families, instead of the English, German, and French ladies at present employed. I never wit- nessed more apparent happiness than in this estab- lishment. The gymnastic exercises of the boys would have attracted applause if performed on the stage. The air and manners of the girls had much of the ton of good society. They will speedily be removed into a new house, which has been built for their reception, near the hotel of the governor of the institution, prince Serge Gagarin. Among the sights of ^Moscow, the Simonov monastery is one which the stranger should not neglect to see. It is near the farthest rampart of the city to the south ; and, supposing the visitor to set out from the Kremlin, I advise him to turn round as he traverses the quay, and indulge himself with the superb view which is so happily imitated in the opposite engraving. As Ave recede from the centre of the town, the houses become more enclosed in groves and gardens; and, from every little eminence we ascend, the domes and cupolas of innumerable churches are seen rising from the centre of the foliage. The Simonov monastery is enclosed within a lofty wall, through the narrow slits of which some small cannon peep at the visitor. It contains live churches, the most ancient of which dates from 1405. The X 2 234 A JOURNEY IN RUSSIA. ikonastas of the principal church is one of the most magnificent in ^Moscow. It is one mass of gilded sculpture rising to the vault, and many of the images are adorned with precious stones. The view from the summit of the tower, liow- ever, is still better. The whole of ^Moscow lies before you, and the town seems to be forcing itself out into the retreating woods. After enjoying this spectacle for some time, the bell gave notice that service was about to begin ; and then came on the principal scene of the piece. The ceremonies were too numerous and complicated for description ; but, every now and then, the pic- ture formed by the monks was prodigiously tine. This was more particularly the case when they formed a hollow square in the middle of the church, with tall candlesticks before them. The light playing upon the pale face and remarkable head of one of them, in particular, would have been wortli any thing to a painter. Even here, however, among these spouseless, and, it is to be hoped, loveless, brethren, I observed the evident presence of personal vanity. The monlc whose duty it was to hold a book before the superior, M'ith a lighted candle, and Avhose liead was thus more fully brought out, chanced to be an extremely handsome man. Instead of allowing his beard, therefore, to grow like those of the others, con- cealing the mouth, lie had trimmed it coquettishly, twisting the upper part into military moustaches, TATAR 310SQUE. 235 and leaving a tuft of hair under the lower lip to mingle with the rest of the beard beneath. He whose pale face and remarkable head I observed, has done more for the monastery than merely contributing to form the picture. He has introduced here a style of singing which it Avould be in vain to attempt to describe. It is so low, so sweet, so rich, and yet so lofty, that if heard even in a theatre it could not fail to excite the deepest feelings of devotion. The audience on this occasion consisted of many of the upper classes ; the ladies of whom, without having any pretensions to beauty, possessed that charming harmony of feature and expression which is hardly any where more common than in Moscow. The Simonov monastery may be taken as a sample, although a favourable one, of the monastic estab- lishments of Moscow, the rest of which I have no space even to name. Some of the nunneries, also, in the busier quarters of the city, are well worth visiting. The lady abbess sailing in, and seating herself on a kind of throne, and the sisters marching two by two, and bowing profoundly at her footstool, produce a scenic effect which will please the lover of the picturesque. The Tatar mosque is in a part of the town to which the Tatars were formerly restricted. It is a very plain and unstuccoed brick building. The mezzuin did not ascend the tower, but mounted upon a wall which overlooked the garden, where many of the congregation were meditating, or 236 A JOURNEY IN RUSSIA. washing, preparatory to entering the church. His voice, as he gave out the invitation to true believers, in recitative, was extremely pleasing; and, in the midst of the profound tranquillity of the place and time, was something more. The interior of the mosque was quite as plain as the exterior. The floor was covered, excepting the space near the door, beyond which heretics are not allowed to advance, with pieces of carpeting ; and at the further end appeared an empty vaulted recess, somewhat like a fire-place. As the wor- shippers came in, they pulled off their shoes, " for the place is holy," unloosed a part of their turbans, and, putting both hands for a few moments to the sides of the head, in order to exclude the world, began to bow and fall on their faces like the Rus- sians. The latter, however, are infinitely more graceful. Theirs is a true prostration ; for, sinking upon their knees, they " fall all along upon the earth." The Tatars, on the contrary, sit upon their heels, and make their heads touch the ground as near their feet as possible the opposite end of the body, of course, ele^"ating itself in a presump- tuous, if not indecorous manner. After these genuflexions and prostrations had gone on for some time in profound silence, the mezzuin said something in a low voice ; and the priest, dressed in a white turban, ascended a sort of arm chair elevated on steps, and delivered an address in recitative. He then came down, and having placed himself on his heels in his original position, looking MOHAMMEDAN CEREMONIES. 237 into the vault, the congregation advanced, and formed themselves into regular lines behind him. All was death-like silence for a considerable time, till at length he spoke. At a certain word the people touched the ground with their foreheads, and rose again, all performing the ceremony with the nicest precision at one instant. This was repeated several times at long intervals, the devotees occa- sionally stroking their faces^ which I understood was to imitate the motion of washing. They then, as if by word of command, turned their faces first to the right and then to the left, and rose up. The priest now turned round with his face towards the audience, and prayed, making use of beads like the Catholics, while the same prostrations went on as before. He then took up the Koran, and having read aloud a portion, the service of the day was over. Among the audience there was a splendid old man, a Tatar prince, known to an English gentle- man who accompanied me. To this gentleman, Mr. R of jMoscow, whose loss of nearly a million of rubles by the French invasion has not damped his affection for his adopted country, I owe the warmest acknowledgments for a series of services as valuable as they were unmerited. CHAPTER XVI. Amusements of Moscow funerals ceremonies and proces- sions singular demonstrations of grief of a Russian lady for the loss of her son Yalomensk, or the accacia palace Catharine's country-house Tsaritzena, or the coffin- palace Yassenova peasantry remarks on the subject of their emancipation sagacious policy of the emperor. There are few public amusements in ]\Ioscow. The theatre is a colossal building, not exceeded in size, I should think, even by that of iMilan. It is chiefly distinguished by its national ballets ; but these were over for the season before my arrival. 31. Z , however, the director-general, a literary man of celebrity, was kind enough to give me the use of his box during my stay. FUNERALS. 239 In the evening the stranger, if respectably intro- duced, has the choice of numerous soirees to pass the time ; and as he will rarely dine at home, there is abundance of variety in his recreations. Owing to the early hour of dinner three o'clock the guests retire in time either to pay visits themselves or allow their entertainers to do so. Forenoon calls are not in vogue, although the ^Muscovites are early risers. I have myself been received by ladies of distinction as early as ten o'clock in the morning. Still even the forenoon will not hang heavily upon the hands of any idler who has eyes and imagination. The streets are an unfailing source of amusement. Sometimes a funeral sweeps by (if that can be called an amusement) preceded at a great distance, and at long intervals, by men in black, with broad brimmed hats slouching upon their shoulders, who light the way of the cortege with torches even at noon day. The hearse is an open car covered by a dais, showing the lofty coffin and its pall. The mourners follow in all sorts of carriages, among which on one occasion I observed several hundred droskis. Some ecclesiastical ceremony is always going on. You see, perhaps, a number of horses ranged round the church, and the priests busy in sprinkling them with holy water, and making the sign of the cross. This cures them of restiveness, and brings them under religious subjection to their owner. The hay which they are to eat is blessed in like manner. The benediction of apples is apparently more profi- 240 A JOURNEY IN RUSSIA. table to the priest, for he takes one out of every parcel as his own perquisite. The processions are sometimes very magnificent. I have seen between three and four hundred priests at one time, all dressed in cloth of silver embroidered with tjold, marchintj alonj; with their flag's and ban- ners displayed, and thundering forth a hymn. In the opposite view of the gate of Vladimir at the southern angle of the Kitai'-gorod, one of these processions is finely introduced. Even if the fund of interest should fail within the city, the traveller will find an inexhaustless store in the environs. The palaces, gardens, monas- teries, country seats of the nobility, for a hundred miles round, oflfer a perpetual variety. I was invited to the consecration of a church eighty or ninety versts distant, and the lady who did me the favour, ^^as even kind enough to send horses for me ; but in consequence of some unfortunate equivoque I had otherwise disposed of myself. I regretted this much, for the circumstances had in them not a little of the strange and romantic. The lady was born Countess Orloif, and is a niece of the famous Prince Gregory Orlofl^, who is supposed to have been privately married to the Empress Catharine II. She married, contrary to the wish of her family, a nobleman of rank inferior to her own, by whom she had one child, a son. This boy grew up every thing that a parent could wish. Brave, handsome, generous, of the highest blood of the country, and the heir of immense INCONSTANCY. 241 wealth, he was beloved, or flattered, by all but he was the idol of his mother. In due time the young man loved ; but the lady, although the daughter of a nobleman high in the army, was not considered a match for him. The mother whose maternal pride and ambition were thus menaced, was thrown into consternation. She begged, prayed, threatened all in vain : the youth was firm. She at length yielded : for he was her son, her only child, the one being in whom her hopes, her affections, her life were centred. But during the struggle, his determination had survived his constancy. His mother's tears, expos- tulations, and reasonings perhaps his more intimate acquaintance with the object of his attachment perhaps even the jeers of his comrades, who laughed at her name Prescovia, so vulgar in Russia perhaps all together had conspired to change his heart. At any rate, the difficulties in the way of the match were no sooner removed, than he declared suddenly that it was not his intention to marry. The young lady had three brothers, and the consequences may be foreseen. They declared that he must either marry their sister, or fight them all three, one after another. This only served to relieve his heart, and to ennoble his cause. He met the eldest brother ; they fought near St. Petersburg and were both killed : the unhappy youth crying with his last breath, '' My poor mother !" This was ten years ago. Since that period the mother has devoted her life to mourning. A church 242 A JOURNEY IN RUSSIA. is now rising on the spot where her son fell ; and ano- ther at her own house at Otrada, to the consecration of which I was invited, has been completed. In the vaults of the monastery of Novospaskoi a splendid monument has been erected to his memory, where the commemorative service is performed by the monks four times a week, and where a lamp is kept perpetually burning beside the tomb. When going to pray there herself, his favourite horse accom- panies her, and on their return she feeds the animal with white bread with her own hand. At the anniversary of the fatal duel, she shuts herself up from the world for some weeks, Avith the portrait, clothes, &c., of her dead son arranged before her. She loads every one with gifts and charities who chooses to claim acquaintance with him however slight. To this hour she is in deep mourning. OAving to the equivoque I have alluded to, instead of taking a part in the mournful solemnities of Otrada, I rode out into the country with a friend, Mr. H , to whose kind attentions, as Avell as to his intimate knowledge of the Russian language, I am indebted for much both of the useful and agreeable. We first went to see the palace of Yalomensk built by Alexis, father of Peter the Great. This edifice, however, is now among the things that were ; and we 'saw only a very fine acacia hedge, planted upon the foundations in such a manner as to describe minutely the plan of the building. In front is a large stone on which, tradition says. ACACIA PALACE. 243 the people placed their petitions ; and at a short distance the tree, surrounded by a table and benches, under which young Peter received his lessons. This tree, which in England would be considered one of very ordinary size, is here reckoned a giant. V/e had approached the acacia palace by an avenue, the gate of which presented something curious. It was an arched building, surmounted by an onion-shaped dome cut vertically down the middle, so as to expose a flat surface. At the middle of the avenue, a little way to one side, was the site of the palace ; and at the opposite end, an edifice, traversed by arched gateways, which served as the oftices. Beyond this, on the right hand is a church, and on the left a country-house built by Catharine II. The latter possesses one large hall, but the other apartments are extremely mean. The view, however, from the tower, which commands a considerable space, is truly imperial. Returning to the highway, from which we had diverged, and pursuing our ride, we reached Tsaritzena, about fourteen versts from the city barriers. This palace was never completed, and never inhabited, and yet it is now a ruin. Catha- rine, for whom it was built by Potemkin, on seeing it for the first time thought it looked like a hearse, and turned back in consternation. Her idea was perfectly just ; for in fact even Avhen standing close by, the roof resembles the lofty lid of a Russian cofiSn, and the small towers may very well be taken for the ornaments of the bier. Surrounding the 244 A JOURNEY IN RUSSIA. palace is a perfect wilderness of walks and gardens, where the citizens of Moscow delight to wander, sometimes passing the whole summer's night in little pavilions that are placed here and there throughout. From Tsaritzena we crossed the country to Yassenova, the seat of Prince G ; where, although his excellency was unwell, we received a hospitable welcome from the princess not to talk of a luxurious dinner, served under orange and lemon trees, and other exotic plants. The prince is a great breeder of merino sheep, and his wool this year was thought to be the best in the exposition. I had much pleasure in viewing his flock, and the excellent appointments of the place in which they are kept ; but still more in visiting the peasantry of his village, and inquiring personally, with Mr. H for my interpreter, into their domestic arrangements and general situation. I found them as happy and comfortable as any peasantry in the world, with large gardens well stocked with fruit trees, and their public bath an unfailing sign in Russia clean and in good order. The very reverse of this description, however, applied to a village close by, of which the proprietor was a lady. This is the dreadful evil of the system. The happiness or misery of a great portion of the people of Russia depends upon the moral character of comparatively a small number of indi- viduals. The late emperor Alexander was the most EMANCIPATION. 245 enlightened friend the peasantry have yet had ; and from the conspicuous energy and intelligence of Nicolas still more may be expected. But it is mere childishness to deny that the subject is in- vested with great difficulty. The emperor feels more acutely than any man in the state^ that the great mass of a people coming every day nearer in contact with the civilized nations of Europe cannot long remain in this condition ; and what is more to the purpose when talking of a sovereign, he feels that it is not his interest that they should do so. The manner of their emancipation, however, has become a question of much intricacy, and in the present wretched state of the administration of the laws it seems almost impossible to attain the object. The public of England, perhaps, will be surprised to learn, that independently of the opposition such a measure would receive from some of the land- holders, it would be opposed by a great body of the peasants themselves. The Russian peasant, enerally speaking, has no idea of liberty in the ao^tract he does not wish to be free merely for sake of freedom. If a noble gives his serf y, he of course resumes his land. " But the land is mine !" cries the serf, " it has come down w} me from my ancestors it is there where my father was buried, and where my young ones were born !" To become a tenant, liable to be turned off at legal warning, instead of a feudal vassal holding his lands on the bond of fidelity, does not appear liberty to him. If he forms an y 2 246 A JOURNEY IN RUSSIA. idea of the word at all, it is that he may still retain his land, and yet not pay the landlord. Again, when the Russian landlord resumes his land he will of course rescind all the privileges which time and custom have secured to the pea- sants ; and I should like to see the stare of the latter when told for the first time, that they were henceforth to have no property in the fish of the river or the fowls of the air ! I have said that the measure of emancipation would be opposed only by some of the nobles. Many, on the other hand, would give it their zea- lous support. When a change of proprietors takes place, it is usual for the peasants, uncertain of the character of their new master, to heg their liberty ; and many of them obtain it. A lady, whose ac- quaintance I had the honour of making at Moscow, IMademoiselle D f, one of the most intelligent women in the empire, lately bought an estate of five hundred peasants. Immediately on her arrival a few of them begged and obtained their libertv ; but although she proclaimed throughout the pro- perty that all who asked should receive the boon without money and without price, not a single application was afterwards made. Another ac- quaintance, M. Z of Moscow, on coming into possession of a small village of forty or fifty males, called them all about him, and ofifered them their freedom, with the liberty of remaining upon the land as tenants. They all refused. On the other hand, the peasants who have FREEMEN. 247 obtained by purchase, or otherwise, the permission of their lord to reside in towns^ necessarily acquire the common feelings of civilization, and learn to enter into the ideas of freemen. They regard their village comrades, however ancestral prejudice may disguise the matter, as nothing more than the slaves of the soil; and they look with a shudder upon the indignities to which they see them exposed when they happen to have either a fool or a brute for their master. These men no sooner acquire money enough, than they hasten to buy their freedom ; and if they effect this (which the pride or caprice of some masters prevents), they see at once open to them the career of ambition, leading to the very highest offices of the state. The present emperor has taken this class of freemen under his special protection. He has ennobled, as it were, the body, and made it a mark for general ambition. He is sagacious enough to see that by such measures he makes himself be looked upon as a good angel by the mujiks. It matters not what is their situation. However sore may be their thraldom when in the hands of a tyran- nical master, it is not the government that is to blame. Although occasionally (and it happened twice during my sojourn in Moscow) they assas- sinate their tyrant, they are always ready to lay down their lives for the emperor. CHAPTER XVII. Dejjarture of the exiles for Siberia distribution of kalatcbes Dr. Haas singular scene in the Ostrog police story of its absurd severity curious anecdote the evil eye education and character of the upper classes English in Moscow their church funeral of an English lady climate cheapness of living population statistics adieu to the Holy City. TiiK departure of the exiles for Siberia is a scene which should not be missed by the traveller : but in order to let him enjoy it at his ease, one thing is necessary to be understood. The mere fact of trans- portation is not looked upon as a severe punishment ; for the great body of the criminals consists of persons who have been accustomed all their lives to a com- pulsory servitude, as severe as that which a\\aits them beyond the Ural mountains. Condemnation SIBERIAN EXILES. 249 to the mines in Siberia is what they dread and with great justice; for this is a substitution for capital punishment, and answers the same purpose, only extending the time occupied by the act of dying from a few minutes to a few years. In a temporary depot, erected on the summit of the Sparrow hills, I found the destined wretches about to commence their march. A long chain se- cured both legs at the ancles, and, to prevent it from incommoding them in walking, was fastened to their belt, or sash. A great many were Jews, most of them mujiks ; and all, with the exception of one man, were free from those physiognomical marks of atrocity which are commonly supposed to distinguish the guilty. Some carts were near, filled with their wives and children, and some of their male relations stood beside them unmanacled, who had likewise petitioned to be permitted to share their exile. In the middle stood a man who had a good deal of the air of an English dissenting clergyman ; but the shape of his clothes and hat, and the large buckles in his shoes, seemed to belong to the fashion of an earlier day. His appearance inspired me with instinctive respect, and his face seemed absolutely to beam with the purest and noblest philanthropy. He was occupied in distributing moral and religious books to such of the prisoners as could read, and in hearing patiently, and often redressing instantly, their complaints. The exiles, on their part, seemed to look upon him as a friend a father; but their affection was mingled with the deepest respect. 250 A JOURNEY IN RUSSIA. 3Iany prostrated themselves at his feet, as before a holy image, and touched the ground with their forehead. On taking leave, he embraced and kissed them all, one by one ; and the rattle of their chains, as they began the march, was mingled with sobs and blessings. The cortege, however, had hardly began to move, when it was stopped by the appearance of a bearded merchant, who entered the prison hastily, followed by servants bearing large baskets of kalatches. This is a species of charity very common in IMoscow. Fine bread is distributed in the prisons almost daily ; and, on the present occasion^ all the exiles and their families received one or more large rolls. Dr. Haas, for this is the philanthropist's name, is in a kind of official situation, acting as the secre- tary of a charitable body ; and he passes his life among the sick and the captives, in the double capacity of physician to the soul and body. He told me various interesting anecdotes of the pri- soners, which I regret I have not space to repeat ; and showed me, with a delightful pride, the hos- pital attached to the depot, where many poor wretches who had never before in their lives known the luxury of a bed, were lying in as much external comfort as if they had been the first nobles in the land. I went afterwards to the Ostrog, the principal prison of the town, in which the classification of the prisoners is strictly attended to. This, ho\\ever, is all 1 can sav in its favour; the buildings being sin- CURIOUS SCENE. 251 gularly mean, and the walls of the apartments dirty. Here, however, I again met Dr. Haas, the guardian genius of the scene and in rather an odd predica- ment. * A sick prisoner, it seems, had longed for a cup of sbeeten, and the doctor had promised it. His assistant, however, although furnished with the necessary directions, had neglected to fulfil the promise ; but, when reminded of it by the poor man, he desired another to do so and that other was prevented, by being taken ill himself. The invalid hereupon becoming desperate, complained to the doctor ; and the doctor, full of indignation, declared that he who had been guilty of breaking the promise should present the cup upon his knees. The affair was at this point when I arrived. The third party to the transgression could not, and the assistant would not, kneel; and Dr. Haas, sur- rounded by a group of turnkeys and felons, was about to go upon his knees to present a cup of sbeeten to the sick prisoner ! The reader, no doubt, will be happy to learn that he suffered himself to be dissuaded, and that the ceremony was eventually performed by the assistant. The police of Moscow is very efficient; but, as is the case in all the executive departments of the law throughout the country, is very unequal and capricious in its operation. I hap- pened to become acquainted with a curious case of absurd severity. At a time when incendi- arism was frequent in the city, a servant-girl 252 A JOCRNEY IN RUSSIA. found in the street a letter in Avhich a neighbour was threatened with having his house burned down that very night. She instantly flew to the devoted family to give the alarm ; and, after relating the story to her master, went to bed in a state of dread- ful agitation. In the middle of a cold and stormy night, she was taken out of bed by the police, having only time to snatch up a petticoat and Avrap it round her shoulders ; she was dragged to the office, and, without a word of examination, knouted severely ; and then thrust into prison, where she was kept for two days without food ! Her crime was having warned the intended victims, instead of carrying the letter to the police ; and, having been delivered of a child only a day or two before, her death from exhaustion would, in all probability, have been the consequence, had she not purchased from one of the men, for an eighty kopek piece, a small morsel of black bread. In consequence of the severity of the police, not only to suspected criminals, but to witnesses, a Rus- sian will never have any thing to do with a dead body which has not died in its bed. If he meets with one in the fields, or on the liighway, he takes to flight as if lie were afraid of the ghost. They are very attentive to the sick ; but when once the breath is out, " there's an end." A friend of mine riding one day near the Simonov monastery, saw a man at a distance climb up a tree and hang himself. He immediately galloped with all his might towards the scene of action ; but, before arriving, a soldier SUPERSTITIONS. 253 was already there from the barracks close by. This man would neither interfere himself, nor permit my friend to do so. He stood on guard very quietly till the police came up, with an immense crowd at their heels ; and the first thing thought of, after taking down the body, was to fell the tree with their hatchets as being unclean. This is the more curious as the general belief is, that the soul does not get clear off from the body till the ninth day after death. But the superstitions of the Russians would require a volume to themselves ; and I shall only mention that the Evil Eye is the most common one in Moscow. A friend's child was taken ill in consequence of this malign, but uninten- tional influence ; and the nurse immediately rubbed its back with the cloths that had been used at its birth. She washed the infant every night, licking its back, and spitting three times. I need hardly say, that the higher ranks are as rarely infected with such superstitions as those of our own country. Among persons in that class of society at jMos- cow, there is in general still more of warmth and kindness of manner than at St. Petersburg. Their education is good, but their reading very superficial. A traveller, in 1784, says that French and a little geography were all that was thought requisite ; whereas, at present, their studies embrace French, German, and English, as well as the other branches of a polite education. I know at least half a dozen ladies who have never been out of Russia, but who z 254 A JOURNEY IN RUSSIA. speak English without the slightest tinge of a fo- reign accent. The number of English here is not considerable, and the great majority consists of the families of manufacturers. They have a very neat church, not- withstanding ; where I heard, not without emotion, a congregation of my countrymen offering up their prayers from the centre of Russia in behalf of theif native land, and their native king. On one occa- sion the sermon was peculiarly affecting. It was preached on the death of Mrs. F , a beautiful, amiable, and highly-gifted young lady ; whom, al- though expected by her in life, I was too late to see except in her coffin. At the funeral itself, my worthy friend, if he will permit me to call him so, the excellent and talented minister of the congre- gation, was so much overcome by emotion that the words of the beautiful service came only in choked and broken fragments from his lips. It was a scene I shall not readily forget that small group of English in a lonely churchyard, weeping over the grave of their countrywoman in a foreign land. The climate of Moscow is healthy, partly owing, no doubt, to its elevated situation, and partly to the freedom with which the wind is able to sweep between the lines of low houses. According to the hospital reports, jNIarch and October are the most fatal months for all diseases, except typhus, whose reign is in January. The prices of the necessaries of life are low; meat being about three pence an English pound, and POPULATION. 255 flour not more than a halfpenny. The inhabitants, notwithstanding, complain ; such rates being enor- mously high, compared with those of preceding years. The population by a late census amounts to 315,152 souls. Of this number, only about a seven- teenth part is noble ; while more than one half is composed of peasants. The following table, without taking up much room, will give an idea of the city as it is, in the various establishments, both spiritual and corporeal, in operation for the benefit of its inhabitants. Churches 273 Convents 21 Hospitals 71 Auberges 507 Beer retail shops . 279 Bakehouses 181 Kalatch bakehouses 91 Eating-houses 170 Public Baths 37 Houses 9904 Shops 7566 Lamps . 7598 I am far from flattering myself that in the fore- going pages I have been able to give a proper picture either of St. Petersburg or Moscow. If such an idea ever entered my head, it would be immediately turned out again, were it only by a 256 A JOURNEY IN RUSSIA. sight of the large quantity of materials still lying in my portfolio untouched. In the small space, however, in which I am " cabined cribbed con- fined," I have endeavoured to touch upon those prominent points which form the outlines of the piece ; and I thus hope that I may have enabled the reader to imagine, with tolerable accuracy, the effect of the whole. I have only to add, that after a residence of six weeks, I assumed once more the pilgrim's staff. On the opposite page the reader will take a parting glimpse, as I did, of the glories of the Kremlin from the right bank of the Moskva ; although he cannot be expected, like me, to turn his back with admira- tion and regret upon the Holy City. Piiuteit by John HaiMim and Co., Doctors' Common? r tj,^ ''' :]r.'^ OF-fA!'" ^w-i; ''rm\mn'i< .Ci ^ u ^, ,^ UC SOUTHERN REGIONAL LIBRARY FACILITY A A 000 113 660 5 Mr- > lOv^v" /^(liv^'v;-;^-