tasm of a dream. These splendid illuminations cost twelve thousand roubles, and lasted two months. At eleven a flourish of musical instruments announced the arrival of the Emperor, who entered with the Empress and the imperial family, the ambassadors, the ambassadresses, the officers of the household, and the ladies in waiting, who all took their places at the middle supper-table; two other tables were filled by six hundred guests, mostly composed of the first-class nobility. The Emperor alone remained standing, moving about the tables, conversing by turns with his numerous guests. Nothing could exceed the magnificent effect produced by the banquet, and the appearance of the court; the sovereign and his officers and nobility covered with gold and embroidery, the Empress and her ladies glittering with diamonds and splendid velvets, tissues and satins. No other fête in Europe could produce such a grand coup d'œil as the New Year's fête at the Hermitage. At the conclusion of the banquet the Court returned to the Saloon of St. George, where the music struck up a polonaise, which was led off by the Emperor. This dance was his farewell to his guests, for as soon as it was finished he withdrew. The departure of their sovereign gave pleasure to those loyal subjects who trembled for his personal safety; but the courageous and ever paternal confidence reposed in his subjects by Alexander, turned away from him every murderous weapon. No one could resolve to assassinate a kind father in the midst of his children, for as such the Emperor had received his numerous guests. The second annual fête was of a religious character. "The Benediction of the Waters," to which the recent disastrous calamity of the most terrible inundation on record in Russia, the preceding year, had given deeper solemnity. The preparations were made with an activity tempered by care, which denoted the national character to be essentially religious. Upon the Neva a great pavilion was erected of a circular form, pierced with eight openings, decorated by four paintings, crowned with a cross; to this pavilion access was given by a jetty forming the hermitage. The temporary edifice, on the morning of the ceremony, was to have its pavement of ice cut through in order to permit the Patriarch to reach the water. The cold was already twenty degrees below zero, when at nine o'clock in the morning the whole population of St. Petersburg assembled themselves on the frozen waters of the Neva, then a solid mass of crystal. At half-past eleven the Empress and Grand-Duchesses took their places in the glass balcony of the Hermitage, and appearance announced to the crowd that the Te Deum was concluded. The whole corps of the Imperial Guards, amounting to forty thousand men, marched to the sound of martial music and formed in line of battle on the river, from the hotel of the French embassy to the fortress. The palace gates opened as soon as this military evolution was effected, and the banners, sacred pictures, and the choristers of their the chapel, appeared preceding the Patriarch and his clergy; then came the pages and the colours of the different regiments of guards, borne by their proper officers; then the Emperor, supported by the GrandDukes Nicholas and Michael, followed by the officers of his household, his aid-de-camps and generals. As soon as the Emperor reached the door of the pavilion, which was nearly filled with priests and banners, the Patriarch gave the signal, and the sweet solemn chant of more than a hundred voices rose to heaven, unaccompanied by music indeed, yet forming a divine harmony hardly to be surpassed on earth. During the prayer, which lasted twenty minutes, the Emperor stood bareheaded, dressed in his uniform, without fur or any defence from the piercing cold, running more risk by this disregard to climate, than if he had faced the fire of a hundred pieces of artillery in the front of battle. The spectators, enveloped in fur mantles and caps, presented a complete contrast to the religious imprudence of their rash sovereign, who had been bald from his early youth. As soon as the second Te Deum was concluded, the Patriarch took a silver cross from the hand of the younger chorister, and encircled by the kneeling crowd, plunged it through the opening made in the ice into the waters below. He then filled a vase up with the consecrated element, which he presented to the Emperor. After this ceremonial of blessing the waters, came the benediction of the standards, which were reverently inclined towards the Patriarch for that purpose. A sky-rocket was immediately let off from the pavilion, and its silvery smoke was answered by a terrible explosion, for the whole artillery of the fortress gave from their metallic throats a loud Te Deum, and these salvos were heard three times during the benediction of the standards; at the third, the Emperor commenced his return to the palace. He was more melancholy than usual, for during this religious ceremony he felt no need of courage or presence of mind; he was secured by the natural veneration of a superstitious people. He knew it, and, therefore, wore no mask in the semblance of a joyless smile. On the same day, this imposing ceremonial is used at Constantinople, only the winter is a mere name and the water has no ice. The Patriarch stands on the deck of a vessel, and drops his silver cross into the calm blue waves of the Bosphorus, which a skilful diver restores to him before it reaches the bottom. To these religious ceremonies succeed sports and pastimes of all kinds. Booths and barracks are erected on the frozen Neva from quay to quay, Russian mountains, down which sledges slide with inconceivable velocity, and the Carnival commences with as much zest as in cities enjoying a southern temperature. Plays are performed on the ice, and curious pantomimes, in which a marmot performs the part of a baby very cleverly, while the man who shows him off under the character of the good father of the family finds resemblances in this black-nosed imp to all his supposed human relatives, to the infinite delight of the spectators. Sleighing on the ice is, as in Canada, a favourite diversion with the Russians, whose sledges are lined with fur and ornamented with silver bells and ribbons of every colour. Sometimes a wind loaded with vapour puts an end to these diversions by rendering the ice unsafe, in which case they are interdicted by the police, and the sports and pastimes of the people are transferred to terra firma; but the Carnival is considered to come to an abrupt conclusion if this misfortune occurs at its commencement, for the Neva is to the inhabitants of St. Petersburg what Vesuvius is to the Neapolitans, and the absence of the ice robs their Saturnalia of its greatest attraction. In countries where the Greek religion is the national standard of faith, Lent is preceded by the same unbounded festivity as in those which are Roman Catholic; but the Court does not display in these days so much barbarous magnificence as in those earlier times when civilization was unknown. The Carnival was, however, held during the last century by Anna Ivanovna, in a style surpassing that of her ancestors. This pleasure-loving princess, the daughter of the elder brother of Peter the Great, covered her usurpation of a throne she had snatched not only from the descendants of her mighty uncle, but also from her own elder sister and niece, by conducing to the popular amusements of her people, who in their turn forgot her defective title to the throne. This popular female sovereign founded the largest bell in the world, and gave the most magnificent Carnival ever held in Russia. Thus she maintained her sway by the aid of pleasure and devotion, a twofold cord her subjects never broke. In 1740 Anna Ivanovna resolved to surpass every preceding Carnival by her unique manner of providing her people with amusement during this merry season. It was customary for the sovereign of Russia to be attended by a dwarf, who united the privileged character of a jester to the tiny proportions of a little child. This empress possessed two of these diminutive personages, and she chose for her own amusement and that of her loving subjects that they should be married during this Carnival, and "whether nature did this match contrive," or it was the consequence of her own despotic will, cannot be known without a peep into the jealously guarded archives of Russia; but the nuptials of these sports of nature was the ostensible cause of the fête. This the Autocrat gave on a new and splendid scale. She directed her governors to send her two natives of the hundred districts they ruled in her name, clothed in their national costume, and with the animals they were accustomed to use on their journeys. The idea was certainly a brilliant one, and worthy of the sovereign lady of so many nations, tongues and languages. Anna Ivanovna was punctually obeyed, and at the appointed time a motley procession, including the purest types of the Caucasian race and the ugliest of the Mongolian, astonished the eyes of the Empress, who had scarcely known the greater part of these distant tribes by name. There she beheld the Kamt chadale with his sledge drawn by dogs, the Russian Laplander with his reindeer, the Kalmuck with his cows, the Tartar on his horse, and the native of Bochara with his camel, the Ostiak on his clogs. Then for the first time, the beautiful Georgian and Circassian, with their dark ringlets and unrivalled features, looked with astonishment upon the red hair of the Finlander. The gigantic Cossack of the Ukraine eyed with contempt the pigmy Samoiede -and in fact, for the first time were brought into contact by the will of their sovereign lady, who classed each race under one of four banners representing spring, summer, autumn and winter; and these two hundred persons, during eight days, paraded the streets of St. Petersburg, to the infinite delight of the population, who had never seen the power of the throne displayed in a manner so agreeable to their taste before. one Upon the wedding day of her dwarfs, these important personages had been attended to the altar by this singular national procession, where they plighted their faith in the presence of the Empress and all her Court, after which they heard Mass, and then, accompanied by their numerous escort, took possession of the palace prepared for them by the direction of their imperial mistress. This palace was not the least fanciful part of the fête. It was entirely composed of ice, and resembled crystal in its brilliancy and fine cutting and polish. This beautiful fabric was fifty-two feet in length and twenty in width; the roof, the floor, the furniture, chandeliers, and even the nuptial bed, were formed of the same cold, glittering, and transparent materials. The doors, the galleries, and the fortifications,-even the six pieces of cannon that guarded this magical palace, were of ice; of these, charged with a single ice-bullet and fired by the aid of a pound of powder, perforated at seventy paces a plank of twelve inches thickness. This was done to salute the bridal party, and welcome them home. The most curious piece of mechanism, and which pleased the Russians the most, was a colossal elephant, mounted by an armed Persian, and led by twelve slaves. This gigantic beast threw from his trunk a column of water by day, and at night a stream of fire, uttering from time to time roars which were heard from one end of St. Petersburg to the other. These noble roars were produced by twelve Russians concealed in the body and legs of the plantom elephant, whose costly housings hid the men whose noise so delighted their countrymen. This Carnival of the fête-loving female usurper has never been surpassed by any Russian sovereign, though, with the exception of the assembly of her distant subjects, its taste was barbarous enough.' (1) Our Sovereign Lady, Queen Victoria, were she to raise her sceptre, might easily convoke a far more numerous and interesting assembly, from lands more distant, and climes of more varied tem perature. How many more nations in the far east and west are ruled and maintained by her lawful rule, than rendered unlawful homage to the Russian Empress! If she were to send for two persons from every tribe, nation, or empire she governs, England would behold the grandest and most interesting national spectacle her sun ever should it not be done? shone upon. Can this idea be realized ?-and if it can be, why then VENUS AND THE BOAR. NOTWITHSTANDING the absurdities and irrational fictions which are interwoven with the stories of classic writers, there are many of them exceedingly beautiful, and not altogether destitute of natural truths. In the mythology of the ancients are frequently to be discovered shadows-dim indeed, but yet types of the loftier creeds which have been revealed to us; thoughts and sentiments almost worthy of the age of Christian enlightenment, and records of deeds which, had they been the work of those who actually trod on this lower world, would have formed no unintelligible and unworthy portion of man's history. The thoughts of ancient poets and philosophers were often nearer to our own than we are apt to believe; those who put them forth expressed all their reason and intelligence knew, and, in doing so, they only left the mind hungering for a higher and more spiritual food. And when the guilty boar they found, One pinch'd his tail to make him go, The more they urged, the more they dragg d, To Venus soon the beast they led," &c. &c. Westall's illustration of this subject ranks among the best of his pictures; it is replete with rich and poetical fancy, and presents a combination of graceful elegance with playful conception, not often surpassed. Richard Westall, R.A., was born about the year 1765, and, like several other artists who rose to eminence as painters, he was apprenticed to an engraver of heraldic designs, in the neighbourhood of Cheapside, London. Towards the conclusion of his term of servitude, his master permitted him to attend the Ever since that period in the history of art when, schools of the Royal Academy, and also to devote his freed from those restrictions which almost compelled evenings to the practice of drawing. At the Academy its disciples to defer the efforts of their genius to the he formed an intimacy with his fellow-pupil, the late requirements of the Roman Church, painting sought Sir Thomas Lawrence; and when Westall's apprenticea wider and more diversified channel for the develop-ship had terminated, the two young artists took a ment of its powers, the heathen writers, as they are generally termed, have furnished a fine and inexhausthe field for illustration, wherein may be discerned symbols of those attributes of social and moral virtues which are common to humanity, however circumstanced. The story of "Venus and the Boar" scarcely can be allowed to rank among such shadowy truths, but it is nevertheless a very beautiful, fiction, that speaks of the sorrow of the heart. The shepherd Adonis, son of the King of Crete, was the great favourite of Venus: he was passionately fond of bunting, and was frequently admonished by the goddess not to hunt wild beasts, lest any accident should happen to him. He disregarded the advice, and one day received a mortal injury from the tusks of a boar, which he had wounded; and Venus, after shedding many tears at his death, changed him into the flower called Anemone. But the animal that caused so much grief was not allowed to escape with impunity; the light-winged attendants of the goddess were commanded to go in search of the boar, to bind him, and bring her to him for trial. Theocritus, a Greek poet, who flourished at Syracuse, in Sicily, about three hundred years before the Christian era, gives a most ¦fanciful account of the apprehension and trial of the culprit, the commencing portion of which has been thus translated, and here is introduced as explanatory of Westall's picture, though we are not aware that he borrowed his version of the story from the Greek writer: "When Venus saw Adonis dead, And from his cheeks the roses fled, house, jointly, at the corner of Greek Street, Soho. Like his friend Lawrence, Westall enjoyed more fashionable patronage than any other artist of his time; his water-colour drawings especially being much sought after by collectors of " elegant trifles," for drawing-room albums. As an instructor of drawing among the higher circles, he was also greatly in request, and among his more distinguished scholars was our present beloved Queen, when Princess Victoria; how effective his lessons have been, the beautiful drawings of his royal pupil abundantly testify. Westall was elected an Academician before he had reached the age of thirty; an honour, it is believed, almost unparalleled in the history of this institution; it was in 1794, the same year that Stothard and Lawrence arrived at a similar dignity. It is, however, greatly to be lamented, that the bright promise of Westall's earlier life was not realized by his subsequent productions; for, however admirable his style is in many particulars, it rarely reaches what may legitimately be called high art. Perhaps, had he found fewer patrons, he would have striven more nobly to become a great artist; the path to substantial fame is rarely that which is strewed with flowers. |