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APPROACH TO PETERSBURG

CHAP. VIII.

GREECE.

APPROACH TO PETERSBURG BY THE NEVA.- INCONGRUITY BETWEEN THE CLIMATE AND ASPECT OF THE COUNTRY AND THE STYLE OF ARCHITECTURE. - ABSURD IMITATION OF THE MONUMENTS OF THE CUSTOM-HOUSE AND POLICE. INQUISITORIAL EXAMINATION. -DIFFICULTIES OF LANDING. APPEARANCE OF THE STREETS. STATUE OF PETER THE GREAT. -THE WINTER PALACE REBUILT IN ONE YEAR THE MEANS EMPLOYED. RUSSIAN DESPOTISM.- CITATION FROM HERBERSTEIN. KARAMSIN. THE CHARACTER OF THE PEOPLE ACCORDS WITH THAT OF THE GOVERNMENT.

THE streets of Petersburg present a strange appearance to the eyes of a Frenchman. I will endeavour to describe them; but I must first notice the approach to the city by the Neva. It is much celebrated, and the Russians are justly proud of it, though I did not find it equal to its reputation. When, at a considerable distance, the steeples begin to appear, the effect produced is more singular than imposing. The hazy outline of land, which may be perceived far off between the sky and the sea, becomes, as you advance, a little more unequal at some points than at others: these scarcely perceptible irregularities are found on nearer approach to be the gigantic architectural monuments of the new capital of Russia. We first begin to recognise the Greek steeples and the gilded cupolas of convents; then some modern public buildings the front of the Exchange, and the white colonnades of the colleges, museums, barracks, and palaces which border the quays of granite, become discernible. On

entering the city, you pass some sphinxes, also of granite. Their dimensions are colossal and their appearance imposing; nevertheless these copies of the antique have no merit as works of art. A city of palaces is always magnificent, but the imitation of classic monuments shocks the taste when the climate under which these models are so inappropriately placed is considered. Soon, however, the stranger is struck with the form and multitude of turrets and metallic spires which rise in every direction: this at least is national architecture. Petersburg is flanked with numbers of large convents, surmounted by steeples; pious edifices, which serve as a rampart to the profane city. The Russian churches have preserved their primitive appearance; but it is not the Russians who invented that clumsy and capricious Byzantine style, by which they are distinguished. The Greek religion of this people, their character, education, and history, alike justify their borrowing from the Lower Empire; they may be permitted to seek for models at Constantinople, but not at Athens. Viewed from the Neva, the parapets of the quays of Petersburg are striking and magnificent; but the first step after landing discovers them to be badly and unevenly paved with flints, which are as disagreeable to the eye as inconvenient to the feet and ruinous to the wheels. The prevailing taste here is the brilliant and the striking: spires, gilded and tapering like electric conductors; porticoes, the bases of which almost disappear under the water; squares, ornamented with columns which seem lost in the immense space that surrounds them; antique statues, the character and attire of which so ill accord with the

130 INCONGRUITY BETWEEN THE CLIMATE, ETC.

aspect of the country, the tint of the sky, the costume and manners of the inhabitants, as to suggest the idea of being captive heroes in a hostile land; expatriated edifices, temples that might have fallen from the summit of the Grecian mountains into the marshes of Lapland; such were the objects that most struck me at the first sight of St. Petersburg. The magnificent temples of the pagan Gods, which so admirably crown, with their horizontal lines and severely chaste contours, the promontories of the Ionian shores, and whose marbles, gilded by the sunshine amid the rocks of the Peloponnesus, here become mere heaps of plaster and mortar; the incomparable ornaments of Grecian sculpture, the wonderful minutiæ of classic art, have all given place to an indescribably burlesque style of modern decoration, which substitution passes among the Finlanders as proof of a pure taste in the arts. Partially to imitate that which is perfect is to spoil it. We should either strictly copy the model, or invent altogether. But the re-production of the monuments of Athens, however faithfully executed, would be lost in a miry plain, continually in danger of being overflowed by water whose level is nearly that of the land. Here nature suggests to man the opposite of that which he has imagined. Instead of imitations of pagan temples, it demands bold projecting forms and perpendicular lines, in order to pierce the mists of a polar sky, and to break the monotonous surface of the moist grey steppes which form, farther than the eye or the imagination can stretch, the territory of Petersburg. I begin to understand why the Russians urge us with so much earnestness to

very

AND THE ARCHITECTURE OF THE COUNTRY. 131

visit them during winter: six feet of snow conceals all this dreariness, but in summer we see the country. Explore the territory of Petersburg and the neighbouring provinces, and you will find, I am told, for hundreds of leagues, nothing but ponds and morasses, stunted firs and dark-leaved birch. To this sombre vegetation the white shroud of winter is assuredly preferable. Every where the same plains and bushes seem to compose the same landscape; at least, until the traveller approaches Finland and Sweden. There he finds a succession of little granite rocks covered with pines, which change the appearance of the soil, though without giving much variety to the landscape. It will be easily believed that the gloom of such a country is scarcely lessened by the lines of columns which men have raised on its even and naked surface. The proper bases of Greek peristyles are mountains: there is here no harmony between the inventions of man and the gifts of nature; in short, a taste for edifices without taste has presided over the building of St. Petersburg.

But, however shocked our perceptions of the beau tiful may be by the foolish imitations which spoil its appearance, it is impossible to contemplate without a species of admiration, an immense city which has sprung from the sea at the bidding of one man, and which has to defend itself against a periodical inundation of ice, and a perpetual one of water.

The Kronstadt steam-boat dropped her anchor before the English quay opposite the Custom-house, and not far from the famous square where the statue of Peter the Great stands mounted on its rock.

I would gladly spare my reader the detail of the

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THE CUSTOM-HOUSE AND POLICE.

new persecutions, which, under the name of simple formalities, I had to undergo at the hand of the police, and its faithful ally the custom-house; but it is a duty to give a just idea of the difficulties which attend the stranger on the maritime frontier of Russia: the entrance by land is, I am told, more easy.

For three days in the year the sun of Petersburg is insupportable. I arrived on one of these days. Our persecutors commenced by impounding us (not the Russians, but myself and the other foreigners) on the deck of our vessel. We were there, for a long time, exposed without any shelter to the powerful heat of the morning sun. It was eight o'clock, and had been daylight ever since one hour after midnight. They spoke of thirty degrees of Réaumur*, which temperature, be it remembered, is much more inconvenient in the North, where the air is surcharged with vapour, than in hot climates.

At length I was summoned to appear before a new tribunal, assembled, like that of Kronstadt, in the cabin of our vessel. The same questions were addressed to me, with the same politeness, and my answers were recorded with the same formalities. "What is your object in Russia ?”

"To see the country."

"That is not here a motive for travelling."

(What humility in this objection!)

"I have no other."

"Whom do you expect to see in Petersburg?" "Every one with whom I may have an opportunity of making acquaintance.”