I HAD PROMISED my friends that I would not return to France without seeing Moscow, the fabulous city—fabulous in spite of history; for the grandeur of the events connected with it, though they recall the most positive and clearly defined occurrences of our age, renders its name poetical beyond all other names.
This scene of an epic poem has a sublimity which contrasts, in a whimsical manner, with the spirit of an age of mathematicians and stockjobbers. I am therefore especially impatient to reach Moscow, for which city I set out in two days. My impatience will not, however, prevent my expatiating on all that may strike me before arriving there, for I mean to complete, as far as I am able, the picture of this vast and singular empire.
It is impossible to describe the dullness of St. Petersburg during the absence of the emperor. At no time does the city exhibit what may be called gaiety; but without the court, it is a desert. The reader is aware that it is constantly menaced with destruction by the sea. This morning, while roaming its solitary quays and empty streets, I said to myself, “Surely the city must be about to be inundated; the inhabitants have fled, and the water will soon recover possession of the marsh.” Nothing of the kind: Petersburg is lifeless only because the emperor is at Peterhof.
The water of the Neva, driven back by the sea, rises so high, and the banks are so low, that this large inlet, with its innumerable arms, resembles a stagnant inundation, an over-flowing marsh. They call the Neva a river, but it is for want of a more precise signification. At Petersburg, the Neva has already become the sea; higher up, it is a channel of a few leagues in length, which serves to convey the superfluous waters of Lake Ladoga into the Gulf of Finland.
At the period when the quays of Petersburg were built, a taste for structures of small elevation prevailed among the Russians. The adoption of this taste was very injudicious in a country where the snow, during eight months in the year, diminishes the height of the walls by six feet; and where the surface of the soil presents no variety that might, in any degree, relieve the monotony of the regular circle which forms the unchangeable line of horizon, serving as a frame for scenes level as the ocean. In my youth, I inhaled enthusiasm at the feet of the mountainous coasts of Calabria, before landscapes all of whose lines, excepting those of the sea, were vertical. Here, on the contrary, I see only one plane surface terminated by a perfectly horizontal line drawn betwixt the sky and the water. The mansions, palaces, and colleges which line the Neva, seem scarcely to rise above the soil, or rather the sea: some have only one story, the loftiest not more than three, and all appear dilapidated. The masts of the vessel overshoot the roofs of the houses. These roofs are of painted iron; they are light and elegant, but very flat, like those of Italy, whereas pointed roofs are alone proper in countries where snow abounds. In Russia, we are shocked at every step by the results of imitation without reflection.
Between the square blocks of an architecture which pretends to be Italian, run wide, straight, and empty vistas, which they call streets, and which, notwithstanding their projecting colonnades, are anything but classical. The scarcity of the women also contributes to the dullness of the city. Those who are pretty, seldom appear on foot. Wealthy persons who wish to walk, are invariably followed by a servant. The practice, is, here, one of prudence and necessity.
The emperor alone has the power to people this wearisome abode, abandoned so soon as its master has disappeared. He is the magician who puts thought and motion into the human machines,—a magician in whose presence Russia wakes, and in whose absence she sleeps. After the court has left, the superb metropolis has the appearance of a theater when the performance is over. The emperor is the light of the lamp. Since my return from Peterhof, I can scarcely recognize the city I left four days ago; but were the emperor to return this evening, everything tomorrow would recover its former interest. We should have to become Russians to understand the power of the sovereign’s eye; it is a very different thing from the lover’s eye spoken of by Lafontaine. Do you suppose that a young girl bestows a thought on her love affairs in the presence of the emperor? Do not deceive yourself; she is occupied with the idea of procuring some promotion for her brother. The old women, so soon as they breathe the air of the court, feel no longer their infirmities. They may have no family to provide for,—no matter, they play the courtier for the pure love of the game. They are servile without an object, just as others like play for its own sake. Thus, by an endeavor to shake off the burden of years, these wrinkled puppets lose all the dignity of age. We have no pity for busy intriguing decrepitude, because it is ridiculous. At the end of life, it is surely time to set about practicing the lesson which time is ever teaching, the grand art, namely, of giving up. Happy those who early learn to apply this lesson. To renounce, is the great proof of a powerful mind: to abdicate a position before it is lost,—this is the policy of old age.
It is, however, a policy little practiced at court, and at that of St. Petersburg less than at any other. Busy, restless old women are the plagues of the court of Russia. The sun of favor dazzles and blinds the ambitious, more especially those of the female sex; it prevents their discerning their true interest, which would be to save their pride by concealing the miseries of their hearts. On the contrary, the Russian courtiers glory in the abject meanness of their souls. The flatterer here shuffles his cards upon the table, and I am only astonished that he can win anything in a game so palpable to all the world. In the presence of the emperor the asthmatic breathes, the paralyzed becomes active, the gouty loses his pain, the lovers no longer burn, the young men no longer seek to amuse themselves, the men of mind no longer think. In lieu of all these human states, mental and physical, one combined sentiment of avarice and vanity animates life even to its latest sigh. These two passions are the breath of all courts; but here, they impart to their victims a military emulation, a disciplined rivalry, whose agitating influences extend throughout all the stages of society. To rise a step by more carefully dancing attendance,—such is the absorbing thought of this crowd, each member of which wears his badge of rank.
But then, what prostration of amazing strength, when the luminary in whose beam these flattering motes may be seen to move, is no longer above the horizon! It is like the evening dew quenching the dust.
With this continual stretch of all minds towards advancement, conversation is impossible. The eyes of the Russian courtiers are the sunflowers of the palace. They speak without interesting themselves in anything that is said, and their looks remain all the while fascinated by the sun of favor.
The absence of the emperor does not render conversation more free: he is still present to the mind. The thoughts, instead of the eyes, then become the sunflowers. In one word, the emperor is the god, the life, the passion, of this unhappy people. Imagine human existence reduced to the hope that an obeisance will procure the acknowledgment of a look! God has implanted too many passions in the human heart for the uses which are here made of it.
If I put myself in the place of the only man who has here the right to live free, I tremble for him. To have to play the part of Providence over sixty millions of souls is a dreadful office. The divinity has only the choice of two things: either to destroy his own power by showing himself a man, or to lead his votaries to the conquest of the world, in maintaining his character as a god.
It is thus, that, in Russia, the whole of life becomes nothing more than a school of ambition.
But by what road have the Russians reached this point of self-abnegation? What human means could produce such a political result? The cause of all is the chin: the chin is the galvanism, the apparent life, of souls and bodies here, —the passion which survives all other passions. I have shown its effects; it is therefore necessary that I should explain its nature.
The chin is a nation formed into a regiment; it is the military system applied to all classes of society, even to those which never go to war. In short, it is the division of the civil population into ranks, which correspond to ranks in the army. Since this institution has been established, a man who has never seen exercise may obtain the title of colonel.
Peter the Great—it is always to him that we must go back in order to understand the actual state of Russia—Peter the Great, troubled by certain national prejudices which had a resemblance to aristocracy, and which incommoded him in the execution of his plans, took it into his head one day to discover that the minds of his people were too independent; and, in order to remedy the evil, that great workman could devise nothing better in his profoundly deep, yet narrow penetration, than to divide the herd, that is to say, the people, into classes, entirely irrespective of name, birth, and family; so that the son of the highest noble in the empire may belong to an inferior class, whilst the son of one of the peasants may rise to the highest classes, if such be the goodwill of the emperor. Under this division of the people, every man takes his position according to the favor of the prince. Thus it is that Russia has become a regiment of sixty millions strong; and this is the chin,—the mightiest achievement of Peter the Great.
By its means, that prince freed himself in one day from the fetters of ages. The tyrant, when he undertook to regenerate his people, held sacred neither nature, history, character, nor life. Such sacrifices render great results easy. Peter knew better than anyone that, so long as an order of nobility exists in a community, the despotism of one man can be nothing more than a fiction. He therefore said, “To realize my government I must annihilate the remains of the feudal system; and the best way of doing this is to make caricatures of gentlemen,— to destroy the nobility by making it a creation of my own.” It has consequently been, if not destroyed, at least nullified by an institution that occupies its place, though it does not replace it. There are castes in this social system, in which to enter is to acquire hereditary nobility. Peter the Great, whom I should prefer to call Peter the Strong, forestalling our modern revolutions by more than half a century, thus crushed the spirit of feudalism. Less powerful under him than it was among us, it fell beneath the half civil, half military institution which constitutes modern Russia. Peter was endowed with a clear and yet a limited understanding. In rearing his system on so great a ruin, he knew not how to profit by the exorbitant powers he had engrossed, except in mimicking, more at his ease, the civilization of Europe.
With the means of action usurped by this prince, a creative genius would have worked much greater miracles. The Russian nation, ascending after all the others upon the great stage of the world, possessed the gift of imitation in lieu of genius, and had a carpenter’s apprentice for its prompter! Under a chief less fond of minutiae, less attached to details, that nation would have distinguished itself, more tardily, it is true, but more gloriously. Its power, corresponding with its own internal requirements, would have been useful to the world: it is now only astonishing.
The successors of this lawgiver in fustian have, during one hundred years, united, with the ambition of subjugating their neighbors, the weakness of copying them. In the present day, the Emperor Nicholas believes the time is arrived when Russia has no longer need of looking for models among foreigners in order to conquer and to rule the world. He is the first really Russian sovereign since Ivan IV. Peter I was a Russian in character, though not in politics; Nicholas is a German by nature, but a Russian by calculation and by necessity.
The tchinn consists of fourteen classes, each of which possesses its own peculiar privileges. The fourteenth is the lowest.
Placed immediately above the serfs, its sole advantage consists in its members having the title of freemen. Their freedom means that no one can strike them without rendering himself liable to prosecution. In return, every member of the class has to inscribe on his door his registered number, in order that no superior may be led to act under an ignorance that would render him liable to a penalty.
The fourteenth class is composed of persons in the lowest employ under the government, clerks of the post office, mailmen, and other subordinates charged with carrying or executing the orders of the heads of departments: it answers to the rank of petty officer in the Imperial army. The men who compose it are servants of the emperor, and serfs of no one: they possess a sense of their social dignity. But as to human dignity, it is not known in Russia.
All the other classes of the chin answer to as many military grades; the order that reigns throughout the entire state is analogous to the order of the army. The first class stands at the summit of the pyramid, and now consists of one single man—Marshal Paskevich, viceroy of Warsaw.
The will of the emperor is the sole means by which an individual is promoted in the chin; so that a man, rising step by step, to the highest rank in this artificial nation, may attain the first military dignity without having served in any army. The favor of promotion is never demanded, but always intrigued for.
There is here an immense quantity of fermenting material placed at the disposal of the head of the state. Medical men complain of their inability to communicate fever to certain patients in order to cure them of chronic maladies. The Czar Peter inoculated with the fever of ambition the whole body of his people, in order to render them more pliant, and to govern them according to his humor.
The English aristocracy is equally independent of birth; it depends upon two things, which may be acquired, office and estate. If, then, that aristocracy, moderated as it is, still imparts an enormous influence to the crown, how great must be the power of a crown whence all these things—the rank, and also the office and estate—are both de jure and de facto derived!
There results from such a social organization a fever of envy so violent, a stretch of mind towards ambition so constant, that the Russian people will become incapable of anything except the conquest of the world. I always return to this expression, because it is the only one that can explain the excessive sacrifices imposed here upon the individual by society. If the extreme of ambition can dry up the heart of a man, it may also stop the fountain of intellect, and so lead astray the judgment of a nation as to induce it to sacrifice its liberty for victory. Without this idea, avowed or disguised, and the influence of which many, perhaps, obey unconsciously, the history of Russia would seem to me an inexplicable enigma.
Here is suggested the grand question: is the idea of conquest that forms the secret aspiration of Russia, a lure, suited only to seduce for a period, more or less long, a rude and ignorant population, or is it one day to be realized?
This question besets me unceasingly, and, in spite of all my efforts, I cannot solve it. All that I can say is, that since I have been in Russia, I have formed a gloomy view of the future reserved for Europe. At the same time, my conscience obliges me to admit that my opinion is combated by wise and very experienced men. These men say that I exaggerate in my own mind the power of Russia; that every community has its prescribed destiny, and that the destiny of this community is to extend its conquests eastward, and then to become divided. Those minds that refuse to believe in the brilliant future of the Slavs, agree with me as regards the amiable and happy disposition of that people; they admit that they are endowed with an instinctive sentiment of the picturesque; they allow them a natural talent for music; and they conclude that these dispositions will enable them to cultivate the fine arts to a certain extent, but that they do not suffice to constitute the capacity for conquering and commanding which I attribute to them. They add, that “the Russians want scientific genius; that they have never shown any inventive power; that they have received from nature an indolent and superficial mind; that if they apply themselves, it is through fear rather than inclination: fear makes them apt to undertake and to draw the rough drafts of things, but it also prevents their proceeding far in any effort: genius is, in its nature, hardy as heroism; it lives on liberty; whilst fear and slavery have a reign and a sphere limited as mediocrity, of which they are the weapons. The Russians, though good soldiers, are bad seamen; in general, they are more resigned than reflective, more religious than philosophical; they have more instinct of obedience than will of their own; their thoughts lack a spring as their souls lack liberty. The task which is to them most difficult, and least natural, is seriously to occupy their minds and to fix their imaginations upon useful exercises. Ever children, they might, nevertheless, for a moment be conquerors in the realm of the sword; but they would never be so in that of thought: and a people who cannot teach anything to those they conquer, cannot long be the most powerful.
“Even physically, the French and English are more robust than the Russians; the latter are more agile than muscular, more savage than energetic, more cunning than enterprising; they possess passive courage, but they want daring and perseverance. The army, so remarkable for its discipline and its appearance on days of parade, is composed, with the exception of a few elite corps, of men well clad when they show themselves in public, but slovenly and dirty so long as they remain in their barracks. The cadaverous complexions of the soldiers betray hunger and disease: the two campaigns in Turkey have sufficiently demonstrated the weakness of the giant. Finally, a community that has not tasted liberty at its birth, and in which all the great political crises have been brought about by foreign influence, cannot, thus enervated in its germ, have a long existence in prospect.”
Such, it seems to me, are the strongest reasons opposed to my fears by the political optimists. From them, it is concluded that Russia, powerful at home, and formidable when she struggles with the Asiatic people, would break herself against Europe so soon as she should throw off the mask, and make war in maintenance of her arrogant diplomacy.
I have in no degree weakened the arguments of those who thus think. They accuse me of exaggerating the danger. At any rate, my opinions are shared by other minds, quite as sober as those of my adversaries, minds which do not cease to reproach these optimists with their blindness, in exhorting them to see the evil before it become irremediable.
I stand close by the colossus, and I find it difficult to persuade myself that the only object of this creation of Providence is to diminish the barbarism of Asia. It appears to me that it is chiefly destined to chastise the corrupt civilization of Europe, by the agency of a new invasion. The eternal tyranny of the East menaces us incessantly; and we shall have to bow to it, if our extravagances and iniquities render us worthy of the punishment.
The reader must not expect from me a complete account of Russia. I neglect to speak of many celebrated things, because they make little impression upon me. I wish only to describe what strikes or interests me. Nomenclatures and catalogs disgust me with travels, and there are plenty of them without my adding to the list.
Nothing can be seen here without ceremony and preparation. Russian hospitality is so edged round with formalities as to render life unpleasant to the most favored strangers. It is a civil pretext for restraining the movements of the traveler, and for limiting the freedom of his observations. Owing to the fastidious politeness exercised in doing the honors of the land, the observer can inspect nothing without a guide: never being alone, he has the greater difficulty in forming his judgment upon his own spontaneous impressions; and this is what is desired. To enter Russia, you must, with your passport, deposit also your right of opinion on the frontier. Would you see the curiosities of a palace, they give you a chamberlain, with whom you are obliged to view everything, and, indiscriminately, to admire all that he admires. Would you survey a camp,—an officer, sometimes a general officer, accompanies you: if it be a hospital, the head surgeon escorts you; if a fortress, the governor, in person, shows it, or rather politely conceals it from you; if a school, or any other public institution, the director or the inspector must be previously apprised of your visit, and you find him, under arms, prepared to brave your examination; if an edifice, the architect himself leads you over the whole building, and explains to you all that you do not care to know, in order to avoid informing you on points which you would take interest in knowing.
All this Oriental ceremony leads people to renounce seeing many things, were it only to avoid the trouble of soliciting admissions: this is the first advantage gained! but if curiosity is hardy enough to persist in importuning official personages, it is at least so carefully watched in its perquisitions, that they end in nothing. You must communicate officially with the heads of the so-called public establishments, and you obtain no other permission than that of expressing before the legitimate authorities the admiration which politeness, prudence, and a gratitude of which the Russians are very jealous, demand. They refuse you nothing, but they accompany you everywhere: politeness becomes a pretext for maintaining a watch over you.
In this manner they tyrannize over us while pretending to do us honor. Such is the fate of privileged travelers. As to those who are not privileged, they see nothing at all. The country is so organized that, without the immediate intervention of official persons, no stranger can move about agreeably, or even safely. In all this, will be recognized the manners and the policy of the East, disguised under European urbanity. Such alliance of the East and the West, the results of which are discoverable at every step, is the grand characteristic of the Russian Empire.
A semicivilization is always marked by formalities; refined civilization dispenses with them, just as perfect good breeding banishes affectation.
The Russians are still persuaded of the efficaciousness of falsehood; and such illusion on the part of a people so well acquainted with it, amazes me. It is not that they want quick perception, but in a land where the governors do not yet understand the advantages of liberty, even for themselves, the governed naturally shrink from the immediate inconveniences of truth. One is momentarily obliged to repeat that the people here, great and small, resemble the Greeks of the Lower Empire.
I am perhaps not sufficiently grateful for the attentions which these people affect to lavish upon strangers who are at all known; but I cannot help seeing below the surface, and I feel, in spite of myself, that all their eagerness demonstrates less benevolence than it betrays inquietude.
They wish, in accordance with the judicious precept of Monomachus, that the foreigner should leave their country contented. It is not that the real country cares what is said or thought of it; it is simply that certain influential families are possessed with the puerile desire of reviving the European reputation of Russia.
If I look further, I perceive under the veil with which they seek to cloak every object, a love of mystery for its own sake. Here, reserve is the order of the day, just as imprudence is in Paris. In Russia, secrecy presides over everything; a silence that is superfluous ensures the silence that is necessary; in short, the people are Chinese disguised; they do not like to avow their aversion to foreign observation, but if they dared to brave the reproach of barbarism, as the true Chinese do, access to Petersburg would be as difficult for us as is the access to Peking.
My reasons for wearying of Russian hospitality will be now seen. Of all species of constraint the most unendurable to me is that of which I have not the right to complain. The gratitude I feel for the attentions of which I am here the object, is like that of a soldier who is made to serve by compulsion. As a traveler who specially piques himself on his independence, I feel that I am passing under the yoke; they trouble themselves unceasingly to discipline my ideas, and every evening on returning to my quarters, I have to examine my thoughts to ascertain what rank they bear, and in what uniform they are clothed.
Having carefully avoided intimacy with many great lords, I have hitherto seen nothing thoroughly except the court. My wish has been to preserve my position as an independent and impartial judge; I have feared also to incur accusations of ingratitude or want of good faith; above all, I have feared lest I should render subjects of the country responsible for my particular opinions. But, at the court, I have passed in review all the characteristics of society.
There, an affectation of French manners, without any of the tone of French conversation, first struck me. It conceals a caustic, sarcastic, Russian spirit of ridicule. If I remained here any time, I would tear away the mask from these puppets, for I am weary of seeing them copy French grimaces. At my age, a man has nothing more to learn from the spectacle of affectation; truth alone can always interest, because it imparts knowledge; truth alone is always new.
I observed from the very first, that the Russians of the lower classes, who are suspicious by nature, detest foreigners through ignorance and national prejudice; I have observed since, that the Russians of the higher classes, who are equally suspicious, fear them because they believe them hostile: “the French and the English are persuaded of their superiority over all other people”; this idea suffices to make a Russian hate foreigners, on the same principle that, in France, the provincial distrusts the Parisian. A barbarian jealousy, an envy, puerile, but impossible to disarm, influences the greater number of the Russians in their intercourse with the men of other lands.
The Russian character is in many respects the very opposite of the German. On this account it is that the Russians say they resemble the French; but the analogy is only apparent: in the inner character there is a great difference. You may, if you choose, admire, in Russia, pomp and Oriental grandeur; you may study there Greek astuteness; but you must not seek for the Gallic naïveté, the sociability and the amiableness of the French when they are natural; though I admit that you will find still less of the good faith, the sound intelligence, and the cordial feeling of the German. In Russia, you may meet with kindness, because it is to be met with wherever there are men; but good nature is never seen.
Every Russian is born an imitator; he is, consequently, a great observer.
This talent of observation, which is proper to a people in its infancy, often degenerates into a mean system of espionage. It produces questions often importunate and impolite, and which appear intolerable, coming from people always impenetrable themselves, and whose answers are seldom more than evasions. One would say that friendship itself had here some private understanding with the police. How is it possible to be at ease with people so guarded and circumspect respecting all which concerns themselves, and so inquisitive about others? If they see you assume, in your intercourse with them, manners more natural than those which they show towards you, they fancy you their dupe. Beware then of letting them see you off your guard, beware of giving them your confidence: to men who are without feeling themselves, it is an amusement to observe the emotions of others, an amusement to which I, for one, do not like to administer. To observe our manner of life is the greatest pleasure of the Russians; if we allowed them, they would amuse themselves by striving to read our hearts, and analyze our sentiments, just as people study dramatic representations at the theater.
The extreme distrust of all classes here with whom you have any business, warns you to be circumspect; the fear that you inspire discloses the danger that you run.
The other day, at Peterhof, a caterer would not permit my servant to provide me with a miserable supper in my actor’s box, without being previously paid for it, although the shop of this prudent man is but two steps from the theater. What you put to your lips with one hand must be paid for with the other; if you were to give an order to a merchant without presenting him with money in advance, he would believe you were in jest, and would not undertake your business.
No one can leave Russia until he has forewarned all his creditors of his intention, that is to say, until he has announced his departure three times in the gazettes, at an interval of eight days between each publication.
This is strictly enforced, unless at least you pay the police to shorten the prescribed time, and even then, you must make the insertion once or twice. No one can obtain post-horses without a document from the authorities, certifying that he owes nothing.
So much precaution shows the bad faith that exists in the country; for as, hitherto, the Russians have had little personal intercourse with foreigners, they must have taken lessons in wariness from themselves alone.
Their experience is only such as their position with regard to each other can teach them. These men will not allow us to forget the saying of their favorite sovereign, Peter the Great, “It takes three Jews to cheat a Russian.”
Among the nobles, those who do possess good manners, possess them in perfection. The proof of this may be seen daily at Paris and elsewhere; but a drawing-room Russian who has not attained true politeness, that is to say, the facile expression of a real amenity of character, has a coarseness of mind, which is rendered doubly shocking by the false elegance of his language and manners. Such ill-bred and yet well-informed, well-dressed, clever, and self-confident Russians, tread in the steps of European elegance, without knowing that refinement of habits has no value except as it announces the existence of something better in the heart of its possessor. These apprentices of fashion, who confuse the appearance with the reality, are trained bears, the sight of which inclines me to regret the wild ones: they have not yet become polished men, and they are already spoiled savages.
As there is such a place as Siberia, and as it is appropriated to the uses that are so well known, I could wish it were peopled with fastidious young officers and capricious fair ladies: “You want passports for Paris, you shall have them for Tobolsk!”
In this manner I would recommend the emperor to check the rage for traveling which is making fearful progress in Russia, among imaginative junior lieutenants and fanciful women.
If, at the same time, he were to restore the seat of his empire to Moscow, he would repair the evil caused by Peter the Great, as far as one man may atone for the errors of generations.
I have visited several churches; that of the Trinity is beautiful, but naked, as is the interior of nearly all the Greek churches that I have seen. To make up for this, the exterior of the domes is clothed with azure and strewn with brilliant gold stars. The cathedral of Kazan, built by Alexander, is vast and beautiful; but its entrance is placed in a corner of the building, out of respect to the religious law which obliges the Greek altar to be invariably turned towards the East. The street not running in such direction as to allow of the rule being obeyed except by placing the church awry, this has been done; the men of taste have had the worst of it; the faithful have carried the day, and one of the most beautiful buildings in Russia has been spoiled by superstition.
The church of Smolny is the largest and most magnificent in Petersburg. It belongs to a religious community, a kind of chapter of women and girls founded by the Empress Anna. Enormous buildings form the residence of these ladies. The noble asylum, with its cloisters, is a city of itself, but its architecture would be more appropriate for a military establishment than a religious congregation: it is neither like a convent nor a palace: it is a barrack for women.
In Russia everything is under a military system; the discipline of the army reigns even in the chapter of the ladies of Smolny.
Near to that building is seen the little palace of the Taurida, built in a few weeks by Potemkin for Catherine. The palace is elegant, but forsaken; and in this country what is forsaken is soon destroyed; even the stones will not last, except on condition of their being cared for. A winter garden occupies one side of the building. It is a magnificent hot-house, empty at the present season, and I believe neglected at all seasons. Chandeliers and other signs of elegance, old, but without the majesty which time imprints on the true antique, prove that dances and suppers have once been given there. The last ball, I believe, which the Taurida has seen, or ever will see, took place at the marriage of the Grand Duchess Helena, wife of the Grand Duke Michael.
In a corner stands a Venus de Medicis, said to be a real antique. This model has, as is well known, been often reproduced by the Romans.
The statue is placed upon a pedestal, on which is this inscription in Russian:—
A PRESENT FROM POPE CLEMENT XI
TO THE EMPEROR PETER I
1717–1719.
A naked Venus, sent by a pope to a schismatic prince, is certainly a singular present. The czar, who had long meditated the project of eternizing schism, by usurping the last rights of the Russian church, must have smiled at such a testimony of the goodwill of the Bishop of Rome.
I have seen also the paintings of the Hermitage, but I cannot now describe them, as I leave tomorrow for Moscow. The Hermitage! is not this a name strangely applied to the villa of a sovereign, placed in the midst of his capital, close to the palace where he resides! A bridge thrown across a street leads from one residence to the other.
All the world knows that there are here some choice pieces, especially of the Dutch school; but I do not like paintings in Russia, any more than music in London, where the manner in which they listen to the most gifted performers, and the most sublime compositions, would disgust me with the art.
So near the pole the light is unfavorable for seeing pictures; no one can enjoy the admirable shading of the colors with eyes either weakened by snow, or dazzled by an oblique and continuous light. The hall of the Rembrandts is doubtless admirable; nevertheless, I prefer the works of that master which I have seen at Paris and elsewhere.
The Claude Lorrains, the Poussins, and some works of the Italian masters, especially of Mantegna, Giovanni Bellini, and Salvator Rosa, deserve to be mentioned.
The fault of the collection is, the great number of inferior pictures that must be forgotten in order to enjoy the masterpieces. In forming the gallery of the Hermitage, they have gathered together a profusion of names of the great masters; but this does not prevent their genuine productions from being rare. These ostentatious baptisms of very ordinary pictures weary the virtuoso, without charming him. In a collection of objects of art, the contiguity of beauty sets off the beautiful, and that of inferiority detracts from it. A judge who is wearied, is incapable of judging: ennui renders him unjust and severe.
If the Rembrandts and the Claude Lorrains of the Hermitage produce some effect, it is because they are placed in halls where there are no other pictures near them.
The collection is undoubtedly fine; but it appears lost in a city where there are so few that can enjoy it.
I leave tomorrow for Moscow.