[134] Heimskringla, Saga of Olaf Tryggvison, Ch. VII.
[135] ib., Ch. XXI.
[136] Saga of Olaf the Holy, Ch. CXCI.
[137] ib., Ch. CXCVIII.
[138] Heimskringla, Saga of Harald the Hardredy, Ch. XVI.
[139] My friend, A. Rothay Reynolds, author of My Russian Year, has very kindly elicited for me the information that these relics no longer exist. Although the sagas give no hint of any difference of religious views between Russians and Norse (p. [233]), the bones of St. Henry were evidently insulted at St. Petersburg, where they might with more appropriateness have been shrined.
[140] The present building was erected about 1733 from designs by Tressini, an Italian architect. It is a rather commonplace Classic church whose details are extremely poor, though the interior has a certain impressiveness from the tall pillars supporting the roof, for the usual galleries are not there. Over the windows are cherubs. Over the eastern octagon rises a little onion dome. The tower that surmounts the western front is crowned by the gilded needle spire which soars, out of all proportion to the church, no less than 364 feet into the air, sometimes most impressively catching the light of the setting sun while all is in shadow around.
[141] This house contains the very distorting panes of glass that were the earliest to be made in Russia. The only large buildings in the city that Peter ever saw are part of the University and an adjacent palace of Menshikóf, now a school of cadets. Both are stucco and uninteresting; one bears the date 1710.
[142] So that it is rather curious that this building should be on the whole the most perfect reproduction of an Italian church in St. Petersburg. There is nothing Russian about it; just an ordinary cruciform domed Renaissance building, 255 feet long.
The other large monastery in St. Petersburg, Smolni, by the bend in the river, has buildings surrounding two huge courts which are made very pleasant by trees. The first, which is much the larger, has a covered cloister all round and a high dome in each corner. The centre of the western side is left open to expose to the street the chief façade of the church, which, like the Chantry at Winchester, stands detached in the centre of the court. It is a simple and impressive Italian Renaissance building, 245 feet long, with pilasters on two levels and in the centre a lofty tower, open to the top within. The interior is all white, some marble shafts giving relief to the eternal plaster. Designed by Rastrelli in 1734, the structure follows the type of his native country, except that five great onion domes mark as Russian the top of the tower. The faults of the building are glaring enough, but Fergusson seems rather severe in his remark: "It would be difficult to find in Europe anything so really bad as this."