At Moscow and during the journey I had admired the exceeding beauty of the twilight in these northern latitudes but this night in St. Petersburgh it was magnificent. I cannot describe the peculiar shades of this northern twilight. It is as if the glare and brilliancy of the sun were softened by the mellowing influence of the moon, and the city, with its superb ranges of palaces, its statues, its bridges, and its clear and rapid river, seemed, under the reflection of that northern light, of a brilliant and almost unearthly beauty. I felt like rambling all night. Even though worn with three days' travel, it was with me as with a young lady at her first ball; the night was too short. I could not bear to throw it away in sleep. My companion was tough, and by no means sentimental, and the scene was familiar to him; but he told me that, even in his eyes, it never lost its interest. Moonlight is something, but this glorious twilight is a thing to enjoy and to remember; and, as the colonel remarked when we sat down in his apartment to a comfortable supper, it always gave him such an appetite. After supper I walked through a long corridor to my apartment, threw myself upon my bed and tried to sleep, but the mellow twilight poured through my window and reproached me with the base attempt. I was not restless, but I could not sleep; lest, however, the reader should find himself of a different humour, I will consider myself asleep the first night in St. Petersburgh.
CHAPTER VI.
Police Requisites.—The Russian Capital.—Equestrian Statue of Peter the Great.—The Alexandrine Column.—Architectural Wonders.—The Summer Islands.—A perilous Achievement.—Origin of St. Petersburgh.—Tombs of dead Monarchs.—Origin of the Russian Navy.
July Fourth. I had intended to pass this day at Moscow, and to commemorate it in Napoleon style by issuing a bulletin from the Kremlin, but it was a long time since I had heard from home. At Constantinople I had written to Paris, directing my letters to be sent to Petersburgh, and, notwithstanding my late hours the night before, I was at the postoffice before the door was open. I had never been so long without hearing from home, and my lips quivered when I asked for letters, my hand shook when I received them, and I hardly drew breath until I had finished the last postscript.
My next business was at the bureau of general police for a carte de sejour, without which no stranger can remain in St. Petersburgh. As usual, I was questioned as to my reasons for coming into Russia; age, time of sojourn, destination, &c.; and, satisfied that I had no intention of preaching democratic doctrines or subverting the government of the autocrat, I received permission to remain two weeks, which, according to direction, I gave to my landlord to be entered at the police-office of his district. As no stranger can stay in Petersburgh without permission, neither can he leave without it; and, to obtain this, he must advertise three times in the Government Gazette, stating his name, address, and intention of leaving the empire; and as the Gazette is only published twice a week, this formality occupies eight days. One of the objects of this is to apprize his creditors, and give them an opportunity of securing their debts; and few things show the barbarity and imperfect civilization of the Russians more clearly than this; making it utterly impossible for a gentleman to spend a winter in St. Petersburgh and go away without paying his landlord. This must prevent many a soaring spirit from wending its way hither, and keep the residents from being enlivened by the flight of those birds of passage which dazzle the eyes of the denizens of other cities. As there was no other way of getting out of the dominions of the Czar, I caused my name and intention to be advertised. It did not create much of a sensation; and though it was proclaimed in three different languages, no one except my landlord seemed to feel any interest in it. After all, to get in debt is the true way to make friends; a man's creditors always feel an interest in him; hope no misfortune may happen to him, and always wish him prosperity and success.
These formalities over, I turned to other things. Different from every other principal city I had visited, St. Petersburgh had no storied associations to interest the traveller. There is no Colosseum, as at Rome; no Acropolis, as at Athens; no Rialto, as at Venice; and no Kremlin, as at Moscow; nothing identified with the men and scenes hallowed in our eyes, and nothing that can touch the heart. It depends entirely upon itself for the interest it creates in the mind of the traveller.
St. Petersburgh is situated at the mouth of the Neva, at the eastern extremity of the Gulf of Finland. It is built partly on islands formed by the Neva, and partly on both sides of that river. But little more than a century ago, the ground now covered with stately palaces consisted of wild morasses and primeval forests, and a few huts tenanted by savage natives, who lived upon the fish of the sea. In seventeen hundred and three Peter the Great appeared as a captain of grenadiers under the orders of one of his own generals, on the wild and dreary banks of the Neva, drove the Swedes from their fortress at its mouth, cut down the forests on the rude islands of the river, and laid the foundations of a city which now surpasses in architectural magnificence every other in the world. I do not believe that Rome, when Adrian reared the mighty Colosseum, and the Palace of the Cæsars covered the Capitoline Hill, exhibited such a range of noble structures as now exists in the Admiralty Quarter. The Admiralty itself is the central point, on one side fronting the Neva, and on the other a large open square, and has a façade of marble, with ranges of columns, a quarter of a mile in length. A beautiful golden spire shoots up from the centre, towering above every other object, and seen from every part of the city glittering in the sun; and three principal streets, each two miles in length, radiate from this point. In front is a range of boulevards, ornamented with trees, and an open square, at one extremity of which stands the great church of St. Isaac, of marble, jasper, and porphyry, upon a foundation of granite; it has been once destroyed, and reared again with increased splendour, enormous columns of a single block of red granite already lifting their capitals in the air.
On the right of the façade, and near the Isaac Bridge, itself a magnificent structure, a thousand and fifty feet long and sixty feet wide, with two drawbridges, stands the well-known equestrian statue of Peter the Great. The huge block of granite forming the pedestal is fifteen hundred tons in weight. The height of the figure of the emperor is eleven feet, that of the horse seventeen feet, and the weight of the metal in the group nearly thirty-seven thousand pounds. Both the idea and the execution of this superb monument are regarded as masterpieces of genius. To immortalize the enterprise and personal courage with which that extraordinary man conquered all difficulties and converted a few fishermen's huts into palaces, Peter is represented on a fiery steed, rushing up a steep and precipitous rock to the very brink of a precipice; the horse rears with his fore feet in the air, and seems to be impatient of restraint, while the imperial rider, in an attitude of triumph, extends the hand of protection over his capital rising out of the waters. To aid the inspiration of the artist, a Russian officer, the boldest rider of his time, daily rode the wildest Arabian of Count Orloff's stud to the summit of a steep mound, where he halted him suddenly, with his forelegs raised pawing the air over the brink of the precipice. The monument is surrounded by an iron railing, and the pedestal bears the simple inscription, Petro Primo, Catharina Secunda, MDCCLXXXII.
On the other side of the square, and in front of the Winter Palace, raised within the last two years, and the most gigantic work of modern days, rivalling those magnificent monuments in the Old World whose ruins now startle the wondering traveller, and towering to the heavens, as if to proclaim that the days of architectural greatness are not gone by for ever, is the great Alexandrine Column, a single shaft of red granite, exclusive of pedestal and capital, eighty-four feet high. On the summit stands an angel holding a cross with the left hand, and pointing to heaven with the right. The pedestal contains the simple inscription, "To Alexander I. Grateful Russia."