The Alhambra and the Kremlin: The South and the North of Europe

by Samuel Irenæus Prime

It was dark when we returned to the city. A feeble attempt at illumination was going on in some of the public buildings. Dim lights were hung along some of the walls, and now and then a private house had an extra lamp or two in its windows! We inquired the cause of this miserable imitation of rejoicing, this abortive demonstration. The telegraph had brought the intelligence that to-day an unsuccessful attempt had been made to assassinate the Emperor Alexander. The illumination was thus very satisfactorily and exactly explained. The assassination was attempted by a Polander, and Poland would have madly rejoiced if it had been a success. I was at a loss to know whether the illumination signified joy at the Emperor’s escape from death or joy that his death had been so nearly accomplished. The melancholy exhibition of lights was just enough to suggest the two conflicting sentiments; and if the Russian soldiers and officials and dependants did their duty in hanging out the lamps, the inhabitants of Warsaw almost without exception will go to bed regretting that the shot of the assassin did not lodge in the heart of the Emperor whom they regard as their oppressor.

The streets of Warsaw are badly paved; riding in some of them is a protracted punishment. They are badly lighted, and it is not unusual for an ordinance to be in force requiring every one going out after dark to carry a light, under pain of arrest.

The first drunken person I saw in the streets of a city on the Continent of Europe was here. In the southern capitals, as of Spain and Italy, and even of France, there was gayety, but not intemperance. I had not been long in the city before I saw a woman lying on the pavement dead drunk. And nobody seemed to heed the spectacle, always and everywhere disgusting as the most shameful exhibition of fallen humanity. They have their favorite vices in the south of Europe, but this of drunkenness is not one of them. The use of wine, light wine, is not the cause of the sobriety of the people, though it is a fact beyond all denial that the wine-growing countries are the most temperate countries in the world. Yet they are not temperate because they have wine to drink. They would be just as temperate, and perhaps more so, if they had no wine. They are temperate because the climate does not invite them to the stimulus of alcohol. That’s all. It is not their virtue, nor their wine, that makes them so. They are not tempted to drink strong drink. As soon as we get into these northern countries we find the people making free use of distilled liquors and getting drunk: and intemperance is the prevailing vice of the clime, as licentiousness is the vice of the south of Europe. Climate is to be considered in all our studies of the habits of a people, and it must be allowed its proper effect when we are estimating the virtues and vices of our fellow-men. Climate is no excuse for wrong-doing, but it helps to know why people fall into one or another class of sins.

On Sunday, after searching in vain to find the English service which was said to be performed in an evangelical chapel by a clergyman of the Church of England, we went to the Lutheran Church. Its dome, rising from an open square, is a prominent object in the city. The building itself is a rotunda, and very large. The yard was filled with all sorts of carriages, wagons, droskies, and carts, with horses of various grades, by which the people had come in from the surrounding country. Some of these vehicles were the rudest kind of rustic wagons, and being covered with mud, and filled with straw as the only seat, having no springs, and long and narrow, indicated that the roads were bad, and that the people had encountered some difficulties in getting to the house of God. It is rare to see such a show of teams about a city church. It was all the more interesting in Warsaw, in the heart of the old kingdom of Poland.

I entered the porch, and it was crowded by people unable to get into the thronged church. Looking over their heads, I saw three successive galleries rising above each other; and, following the winding staircase in the vestibule, we reached the first, and, unable to get admission there, we mounted to the second, which was also full, and then to the third, where there was plenty of room. A singularly imposing spectacle was presented. The vast audience-room was a perfect circle; the three galleries sweeping completely around to the pulpit and organ behind it. The pews on the ground floor were occupied by a class of persons by their dress and manner more elevated in rank than the others. The pew doors were kept locked, until the sermon was to be commenced, when they were opened, and the crowd in the porch were permitted to take those not occupied by their owners. The first gallery pews were filled with plainer people. The second gallery had a set of worshippers whose coarse and humble attire indicated the harder worked and poorer people; but their dress was cleanly, and an air of comfort pervaded the whole assembly. The third gallery, into which I found access, was not seated, and the few persons in it stood at the front. It was a sublime spectacle, this crowded sanctuary, perhaps three thousand people, worshipping in a strange tongue, and all animated with the spirit of the hour. Behind the pulpit was a life-size statue of the Saviour on the cross. In front of it four immense candles, each four feet high, were burning. These candles and statue would lead us to suppose that the Lutheran was not wholly reformed, and that some relics of Romanism still lingered. The minister read a hymn, and around the organ a large choir of young men and boys, no females in it, stood up and sang,—the whole assembly, men and women,—with the organ, singing with a mighty noise. The sermon followed. The Polish is not one of the tongues with which I am familiar, and I shall not undertake to pass an opinion upon the eloquence or the orthodoxy of the discourse. But the clear rich tones of the preacher’s voice fell upon attentive ears, and the earnestness of his manner spoke well for him, though I could not understand a word.

At the door, as I came out, there was a row of mendicants, not asking alms, but willing and expecting to receive the charities of those who passed, and they were remembered by many. It was an inoffensive way of begging. Whoever gave was moved to do a good thing without being importuned.

The principal streets of the city had as many people in them, going to and from church, as you would see in New York, and so widely do the fashions of Paris prevail in the west and east and north, that the fashionable people of Warsaw, riding or walking, looked to be the same sort of people that one meets in cities with which he is more familiar.

I walked into the Jewish quarter of the town. Their Sabbath was yesterday; but to-day is one of their feast-days, and they were all out of doors, “a peculiar people” everywhere. The men wore long frock-coats reaching to the ground. Their dwellings were mostly mean and low; but we saw women going in and out of them dressed in rich silks, with splendid velvet mantillas, and they were doubtless as well off for this world as their people seem to be in all countries where they have a chance to live and trade. They have the best hospital in Warsaw. They retain their nationality, the expression of countenance, the curve of the nose, the faculty of making and keeping money wherever they go. And they are strangely hated in the Christian world since they crucified the Lord of Glory, as the serpent has been among men since he tempted the woman in Eden. Of the five or six millions of people in Poland, nearly one million are Jews. This is a large proportion, perhaps larger than any other country in Europe.

There are only about 300,000 Protestants in Poland, and when you learn that of the Russian or Greek church there are but five or six thousand, out of the five or six millions, you will see one grand reason why Poland will never be submissive to the rule of Russia. Their religions are at war. Poland is intensely bigoted in its Romanism. In the public square we see a statue of the Virgin Mary, with an iron railing around it; flowers in pots are kept before it, lamps by night are burning in its presence, tumblers of oil with lighted wicks in them, and an old woman to light them as often as the wind blows them out, and here the people are constantly coming and throwing themselves down on the stones and saying their prayers: one young man was so earnest in his devotions, that he prayed with a loud voice, regardless of those around him, as if he knew the statue was quite deaf and could hear no common prayer. In 1863, the frightened people rushed to this image, when they saw that the insurrection was not to be successful, and the Russian troops charged upon the praying multitude of men and women and scattered them on their knees.

Before one of the churches two crosses are erected, to commemorate the union of Poland and Russia. Tradition says that they also mark the scene of the strangest duel that was ever heard of,—two brothers being jealous of each other on account of their own sister’s love, fought here and slew each other. The province of “Little Russia” lies between Russia proper and Poland, and for the possession of it the two kingdoms have fought till it has sometimes been thought they would devour each other.