A RAINY DAY IN A RUSSIAN CITY.
CHAPTER XXV.
RUSSIAN ART, CUSTOMS, AND MANNERS.
I HAD always supposed the Winter Palace of the Emperor was an edifice prepared with some special reference to the climate of this northern country. It is called the Winter Palace only because the Emperor has, as a matter of course, other palaces in the country in which to spend the summer. This is a vast structure on the very border of the river Neva, and in the midst of the city. It is built of brown stone, and makes some pretence to architectural elegance.
It, the palace, has five thousand inhabitants! I confess that those figures of speech seem to be very large, and it is a wonder how so many people can find employment in the service of one household. But the ways of royalty are not readily comprehended by mortals of common clay, and perhaps if we knew how many servants there are who have servants to wait upon them, how all these have families of their own, and these are all to be fed and lodged within these walls, we may begin to understand that one house may become a village, and quite populous also.
But if this number of dependents exceeds that of any other palace in Europe, as it probably does, it is safe to say that it is the most gorgeously decorated and furnished. Whatever extravagance the wit of man could devise to adorn a house has been lavished here, and the result is what might be expected,—a great display without that quiet elegance which distinguishes true from meretricious art. The Russian is between the Eastern and Western. The Russian is not a barbarous people, nor yet thoroughly civilized. On the borders of the two, he delights in the barbaric splendor of the Orientals, and has not yet reached the point where simplicity imparts the highest charm to elegance and grandeur. This accounts for the architecture of Russian palaces and temples. More emphatically it shows itself in the immense amount of gold which overlays every thing they wish to adorn. Even the domes of their churches blaze in gold, so that each one looks like a rising sun.
The crown jewels of Russia are the chief object of interest in the Winter Palace, for it is dreadfully tiresome to be led over miles of polished floors to look through room upon room, in endless mazes lost, seeing the same things substantially everywhere, and hearing the same story over and over again about the kings and queens that slept here and died there; though, as it was built since 1840, there is little or no historic interest about it. But the crown jewels are worth seeing. One loves to look at a diamond worth a million, though he cannot use it for a button. The Orloff diamond is as famous as the Koh-i-noor, and was, perhaps, at one time part of the same stone. Its history is romantic. It was once the eye of an idol in a temple in India, and being plucked out and stolen by a soldier, it passed through many hands till Count Orloff bought it and gave it to the Empress of Russia. It cost the Count or the Empress about three hundred thousand dollars. It weighs 194 carats, being eight carats more than the Koh-i-noor weighed when it came from India. The Orloff is the largest of the crown jewels in Europe. The imperial crown itself is radiant with the most magnificent gems, forty or more in number, and the crown of the Empress contains the most beautiful mass of diamonds known to be set together; a hundred of them at least. Some of the richest are precious stones presented to Russia by sovereigns in the East who would conciliate this mighty power. And what are they good for, when gathered into such a treasury? They are the playthings of royalty; baubles that delight the eye, pure carbon that is sold by the ton for a few dollars, but in the form of a diamond, it has a value scarcely to be reckoned, when they lie around in such heaps as we see them here.
The Hermitage is a palace near to the other, in which are the Russian galleries of art. If it was surprising to find in Madrid the most valuable collection of paintings in Europe, it was not less astonishing to find in Russia such magnificent pictures and so large a number of those that deserve admiration. For many years past the government has been spending large sums of money in the purchase of pictures. It has had and has its agents in Italy, and in every picture mart in Europe, ready to pay any price for “an old master.”
And it has shown its good sense in this, that when it cannot compass the original, it gets the best possible copy, and hangs it on its walls, with its story fairly told. This is the true way to cultivate the taste, and instruct the intellect of the nation in art. Catharine the Great built a pavilion on the end of the Winter Palace, to which she might retire from the cares of State, and here she drew around her the wits of the age. She called it the Hermitage, and that it might be a real refuge, into which royalty and its stiltedness could not intrude, she made a curious code of laws to govern the company that she here assembled.
The Hermitage is now the Royal Museum, and its grandeur and extent are unequalled. It is 515 feet long and 375 feet wide. The roof of this vast hall is supported by sixteen columns, each one a single block of granite from Finland, with Corinthian capitals of Carara marble. Successive stories on the same scale are filled with statues and pictures, and curious works of art, in which the genius and skill of all schools and nations are represented. Even to mention them would take up more of your time than would be proper for me to consume, and I let them pass unnoticed. I was even more interested in Peter the Great’s gallery, where his turning-lathes and other tools that he used with his own hands are preserved; and what is even more remarkable, the instruments that he manufactured for himself, from a telescope to a walking-stick. His iron staff that he carried about with him would not be credited as genuine, were it not that a wooden rod tells of his gigantic stature, and thus makes it quite probable that he could walk with a rod of iron.
Art-culture in Russia has advanced to a far higher point than we would expect to find. The painting and sculpture of Russia in the Paris exhibition astonished the outside world, and the galleries in the Hermitage devoted to native art are marvellously illustrated with splendid achievements of the chisel and pencil.