The triumphs of perseverance and enterprise, recorded as examples for the young

by Thomas Cooper

Dr. Granville, in his “Travels to St. Petersburg,” describing the public promenade in front of the Admiralty in that city, says, “Here the colossal equestrian statue of the founder of this magnificent city, placed on a granite rock, seems to command the undivided attention of the stranger. On approaching the rock, the simple inscription fixed on it in bronze letters, ‘Petro Primo, Catherina Secunda, MDCCLXXXII,’ meets the eye. The same inscription in the Russian language appears on the opposite side. The area is inclosed within a handsome railing placed between granite pillars. The idea of Falconet, the French architect, commissioned to erect an equestrian statue to the extraordinary man at whose command a few scattered huts of fishermen were converted into palaces, was to represent the hero as conquering, by enterprise and personal courage, difficulties almost insurmountable. This the artist imagined might be properly represented by placing Peter on a fiery steed which he is supposed to have taught by skill, management, and perseverance, to rush up a steep and precipitous rock, to the very brink of the precipice, over which the animal and the imperial rider pause, without fear, and in an attitude of triumph. The horse rears with his fore-feet in the air, and seems to be impatient of restraint, while the sovereign, turned towards the island, surveys with calm and serene countenance his capital rising out of the waters, over which he extends the hand of protection. The bold manner in which the group has been made to rest on the hind legs of the horse only, is not more surprising than the skill with which advantage is taken of the allegorical figure of the serpent of envy spurned by the horse, to assist in upholding so gigantic a mass. This monument of bronze is said to have been cast at a single jet. The head was modelled by Mademoiselle Calot, a female artist of great merit, a contemporary of Falconet, and is admitted to be a strong resemblance of Peter the Great. The height of the figure of the emperor is eleven feet; that of the horse seventeen feet. The bronze is in the thinnest parts the fourth of an inch only, and one inch in the thickest part; the general weight of metal in the group is equal to 36,636 English pounds. I heard a venerable Russian nobleman, who was living at St. Petersburg when this monument was in progress, relate that as soon as the artist had formed his conception of the design he communicated it to the empress, together with the impossibility of representing to nature so striking a position of man and animal, without having before his eyes a horse and rider in the attitude he had devised. General Melissino, an officer having the reputation of being the most expert as well as boldest rider of the day, to whom the difficulties of the architect were made known, offered to ride daily one of Count Alexis Orloff’s best Arabians out of that nobleman’s stud, to the summit of a steep artificial mound formed for the purpose, accustoming the horse to gallop up to it and to halt suddenly, with his fore-legs raised, pawing the air over the brink of a precipice. This dangerous experiment was carried into effect by the general for some days, in the presence of several spectators, and of Falconet, who sketched the various movements and parts of the groups from day to day, and was thus enabled to produce perhaps the finest—certainly the most correct—statue of the kind in Europe.”

It thus appears that enterprise characterised not only Lascary, the engineer, but Falconet, the artist, Melissino, the officer who undertook to depict the living model, and in brief, the entire deed from beginning to end. How strikingly might the parallel be continued with Peter himself! The young reader will find the history of the Czar, which he can peruse in various forms, pregnant with lessons of enterprise to a degree beyond that of any modern man, with the exception of Napoleon. In both their histories, however, we are compelled to remind him, there is much to censure; and in the history of the latter especially, much more to censure than to praise.

If our own country be viewed with strictness, it will be found that we have no great work of ornamental enterprise simply, at all comparable to the one just sketched. Russia, nevertheless, can bear no comparison with England in point of useful enterprises; she has nothing, for instance, like the Eddystone light-house or the Plymouth breakwater. A few brief sentences will serve to sketch the former.

The first light-house built on the Eddystone rock was constructed by Winstanley, in 1696 to 1700. While some repairs were making under his inspection, the building was blown down in a terrible hurricane, during the night of the 26th of November, 1703, and he and his workmen perished. Not a vestige, except some iron stanchions and a chain, was left behind.

Rudyerd, in 1706, erected another, which was destroyed by fire, in 1755; it was entirely of wood, except the five lower courses of stone, on the rock.

The present edifice is a circular tower of stone sweeping up with a gentle curve from the base, and gradually diminishing to the top, somewhat similar to the swelling of the trunk of a tree. The tower is furnished with a door and windows, and a staircase and ladders for ascending to the lantern, through the apartments of those who keep watch. Mr. Smeaton undertook the arduous task of constructing the present light-house, in the spring of 1756, and completed it in about three years. In order to form his foundation, Smeaton accurately measured the very irregular surface of the rock, and made a model of it. Granite partially worked, forms the foundation; every outside piece is grafted into the rock, to sustain more effectually the action of the sea; a border of three inches effects also a kind of socket for the foundation. Each course of masonry is dovetailed together, in the most skilful manner, and each layer of masonry is strongly cemented together and connected by oaken plugs, and the whole strongly cramped. The general weight of the stones employed is a ton, and some few are two tons. In the solid work the centre stones were fixed first, and all the courses were fitted on a platform and accurately adjusted before they were removed to the rock.

The base of the tower is about twenty-six feet nine inches in diameter; the diameter at the top of the solid masonry is about nineteen feet nine inches; and the height of the solid masonry is thirteen feet from the foundation. The height of the tower from the centre of the base is sixty-one feet seven inches; the lantern, the base of which is stone, is twenty-four feet. The whole height is eighty-five feet seven inches; and the Eddystone light-house has not only the merit of utility, but also of beauty, strength, and originality, and is itself sufficient to immortalise the name of the architect.

The Breakwater thrown across Plymouth Sound is another of the great useful enterprises of Britain. Mr. Rennie was the distinguished engineer appointed to perform this work. He knew that to resist the force of the heavy sea which rolls into the Sound from the south and south-west, a very considerable slope would be necessary for the breakwater, and accordingly, it is so constructed. He also perceived that great masses of stones from one to ten tons each would be required.