I descended to the Moskwa, and, from under the fine quay, examined the massive white walls, the towers and the gate forts which surround the Czar's palace, and a whole town of churches of the strangest structure. Tonight the city gives a grand entertainment, from which I shall absent myself to write. One receives so many impressions that it is impossible to digest them all and collect one's thoughts.
I am trying to understand this architecture. In Culm, in West Prussia, I saw last year in the marketplace such a curious City Hall that I could not reconcile it in my mind; now I understand that it is Moscovite architecture. The Knights of the Sword of Liefland were in intimate connection with the German Knights in Prussia, and one of their architects may have repeated on the Vistula what he had seen on the Moskwa.
The fountains here remind one of the East; little, round covered houses on the principal squares, which are constantly surrounded by men and beasts supplying themselves with water. At first they seem rude and awkward when compared with the fine style, the rich sculpture, the golden railings, and the perforated marble walls of the Tschesmas of Constantinople. There are here, as in the mosques, swarms of doves that are so bold that they scarcely leave room for carriages and foot-passengers. They are often chased out of the shops like a brood of chickens, and they go everywhere for food. No one does them any harm, and the Russians think it a sin to eat them. The Gostinoy Dwor (the merchants' court) is especially a repetition of the Oriental Tschurchi. One booth is next to the other, and the narrow passages that separate them are covered; therefore the same dim light and the same smell of leather and spices exist as at the Missir, or Egyptian market, in Constantinople. The wares here, however, are mostly European, and cheaper at home, so that we are not much tempted to buy.
If I had my choice, I would rather live in Moscow than in St.
Petersburg.
Peter the Great found an island without any seacoast. He could look upon the Black Sea or the Baltic as a communication with the civilized world; but one or the other must first be conquered. The hot-headed King of Sweden pressed him to a Northern war, and, besides, the Southern Sea was inhabited by barbarians. His original intention, it is said, was to build his new capital on the Pontus, and that he even had selected the spot. The one coast, indeed, is not much farther from the centre of the empire than the other.
How would it have been had he built his St. Petersburg on the beautiful harbor of Sebastopol, close to the paradisiac heights of the Tschadyr Dagh, where the grape grows wild and everything flourishes in the open air that is forced through a greenhouse on the Neva; where no floods threaten destruction; where the navy is not frozen fast during seven months of the year; and where steam power makes an easier communication with the most beautiful countries of Europe than the Gulf of Finland does?
What a city would St. Petersburg have been, did her wide streets extend to Balaklava and did the Winter Palace face the deep blue mirror of the Black Sea; if the Isaac Church stood at the height of Malakoff; if Aluschta and Orianda were the Peterhof and Gatschina[43] of the Imperial family!
THE PEACE MOVEMENT
TRANSLATED BY EDMUND VON MACH, PH.D.
[Professor Bluntschli had sent the manual of the Institute of
International Law to Count Moltke, and expressed the hope, in a letter
dated November 19, 1880, that it would meet with his approval. Count
Moltke replied as follows:]