The festival of Epiphany is celebrated by the blessing of the waters of the Neva, followed by a grand military review on the Admiralty Square. We were invited to witness both ceremonies from the windows of the Winter Palace, where, through the kindness of Prince Dolgorouki, we obtained favorable points of view. As the ceremonies last two or three hours, an elegant breakfast was served to the guests in the Moorish Hall. The blessing of the Neva is a religious festival, with the accompaniment of tapers, incense, and chanting choirs, and we could only see that the Emperor performed his part uncloaked and bare-headed in the freezing air, finishing by descending the steps of an improvised chapel and well, (the building answered both purposes,) and drinking the water from a hole in the ice. Far and wide over the frozen surface similar holes were cut, where, during the remainder of the day, priests officiated, and thousands of the common people were baptized by immersion. As they generally came out covered with ice, warm booths were provided for them on the banks, where they thawed themselves out, rejoicing that they would now escape sickness or misfortune for a year to come.
The review requires a practised military pen to do it justice, and I fear I must give up the attempt. It was a "small review," only about twenty-five thousand troops being under arms. In the uniformity of size and build of the men, exactness of equipment, and precision of movement, it would be difficult to imagine anything more perfect. All sense of the individual soldier was lost in the grand sweep and wheel and march of the columns. The Circassian chiefs, in their steel skull-caps and shirts of chain mail, seemed to have ridden into their places direct from the Crusades. The Cossacks of the Don, the Ukraine, and the Ural managed their little brown or black horses (each regiment having its own color) so wonderfully, that, as we looked down upon them, each line resembled a giant caterpillar, moving sidewise with its thousand legs creeping as one. These novel and picturesque elements constituted the principal charm of the spectacle.
The passing away of winter was signalized by an increase of daylight rather than a decrease of cold. The rivers were still locked, the ice-hills frequented, the landscape dull and dead; but by the beginning of February we could detect signs of the returning sun. When the sky was clear, (a thing of rarest occurrence,) there was white light at noonday, instead of the mournful yellow or orange gloom of the previous two months. After the change had fairly set in, it proceeded more and more rapidly, until our sunshine was increased at the rate of seven or eight minutes per day. When the vernal equinox came, and we could sit down to dinner at sunset, the spell of death seemed to be at last broken. The fashionable drive, of an afternoon, changed from the Nevskoi Prospekt to the Palace Quay on the Neva; the Summer Garden was cleared of snow, and its statues one by one unboxed; in fine days we could walk there, and there coax back the faded color to a child's face. There, too, walked Alexander II., one of the crowd, leading his little daughter by the hand; and thither, in a plain little calèche, drove the Empress, with her youngest baby on her lap.
But when the first ten days of April had passed and there was still no sign of spring, we began to grow impatient. How often I watched the hedges around the Michaïloffsky Palace, knowing that the buds would there first swell! How we longed for a shimmer of green under the brown grass, an alder tassel, a flush of yellow on the willow wands, a sight of rushing green water! One day, a week or so later, we were engaged to dine on Vassili Ostrow. I had been busily occupied until late in the afternoon, and when we drove out upon the square, I glanced, as usual, towards Peter the Great. Lo! behind him flashed and glittered the free, the rejoicing Neva! Here and there floated a cake of sullen ice, but the great river had bared his breast to the sun, which welcomed him after six months of absence. The upper pontoon-bridges were already spanned and crowded with travel, but the lower one, carried away before it could be secured, had been borne down by the stream and jammed against and under the solid granite and iron of the Nikolai Bridge. There was a terrible crowd and confusion at the latter place; all travel was stopped, and we could get neither forward nor backward. Presently, however, the Emperor appeared upon the scene; order was the instant result; the slow officials worked with a will; and we finally reached our host's residence half an hour behind the time. As we returned, at night, there was twilight along the northern sky, and the stars sparkled on the crystal bosom of the river.
This was the snapping of winter's toughest fetter, but it was not yet spring. Before I could detect any sign of returning life in Nature, May had come. Then, little by little, the twigs in the marshy thickets began to show yellow and purple and brown, the lilac-buds to swell, and some blades of fresh grass to peep forth in sheltered places. This, although we had sixteen hours of sunshine, with an evening twilight which shifted into dusky dawn under the North Star! I think it was on the 13th of May that I first realized that the season had changed, and for the last time saw the noble-hearted Ruler who is the central figure of these memories. The People's Festival—a sort of Russian May-day—took place at Catharinenhof, a park and palace of the famous Empress, near the shore of the Finnish Gulf. The festival, that year, had an unusual significance. On the 3d of March the edict of Emancipation was finally consummated, and twenty-two millions of serfs became forever free: the Polish troubles and the menace of the Western powers had consolidated the restless nobles, the patient people, and the plotting revolutionists, the orthodox and dissenting sects, into one great national party, resolved to support the Emperor and maintain the integrity of the Russian territory: and thus the nation was marvellously strengthened by the very blow intended to cripple it.
At least a hundred thousand of the common people (possibly, twice that number) were gathered together in the park of Catharinenhof. There were booths, shows, flying-horses, refreshment saloons, jugglers, circuses, balloons, and exhibitions of all kinds: the sky was fair, the turf green and elastic, and the swelling birch-buds scented the air. I wandered about for hours, watching the lazy, contented people, as they leaped and ran, rolled on the grass, pulled off their big boots and aired their naked legs, or laughed and sang in jolly chorus. About three in the afternoon there was a movement in the main avenue of the park. Hundreds of young mujiks appeared, running at full speed, shouting out, tossing their caps high in the air, and giving their long blonde locks to the wind. Instantly the crowd collected on each side, many springing like cats into the trees; booths and shows were deserted, and an immense multitude hedged the avenue. Behind the leaping, shouting, cap-tossing avant-garde came the Emperor, with three sons and a dozen generals, on horseback, cantering lightly. One cheer went up from scores of thousands; hats darkened the air; eyes blazing with filial veneration followed the stately figure of the monarch, as he passed by, gratefully smiling and greeting on either hand. I stood among the people and watched their faces. I saw the phlegmatic Slavonic features transformed with a sudden and powerful expression of love, of devotion, of gratitude, and then I knew that the throne of Alexander II. rested on a better basis than tradition or force. I saw therein another side of this shrewd, cunning, patient, and childlike race, whom no other European race yet understands and appreciates,—a race yet in the germ, but with qualities out of which a people, in the best sense of the word, may be developed.
The month of May was dark, rainy, and cold; and when I left St. Petersburg, at its close, everybody said that a few days would bring the summer. The leaves were opening, almost visibly, from hour to hour. Winter was really over, and summer was just at the door; but I found, upon reflection, that I had not had the slightest experience of spring.