But the streets are wide, and the walls painted white or light yellow; and from one street opens another, and another, and another—all wide, and white, and light yellow. And then, here and there, there are columned façades, and churches, and domes, and tapering spires—all white too, that are not gilded, or painted a sparkling green. And canals sweep away to the right and left almost at every turning, not straight and Dutch-like, but bending gracefully, and losing themselves among the houses. And there is one vast and glorious river, as wide as the Thames at London, and a hundred times more beautiful, which rolls through the whole; and, beyond it, from which ever side you look, you see a kindred mass of houses and palaces, white and yellow, and columned façades, and churches, and domes, and spires, gilded and green.
The left bank of this river is a wall of granite, with a parapet and trottoir of the same material, extending for several miles; and this forms one of the most magnificent promenades in Europe. The houses on either side look like palaces, for all are white, and many have columns; and there are also absolute de facto palaces; for instance, the Admiralty, the Winter Palace, and the Marble Palace, on one side, and the Academy of Arts, on the other. The water in the middle is stirring with boats, leaping and sweeping through the stream, with lofty, old-fashioned sterns, painted and gilded within and without.
Among the streets, there is one averaging the width of Oxford Street in London, sometimes less, sometimes a little more. It is lined with trees, and shops with painted shutters, and churches of half a dozen different creeds. Its shops, indeed, are not so splendid as ours, nor are their windows larger than those of private houses: but the walls are white and clean, sometimes columned, sometimes pillastered, sometimes basso-relievoed: in fact, if you can imagine such a thing as a street of gin-palaces just after the painting season—and that is a bold word—you may form an idea scarcely exaggerated of the Nevski Prospekt.
But no analogy taken from London can convey an idea of the—grandeur, I may venture to say, presented by the vistas opening from the main street. Here there are no lanes, no alleys, no impasses, no nestling-places constructed of filth and rubbish for the poor. These lateral streets are all parts of the main street, only diverging at right angles. The houses are the same in form and color; they appear to be inhabited by the same classes of society; and the view is terminated, ever and anon, by domes and spires. The whole, in short, is one splendid picture, various in its forms, but consistent in its character.
Such were my first impressions—thus thrown down at random, without waiting to look for words, and hardly caring about ideas,—the first sudden impressions flashed upon my mind by the physical aspect of St. Petersburg.
I have said in a former volume of this work, that I have the custom—like other idlers, I suppose—of wandering about during the first day of my visit to a foreign city, without apparent aim or purpose; without knowing, or desiring to know, the geography of the place; and without asking a single question. Now this is precisely the sort of view which should be taken of the new city of the Tsars, by one who prefers the poetry of life to its dull and hackneyed prose. St. Petersburg is a picture rather than a reality—grand, beautiful, and noble, at a little distance, but nothing more than a surface of paint and varnish when you look closer. Or, rather, to amend the comparison, it is like the scene of a theatre, which you must not by any means look behind, if you would not destroy the illusion.
It will be said, that such is the case with all cities, with all objects that derive their existence from the puny sons of men: but this is one of those misnamed truisms which are considered worthy of all acceptation for no other reason than that they come from the tongue, or through a neighboring organ, with the twang of religion or morality.
London does not lose but gain by inspection; although on inspection it is found to be an enormous heap of dirty, paltry, miserable brick houses, which, but for the constant repairs of the inhabitants, would in a few years become a mass of such pitiful ruins as the owls themselves would disdain to inhabit. Those narrow, winding, dingy streets—those endless lines of brick boxes, without taste, without beauty, without dignity, without any thing that belongs to architecture, inspire us with growing wonder and admiration. The genius, the industry, the commerce, of a whole continent seem concentrated in this single spot; and the effect is uninterrupted by any of the lighter arts that serve as the mere ornaments and amusements of life. An earnestness of purpose is the predominating character of the scene—a force of determination which seizes, and fixes, and grapples with a single specific object, to the exclusion of every other. The pursuit of wealth acquires a character of sublimity as we gaze; and Mammon rises in majesty from the very deformity of the stupendous temple of common-place in which he is worshipped.
Venice does not lose but gain by inspection; although on inspection it is found to be but the outlines of a great city, filled up with meanness, and dirt, and famine. We enter her ruined palaces with a catching of the breath, and a trembling of the heart; and when we see her inhabitants crouching in rags and hunger in their marble halls, we do but breathe the harder, and tremble the more. The effect is increased by the contrast; for Venice is a tale of the past, a city of the dead. The Rialto is still crowded with the shapes of history and romance; the Giant's Steps still echo to the ducal tread; and mingling with the slaves and wantons who meet on the Sunday evenings to laugh at the rattle of their chains in the Piazza di San Marco, we see gliding, scornful and sad, the merchant-kings of the Adriatic.
St. Petersburg, on the other band, has no moral character to give dignity to common-place, or haunt tombs and ruins like a spirit. It is a city of imitation, constructed, in our own day, on what were thought to be the best models; and hence the severity with which its public buildings have been criticised by all travellers, except those who dote upon gilding and green paint, and are enthusiasts in plaster and whitewash. As a picture of a city, notwithstanding, superficially viewed—an idea of a great congregating place of the human kind, without reference to national character, or history, or individuality of any kind—St. Petersburg, in my opinion, is absolutely unrivalled.