Russia in 1839 -Empire of the Czar: A Journey Through Eternal Russia

54.SUBLIMITY OF FLAT SCENERY.

a satin cravat for his own — in short, it is, not to eat, btit to adorn himself and those whom he loves, that the fisherman of Travemunde struggles at the peril of his life against the billows and the ice. He would not face this needless danger if he were not something above the mere animal; for the wants of luxury spring from the nobler part of our nature., and can perhaps be subdued only by a sentiment still more noble.

This country pleases me in spite of its uniform aspect. The vegetation is luxuriant. On the fifth of July the verdure still appears fresh ; the seringas in the gardens scarcely begin to blossom. The sun in these sluggish climes* is like a great lord, rising late, and showing himself for only a short time. The influences of spring begin but to appear in the month of June, when the days are again about to decline. But if the summer be short, the days are long, and then there reigns a sort of sublime serenity throughout a landscape in which the horizontal sim is scarcely visible, and where the sky is, in itself, the chief object. In viewing this land, level as the sea whose flow it scarcely arrests — a land sheltered alike from the revolutions of nature, and from the troubles of society—we are touched with that kind of admiration which we feel in gazing on the face of a virgin. It is, by comparison, like the pure charm of the eclogue,

* The author, in the remarks which here follow, appears to be alluding rather to the general climate of the Baltic Sea, than to that of its southern coast, which he has been just describing, and to which some of his remarks will not apply. The latitude of Travemunde is very nearly the same as that of York. — Trans