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

EFFECT OF MUSIC IN RUSSIA.201

thus detached, drawn by one horse, guided by men who stand upright on the axle, balancing themselves with a savage grace, and managing their half-broken steeds with a dexterity I have seen nowhere but in Russia. They remind me of the charioteers of the Byzantian circus; their shirts form a Greek tunic that is truly antique. As the Russian female peasants are the only women on earth who make themselves a waist above the bosom, so are their male relatives the only men I have ever seen who wear their shirts over their pantaloons.

In wandering at night about the fair, I was struck with the brilliancy of the eating-booths, the little theatres, the taverns, and the coffee-houses. But from the midst of so much light there rose no sound save a dull suppressed murmur; and the contrast formed by the illumination of the place, and the taciturnity of the people, gave the idea of magic. I could have believed the human beings had been touched by the wand of an enchanter. The men of Asia continue o·rave and serious, even in their diversions : and the Russians are Asiatics, drilled, but not civilised.

I am never tired of hearing their popular songs. The value of music is doubled in a place where a hundred different communities are drawn together by their common interests, though divided by their language and religion. When speech serves only to separate meji, they sing to understand each other. Music is the antidote of sophistry ; whence the ever-increasing vogue of this art in Europe. There is, in the pieces executed by the mugics of the Volga, an extraordinary complexity, evolving effects of harmony which, notwithstanding, or perhaps owing to к 5