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

SCENERY OF THE NORTH.63

deck while my fellow-passengers are sleeping. As I lay down my pen to look around, I perceive already, towards the N".N.E. the first streaks of morning light. Yesterday is not ended, yet to-morrow is begun. The sublimity of this polar scene I feel as a compensation for all the toils of the journey. In these regions of the globe the day is one continued morning, which never performs the promises of its birth. This singular twilight precedes neither day nor night; for the things which bear those names in southern countries have in reality no existence here. The magic effects of colour, the religious dimness of night, are forgotten ; nature appears no longer a painting, but a sketch; and it is difficult to preserve belief in the wonders of those blest climates where the sun reigns in his full power.

The sun of the north is an alabaster lamp, hung breast-high, and revolving between heaven and earth. This lamp, burning (for weeks and months) without interruption, sheds its melancholy rays over a vault which it scarcely lightens; nothing is bright, but all things are visible. The face of nature, everywhere equally illuminated by this pale light, resembles that of a poet rapt in vision and hoary with years. It is Ossian who remembers his loves no more, and who listens only to the voices of the tombs.

The aspect of these unvaried surfaces — of distances without objects, horizons undefined, and lines half effaced — all this confusion of form and colouring, throws me into a gentle reverie, the peaceful awakening from which is as like death as life. The soid resembles the scene, and rests suspended between day and night — between waking and sleep-