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

292MADEMOISELLE TAGLIOXI.

admirable : it is unquestionably the best of all the modern paintings in Petersburg ; though, indeed, it is a copy of an ancient chef-d'oeuvre, the School of Athens, and is full as large as the original. When an individual knows how thus to reproduce one, perhaps, of Raphael's most inimitable works after his Madonnas, he ought to return to Rome, there to learn to do something better than "The Last Day of Pompeii" and " The Assumption of the Virgin."*

The vicinity of the Pole is unfavourable to the arts, with the exception of poetry, which' can sometimes dispense with all material except the human soul; it is then the volcano under the ice. But for the inhabitants of these dreadful climates, music, painting, the dance — all those pleasures of sensation which are partially independent of mind — lose their charms in losing their organs. What are Rembrandt, Corregio, Michael Angelo, and Raphael, in a dark room ? The north has doubtless its own kind of beauty, but it is still a palace without light : all the attractive train of youth, with their pastimes, their smiles, their graces, and their dances, confine themselves to those blest regions where the rays of the sun, not content with gliding over the surface of the earth, warm and fertilise its bosom by piercing it from on high.

In Russia a double gloom pervades every thing — the fear of power and the want of sun. The national dances resemble rounds led by shadows under the gleam of a twilight which never ends. Ma-

* M. Bi·ulow has copied several of Raphael's works; but I was especially struck with the beauty of the one here mentioned.