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

130 INCONGRUITY BETWEEN ТПЕ CLIMATE, ETC.

aspect of the country, the tint of the sky, the costume and manners of the inhabitants, as to suggest the idea of being captive heroes in a hostile land ; expatriated edifices, temples that might have fallen from the summit of the Grecian mountains into the marshes of Lapland ; — such were the objects that most struck me at the first sight of St. Petersburg. The magnificent temples of the pagan Gods, which so admirably crown, with their horizontal lines and severely chaste contours, the promontories of the Ionian shores, and whose marbles, gilded by the sunshine amid the rocks of the Peloponnesus, here become mere heaps of plaster and mortar; the incomparable ornaments of Grecian sculpture, the wonderful minutiæ of classic art, have all given place to an indescribably burlesque style of modern decoration, which substitution passes among the Finlanders as proof of a pure taste in the arts. Partially to imitate that winch is perfect is to spoil it. We should either strictly copy the model, or invent altogether. But the re-production of the monuments of Athens, however faithfully executed, would be lost in a miry plain, continually in danger of being overflowed by water whose level is nearly that of the land. Here nature suggests to man the very opposite of that which he has imagined. Instead of imitations of pagan temples, it demands bold projecting forms and perpendicular lines, in order to pierce the mists of a polar sky, and to break the monotonous surface of the moist grey steppes which form, farther than the eye or the imagination can stretch, the territory of Petersburg. I begin to understand why the Russians urge us with so much earnestness to