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

THE MICHAEL PALACE?.151

streets opening between. Scarcely had I passed the new Michael Palace than I found myself before the old. It is a vast, square, and gloomy fabric, differing in all respects from the elegant modern edifice of the same name.

If the men are silent in Russia, the stones speak with a lamentable voice. I am not surprised that the Russians neglect their ancient architectural monuments ; these are witnesses of their history, which, for the most part, they are glad to forget. When I observed the black steps, the deep canals, the massive bridges, and the deserted porticos of this ill-omened palace, I asked its name ; and the answer called to my mind the catastrophe which placed Alexander on the throne, while all the circumstances of the dark scene which terminated the reign of Paul I. presented themselves to my imagination.

Xor was this all: by a kind of savage irony there had been placed before the principal gate of the sinister edifice, before the death, and by the order of the Emperor Paul, the equestrian statue of his brother Peter III., another victim whose memory the emperor delighted to honour in order to dishonour that of his mother. What tragedies are played in cold blood in this land, where ambition and even hate are calm in appearance! With the people of the south, their passion reconciles me, in some measure, to their cruelty; but the calculating reserve, and the coldness of the men of the north, adds to crime the varnish of hypocrisy. Snow is a mask. Here man appears gentle because he is impassible; but murder without hate inspires me with more horror than vindictive assassination. The more nearly I can recognise an и 4