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

216 FALSE TASTE OF THE RUSSIANS IN THE ARTS.

sufficiently consult her, and therefore she is constantly revenging herself by doing them mischief. Masterpieces have only been produced by men who have listened to, and felt the power of, nature. Nature is the conception of God; art is the relation between the conceptions of man and those of the power which has created, and which perpetuates the world. The artist repeats on earth what he has heard in heaven; he is but the translator of the works of the Deity ; those who woiúd create by their own models produce only monsters.

Among the ancients the architects reared their structures in steep and confined spots, where the picturesque character of the site added to the effect of the works of man. The Russians, who flatter themselves they are reproducing the wonders of antiquity, and who, in reality, are only caricaturing them, raise their soi-dìsant Grecian and Roman structures in immense fields, where they are almost lost to the eye. The architecture proper for such a land would not be the colonnade of the Parthenon, but the tower of Pekin. It is for man to build mountains, when nature has not undulated the surface of the earth; but the Russians have raised their porticoes and pediments without thinking of this, and without recollecting that on a flat and naked expanse it is difficult to distinguish edifices with so small an elevation. We still recognise the steppes of Asia in cities where they have pretended to revive the Roman Forum.* Muscovy is more nearly allied to Asia

* These observations apply only to the buildings constructed from the time of Peter I. The Russians of the middle ages, ■who built the Kremlin, better understood the architecture which belonged to their land and their genius.