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

302 CHURCH ARCHITECTURE IN RUSSIA.

with the plan of the streets in Petersburg: there has been evidently no connection between the architect and the inhabitant. Peter the Great built the city against the Swedes rather than for the Russians ; but the natural character of its popiúation betrays itself, notwithstanding their respect for the caprices of their master; and it is to this inyohmtary disobedience that Russia owes its stamp of originality. Nothing can efface the primitive character of its people; and this triumph of innate faculties over an ill-directed education is an interesting spectacle to every traveller capable of appreciating it.

Happily for the painter and the poet, the Russians possess an essentially religious sentiment. Their churches, at least, are their own. The unchangeable form of these pious edifices is a part of their religion, and superstition defends her sacred fortresses against the mania for mathematical figures in freestone, oblongs, planes and straight lines ; in short, against the military, rather than classic architecture, which imparts to each of the cities of this land the air of a camp destined to remain for a few weeks during the performance of some grand manoeuvres.

The genius of a nomade race is equally recognised in the various vehicles and harness, the carriages and the drowska already described. The latter is so small as quite to disappear under those who occupy it. Its singular appearance, as it passes rapidly between long straight lines of very low houses, over which are seen the steeples of a multitude of churches and other buildings, may be easily imagined.

These gilded or painted spires break the monotonous line of roofs, and rise in the air with shafts so tapered,