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

GENERAL VIEW OF PETERSBURG.303

that the eye can scarcely distinguish the point where their gilding is lost in the mists of a polar sky. They are of Asiatic origin, and appear to be of a height which, for their diameter, is truly extraordinary. It is impossible to conceive how they maintain themselves in air.

Let the reader picture to himself an assemblage of domes, to which are attached the four belfries necessary to constitute a church among the modern Greeks; a multitude of cupolas covered with gold, silver, or azure ; palace roofs of emerald green, or ultra-marine; srpiares ornamented with bronze statues.: an immense river bordering and serving as a mirror to the picture — let him add to it the bridge of boats thrown across the river's broadest part — the citadel, where sleep in their unornamented tombs Peter the Great and his family*, and an island covered with edifices built after the model of Grecian temples — let him embrace in one view the whole of these varied parts, and he will understand how Petersburg may be infinitely picturesque, notwithstanding the bad taste of its borrowed architecture, the marshes which surround it, the unbroken flatness of its site, and the pale dimness of its finest summer days.

Let me not be reproached for my contradictions : í have myself perceived them without wishing to avoid them, for they lie in the things which I contemplate. I could not give a true idea of objects that I describe, if I did not often seem to contradict myself. If I were less sincere, I should appear more consistent;. but in physical as in moral order, truth

* The Greek rite forbids sculpture in churches.