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

MODERN GRANDILOQUENCE.301

brightness of this ornament contrasted singularly with the blood-red of the walls. The tower seemed like a crowned giant standing before the fortress of which he was the guardian. What is there that one could not see, by the light of the moon, wandering at the foot of the Kremlin ? There, every thing is supernatural; the mind believes in spectres in spite of itself. Who could approach without a religious terror this sacred bulwark, a stone of which, disturbed by Buonaparte, rebounded even to Saint Helena, to crush the conqueror in the bosom of the' ocean ! Pardon, reader, I am born in the age of grandiloquence.

The newest of the new schools is endeavouring to banish it, and to simplify language upon the principle that people the most devoid of imagination that have ever existed, ought most carefully to shun venturing among the tortuous paths of a faculty which they do not possess. I can admire a puritanical style when it is employed by superior talents, talents capable of divesting it of all monotony, but I cannot imitate it.

After having seen all that I have gazed at this evening, it would be wise to return straight to one's own country : the excitement of the journey is exhausted.