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

126A RUSSIAN'S OPINION OF

disdainful tone and air which here too often pass for a proof of civilisation.

" What!" I replied, " the novelty of those landscapes adorned by art, those hills and slopes, where palaces, convents, and villages stand surrounded with vines, mulberries, and olives, those long ranges of white pillars, which support festoons of vines, and which carry the wonders of architecture into the recesses of the steepest mountains,—all that magnificent scenery, which gives the idea of a park laid out by Lenôtre for the pleasure of princes, rather than of a land cultivated in order to yield the labourer his daily bread; all those creations of man applied to embellish the creations of God,— is it possible that they did not appear to you as something new ? Surely, elegantly designed churches, in the steeples of which we recognise a classic taste modified by feudal customs, with so many other stately and extraordinary buildings dispersed in that superb garden, must have caused you some surprise ! Roads carried over enormous passes, on arcades as solid as they appear light to the eye *, mountains serving as the base of convents, villages, and palaces,— all announce a land where nature owns art as her sovereign. Woe to him who could tread the soil of Italy, without recognising in the majesty of the sites, as in that of the edifices, the land that is the cradle of civilisation ! "

" I congratulate myself," replied my opponent, ironically, " on having seen nothing of all tins, as my blindness will serve as an excuse for your eloquence."

* Witness the town of Bergamo, the lakes Maggiore, Como, &c„ and all the southern valleys of the Alps.