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

66 MELANCHOLY OF NORTHERN PEORLE.

vance in these abodes of cold illusions, of visions, brilliant, though with a silvered rather than a golden light, an indefinable kind of sadness takes possession of the heart; the failing imagination ceases to create, or its feeble conceptions resemble only the undefined forms of the wanly glittering clouds that meet the eye.

When the mind reverts from the scenery to itself, it is to partake of the hitherto incomprehensible melancholy of the people of the north, and to feel, as they feel, the fascination of their monotonous poetry. This initiation into the pleasures of sadness is painful while it is pleasing; you follow with slow steps the chariot of death, chaunting hymns of lamentation, yet of hope; your sorrowing soul lends itself to the illusions around, and sympathises with the objects that meet the sight: the air, the mist, the water, all produce a novel impression. There is, whether the impression be made through the organ of smell or of touch, something strange and unusual in the sensation : it announces to you that you are approaching the confines of the habitable world; the iey zone is before jou, and the polar air pierces even to the heart. This is not agreeable, but it is novel and very strange.

I cannot cease to regret having been detained so long this summer, on account of my health, at Paris and at Ems. Had I followed my first plan, I should now be in Lapland, on the borders of the White Sea, beyond Archangel; but it will be seen from the above, that I feel as though there, which is the same thing.

Descending from the elevation of my illusions, I