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

166PRIVATE SOCIAL CODE

enjoy the master-pieces. In forming the gallery of the Hermitage, they have gathered together a profusion of names of the great masters ; but this does not prevent their genuine productions being rare. These ostentatious baptisms of very ordinary pictures weary the virtuoso, without cheating him. In a collection of objects of art, the contiguity of beauty sets off the beautiful, and that of inferiority detracts from it. A judge who is wearied, is incapable of judging : ennui renders him unjust and severe.

H the Rembrandts and the Claude Lorrains of the Hermitage produce some effect, it is because they are placed in halls where there are no other pictures near them.

This collection is fine ; but it appears lost in a city where there are so few that can enjoy it.

An inexpressible sadness reigns throughout the palace, which has been converted into a museum since the deatli of her who animated it by her presence and her mind. ]STo one ever better understood familiar life and free conversation than did that absolute princess. Not wishing to resign herself to the solitude to which her position condemned her, she discovered the art of conversing familiarly even while reigning arbitrarily.

The finest portrait of the Empress Catherine which exists, is in one of the halls of the Hermitage. I remarked also a portrait of the Empress Mary, wife of Paul I., by Madame Le Brun. There is, by the same artist, a genius writing upon a shield. This latter work is one of her best; its colours, defying alike time and climate, do honour to the French school.

At the entrance of one hall, I found behind a green