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

reflected in the calm stream or rather lake of the Neva, which, thus irradiated, resembles an immense plate of bright metal, a silver plain, only separated from a sky as white as itself, by the dim miniature of a city. That little spot of earth which seems to detach itself from the water and to tremble upon it like the froth of an inundation, those small dark irregular points scarcely observable between the white of the sky and the white of the river, can they form the capital of a vast empire?—or rather, is it not all an optical illusion, a phantasmagoria?

The spire of the cathedral church in which are deposited the remains of the last sovereigns of Russia, rises blackly against the white curtain of heaven. This taper spire, soaring above the fortress and the city, has the effect of the too hard and too bold pencil-stroke given by a painter in a moment of intoxication. A stroke which would spoil a picture may embellish the reality. God does not paint as we do. The whole scene was beautiful; — scarcely any movement, but a solemn calm, a vague inspiration. All the sounds and bustle of ordinary life were interrupted ; man had disappeared, the earth remained in the possession of the supernatural powers. There are in these remains of day, these unequal and dying lights of a boreal night, mysteries which I know not how to define, and which explain to me the mythology of the North. I can now understand all the superstitions of the Scandinavians. God hides himself in the light of the pole as much as he manifests himself in the blazing noon-tide of the tropics. All places and all climates are beautiful in the eyes of the wise man who seeks only in creation to discover the