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

280FIRST VIEW OP THE VOLGA.

peasants are very musical; we shall see by and by. I have heard nothing yet that merits the trouble of being listened to. The chanted communings of the coachman with his horses, during the night, are very doleful: tliis murmur without rhythm, this declamatory reverie in which man confides his sorrows to the brute, the only kind of friend by whom he is not despised, filled me with a melancholy more deep than pleasing.

At one place, the road shelved suddenly upon a bridge of boats, which lay much below its level by reason of the droughts that had dried up the river thus crossed. This river, still broad, although shrunk in its bed by the summer heats, bears a celebrated name — it is the Volga. Upon the border of the famous stream appeared, gilded by the moon, a city, whose long white walls gleamed in the night, which is only a twilight favourable to the conjuring up of images. The road formed a bend round this newly whitewashed eity, where I found the everlasting Roman pediments and colonnades of plaster, of which the Russians are so fond, because they think them proofs of their knowledge of the arts. The city, of which I went the round, appeared immense. It was Twer, a name that brought to my recollection the interminable civil contests which make up the history of Russia until the invasion of the Tartars. I could hear brethren insulting their brethren ; the cry of war resounded ; I saw the massacre; the Volga flowed with blood ; from the deep solitudes of Asia, the Calmue hurried on to drink it, and to shed more. But what have I to do with this blood thirsty crowd ? It is to have a new