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

ENTRANCE TO MOSCOW.287

square as a die, which by no means renders its general effect more imposing. It is here that the sovereign stops, when he means to make a solemn entrance into Moscow. A summer theatre, a ballroom, and a garden have been established, so as to form a kind of public cafe, which I shall return to see, as it is the rendezvous of the city loungers during the summer season.

After passing Petrowski, the enchantment gradually disperses, so that by the time of entering Moscow, we feel as if waking from a brilliant dream to a very dull and prosaic reality — a vast city without any real monuments of art, that is to say, without a single object worthy of a discriminative and thoughtful approbation. Before so heavy and awkward a copy of Europe, we ask, with wonder, what has become of the Asia whose apparition had struck us with admiration so shortly before ? Moscow, viewed from without and as a whole, is a creation of sylphs. a world of chimeras; when inspected close at hand and in detail, it is a vast trading city, without regularity, dusty, ill paved, ill built, thinly peopled; in short, though it unquestionably exhibits the work of a powerful hand, it betrays also the conceptions of a head whose idea of the beautiful has failed to produce one single chef-cVœuvre. The Russian people are strong in arms, that is, in numbers, but in the strength of imagination they are altogether deficient.

Without genius for architecture, without taste for sculpture, they can heap together stones, and create objects enormous in dimension ; but they can produce nothing harmonious, notliing great in the perfection