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

22ERROR OF THE EMPEROR NICHOLAS.

church of the Saviour in the Garden. That venerable sanctuary, the most ancient, I believe, in the Kremlin and in Moscow, is then to disappear among the fine white walls, with which they will surround it, to the great regret of all lovers of antiquity and of the picturesque.

What more provokes me is the mockery of respect with which the profanation is to be committed. They boast that the old monument will still be preserved ; in other words, it will not be destroyed, but only buried alive in a palace. Such is the way in which they here conciliate the official veneration for the past with the passion for "comfort," newly imported' from England. This manner of beautifying the national city of the Russians is altogether worthy of Peter the Great. TV^as it not sufficient that the founder of the new city should abandon the old one ? No ! —his successors must also demolish it, under the pretext of adorning it.

The Emperor Nicholas might have acquired a glory of his own, instead of crawling аклш the road laid out by another. He had only to leave the Petersburg winter-palace when it had been burnt for him, and to return and fix the imperial residence in the Kremlin * as it stands ; building for the wants of his household and for the great fetes of the court, as many palaces, beyond the sacred walls, as he might think fit. By this return he would have repaired the fault of Peter the Great; who, instead of dragging his boyards into the theatre which he built for them on the Baltic, ought to have been able to civilise them in their own homes, by availing himself of the admirable elements which nature had placed within their reach and at his