building is seen, of no known style of architecture, neither
Asiatic nor Tartar, and which for a secular building is much what
Vassili-Blagennoi is for a religious edifice,--the perfectly realized
chimæra of a sumptuous, barbaric, and fantastic imagination. It was
built under Ivan III. by the architect Aleviso. Above its roof several
towers, capped with gold and containing within them chapels and
oratories, spring up with a graceful and picturesque irregularity.
An outside staircase, from the top of which the Czar shows himself
to the people after his coronation, gives access to the building and
produces by its ornamented projection a unique architectural effect. It
is to Moscow what the Giants’ Stairway is to Venice. It is one of the
curiosities of the Kremlin. In Russia it is known as the Red Stairway
(_Krasnoi-Kriltosi_). The interior of the Palace, the residence of the
ancient Czars, defies description; one would say that its chambers and
passages have been excavated according to no determined plan in some
curious block of stone, for they are so strangely entangled, so winding
and complicated, and so constantly changing their level and direction
that they seem to have been ordered at the caprice of an extravagant
fancy. We walk through them as in a dream, sometimes stopped by a
grille which opens mysteriously, sometimes forced to follow a narrow
dark passage in which our shoulders almost touch both walls, sometimes
having no other path than the toothed ledge of a cornice from which
the copper plates of the roofs and the globular belfries are visible,
constantly ascending, descending without knowing where we are, seeing
beyond us through the golden trellises the gleam of a lamp flashing
back from the golden filigree-work of the shrines, and emerging after
this intramural journey into a hall with a rich and riotous wildness
of ornamentation, at the end of which we are surprised at not seeing
the Grand Kniaz of Tartary seated cross-legged upon his carpet of black
felt.
Such for example is the hall called the Golden Chamber, which occupies
the entire Granovitaïa Palata (the Facet Palace), so called doubtless
on account of its exterior being cut in diamond facets. The Granovitaïa
Palata adjoins the old palace of the Czars. The golden vaults of this
hall rest upon a central pillar by means of surbased arches from which
thick bars of elliptical gilded iron go across from one arc to another
to prevent their spreading. Several paintings here and there make
sombre spots upon the burnished gold splendour of the background.
Upon the string-courses of the arches legends are written in old
Sclavonic letters--magnificent characters which lend themselves with
as much effect for ornamentation as the Cufic letters on Arabian
buildings. Richer, more mysterious, and yet more brilliant decorations
than these of the Golden Chamber cannot be imagined. A romantic person
would like to see a Shakespearian play acted here.
Certain vaulted halls of the old Palace are so low that a man who is
a little above the average height cannot stand upright in them. It is
here, in an atmosphere overcharged with heat, that the women, lounging
on cushions in Oriental style, spend the hours of the long Russian
winter in gazing through the little windows at the snow sparkling on
the golden cupolas and the ravens whirling in great circles around the
bell-towers.
These apartments with their motley wall-decorations of palms, foliage,
and flowers, recalling the patterns of Cashmere, make us imagine
these to be Asiatic harems transported to the polar frosts. The true
Muscovite taste, perverted later by a badly-understood imitation
of Western art, appears here in all its primitive originality and
intensely barbaric flavour.
I have frequently observed that the progress of civilization seems
to deprive nations of the true sense of architecture and decoration.
The ancient edifices of the Kremlin prove once again how true is this
assertion, which appears paradoxical at first. An inexhaustible fantasy
presides over the decoration of these mysterious rooms where the gold,
the green, the blue, and the red mingle with a rare happiness and
produce the most charming effects. This architecture, without the least
regard for symmetry, rises like a honey-comb of soap-bubbles blown upon
a plate. Each little cell takes its place adjoining its neighbour,
arranging its own angles and facets until the whole glitters with
colours diapered with iris. This childish and bizarre comparison will
give you a better idea than anything else of the aggregation of these
palaces, so fantastic, yet so real.
It is in this style that we wish they had built the new Palace, an
immense building in good modern taste and which would have a beauty
elsewhere, but none whatever in the centre of the old Kremlin. The
classic architecture with its long cold lines seems more wearisome
and solemn here among these palaces with their strange forms, their
gaudy colours, and this throng of churches of Oriental style darting
towards the sky a golden forest of cupolas, domes, pyramidal spires,
and bulbous bell-towers.
When looking at this Muscovite architecture you could easily believe
yourself in some chimerical city of Asia, fancying the cathedrals
mosques, and the bell-towers minarets, if it were not for the sober
façade of the new Palace which leads you back to the unpoetic Occident
and its unpoetic civilization: a sad thing for a romantic barbarian of
the present day. We enter the new Palace by a stairway of monumental
size closed at the top by a magnificent grille of polished iron which
is opened to allow the visitor to pass. We find ourselves under
the large vault of a domed hall where sentinels are perpetually on
guard: four effigies clothed from head to foot in antique and curious
Sclavonic armour. These knights have a noble air; they are surprisingly
life-like; we could easily believe that hearts are beating beneath
their coats of mail. Mediæval armour disposed in this way always gives
me an involuntary shiver. It so faithfully suggests the external form
of a man who has vanished forever.
From this rotunda lead two galleries which contain priceless
riches: the treasure of the Caliph Haroun al-Raschid, the wells of
Aboul-Kasem, and the Green Vaults of Dresden united could not show
such an accumulation of marvels, and here historic association is
added to the material value. Here, sparkling, gleaming, and sportively
flashing their prismatic light, are diamonds, sapphires, rubies, and
emeralds--all the precious stones which Nature has hidden in the depths
of her mines--in as much profusion as if they were mere glass. They
glitter like constellations in crowns, they flash in points of light
from the ends of sceptres, they fall like sparkling raindrops upon the
Imperial insignias and form arabesques and cyphers until they nearly
hide the gold in which they are set. The eye is dazzled and the mind
can hardly calculate the sums that represent such magnificence.
_Voyage en Russie_ (Paris, 1866).
THE CATHEDRAL OF YORK.
THOMAS FROGNALL DIBDIN.
Let us go immediately to the Cathedral--the deepening tones of whose
tenor bell seem to hurry us on to the spot. Gentle reader, on no
account visit this stupendous edifice--this mountain of stone--for
the first time from the Stonegate (Street) which brings you in front
of the south transept. Shun it--as the shock might be distressing;
but, for want of a better approach, wend your steps round by Little
Blake Street, and, at its termination, swerve gently to the left, and
place yourself full in view of the _West Front_. Its freshness, its
grandeur, its boldness and the numerous yet existing proofs of its
ancient richness and variety, will peradventure make you breathless
for some three seconds. If it should strike you that there is a want
of the subdued and mellow tone of antiquity, such as we left behind at
Lincoln, you must remember that nearly all this front has undergone a
recent scraping and repairing in the very best possible taste--under
the auspices of the late Dean Markham, who may be said to have loved
this Cathedral with a holy love. What has been done, under his
auspices, is admirable; and a pattern for all future similar doings.
[Illustration: INTERIOR OF YORK MINSTER]
Look at those towers--to the right and left of you. How airy, how
elegant, what gossamer-like lightness, and yet of what stability! It
is the decorative style of architecture, in the Fourteenth Century,
at which you are now gazing with such untiring admiration. Be
pleased to pass on (still outside) to the left, and take the whole
range of its northern side, including the Chapter-House. Look well
that your position be far enough _out_--between the house of the
residing prebendary and the deanery--and then, giving rein to your
fancy, gaze, rejoice, and revel in every expression of admiration
and delight!--for it has _no equal_: at least, not in Germany and
France, including Normandy. What light and shade!--as I have seen it,
both beneath the sun and moon, on my first visit to the house of the
prebendal residentiary--and how lofty, massive, and magnificent the
Nave! You catch the Chapter-House and the extreme termination of the
choir, connecting one end of the Cathedral with the other, at the
same moment--comprising an extent of some 550 feet! You are lost in
astonishment, almost as much at the conception, as at the completion of
such a building.
Still you are disappointed with the central Tower, or Lantern; the
work, in great part, of Walter Skirlaw, the celebrated Bishop of
Durham,--a name that reflects honour upon everything connected with it.
Perhaps the upper part only of this tower was of his planning--towards
the end of the Fourteenth Century. It is sadly disproportionate with
such a building, and should be lifted up one hundred feet at the
least....
After several experiments, I am of the opinion that you should enter
the _interior_ at the spot where it is usually entered; and which, from
the thousand pilgrim-feet that annually visit the spot, may account
for the comparatively worn state of the pavement;--I mean the _South
Transept_. Let us enter alone, or with the many. Straight before you,
at the extremity of the opposite or northern transept, your eyes
sparkle with delight on a view of the stained-glass lancet windows. How
delicate--how rich--how chaste--how unrivalled! All the colours seem
to be intertwined, in delicate fibres, like Mechlin lace. There is no
glare: but the tone of the whole is perfectly bewitching. You move on.
A light streams from above. It is from the Lantern, or interior summit
of the Great Tower, upon which you are gazing. Your soul is lifted up
with your eyes: and if the diapason harmonies of the organ are let
loose, and the sweet and soft voices of the choristers unite in the
Twelfth Mass of Mozart--you instinctively clasp your hands together and
exclaim, “_This must be Heaven!_”
Descend again to earth. Look at those clustered and colossal bases,
upon which the stupendous tower is raised. They seem as an Atlas that
for some five minutes would sustain the world. Gentle visitor, I see
you breathless, and starting back. It is the Nave with its “storied
windows richly dight,” that transports you; so lofty, so wide, so
simple, so truly grand! The secret of this extraordinary effect appears
to be this. The pointed arches that separate the nave from the side
aisles, are at once spacious and destitute of all obtruding ornaments;
so that you catch very much of the side aisles with the nave; and on
the left, or south aisle, you see some of the largest windows in the
kingdom, with their _original stained glass_, a rare and fortunate
result--from the fanatical destruction of the Sixteenth and Seventeenth
Centuries; and for which you must laud the memory of General Lord
Fairfax, Cromwell’s son-in-law: who showed an especial tenderness
towards this Cathedral.
“Breathe a prayer for his soul and pass on”
to the great window at the extremity of the nave. To my eye the
whole of this window wants simplicity and grandeur of effect. Even
its outside is too unsubstantial and playful in the tracery, for my
notion of congruity with so immense a Cathedral. The stained glass is
decidedly second-rate. The colour of the whole interior is admirable
and worthy of imitation.
But where is _The Choir_, that wonder of the world?--“Yet more
wondrous grown” from its phœnix-like revival from an almost all
devouring flame?[2] You must retrace your steps--approach the grand
screen--throwing your eye across the continued roof of the nave; and,
gently drawing a red curtain aside, immediately under the organ, you
cannot fail to be ravished with the most marvellous sight before you.
Its vastness, its unspeakable and indescribable breadth, grandeur,
minuteness, and variety of detail and finish--the clustering stalls,
the stupendous organ, the altar, backed by a stone Gothic screen,
with the interstices filled with plate-glass--the huge outspreading
eastern window behind, with its bespangled stained-glass, describing
two hundred scriptural subjects--all that you gaze upon, and all that
you feel is so much out of everyday experience, that you scarcely
credit the scene to be of this world. To add to the effect, I once
saw the vast area of this choir filled and warmed by the devotion of
a sabbath afternoon. Sitting under the precentor’s stall, I looked up
its almost interminable pavement where knees were bending, responses
articulated, and the organ’s tremendous peal echoing from its utmost
extremity. Above the sunbeams were streaming through the chequered
stained-glass--and it was altogether a scene of which the recollection
is almost naturally borne with one to the grave....
This Cathedral boasts of two transepts, but the second is of very
diminutive dimensions: indeed, scarcely amounting to the designation of
the term. But these windows are most splendidly adorned with ancient
stained-glass. They quickly arrest the attention of the antiquary;
whose bosom swells, and whose eyes sparkle with delight, as he surveys
their enormous height and richness. That on the southern side has a
sort of mosaic work or dove-tailed character, which defies adequate
description--and is an admirable _avant-propos_ to the CHAPTER
HOUSE:--the Chapter House!--that glory of the Cathedral--that wonder of
the world!...
Doubtless this Chapter House is a very repertory of all that is curious
and grotesque, and yet tasteful, and of most marvellous achievement.
You may carouse within it for a month--but it must be in the hottest
month of the year; and when you are tired of the “cool tankard,”
you may feast upon the pages of Britton and Halfpenny.... But the
“world of wonders” exhibited in the shape of grotesque and capricious
ornaments within this “House,” is responded to by ornaments to the
full as fanciful and extravagant within the Nave and Choir. What an
imagination seems to have been let loose in the designer engaged! Look
at what is before you! Those frisky old gentlemen are sculptured at the
terminating point, as corbels, of the arches on the _roof of the nave_:
and it is curious that, in the bottom corbel, the figure to the left is
a sort of lampoon, or libellous representation of the clergy: the bands
and curled hair are decisive upon this point.... When I pace and repace
the pavement of this stupendous edifice--when I meditate within this
almost unearthly HOUSE OF GOD--when I think of much of its departed
wealth and splendour,[3] as well as of its present durability and
grandeur--a spirit within me seems to say, that _such_ an achievement
of human skill and human glory should perish only with the crumbling
fragments of a perishing world. Altogether it looks as if it were built
for the day of doom.
“_A Bibliographical, Antiquarian, and Picturesque Tour of the
Northern Counties of England and in Scotland_” (London, 1838).
THE MOSQUE OF OMAR.
PIERRE LOTI.
I am enchanted to-day by the spell of Islam, by the newly-risen sun, by
the Spring which warms the air.
Moreover, we will direct our steps this morning towards the holy spot
of the Arabs, towards the Mosque of Omar, accounted marvellous and
honoured throughout the world.--Jerusalem, city sacred to Christians
and Jews, is also, after Mecca, the most sacred Mohammedan city.--The
French consul-general and Father S----, a Dominican, celebrated for
his Biblical erudition, gladly accompanied us, and a janizary of the
consulate preceded us, without whom even the approaches of the Mosque
would have been forbidden.
We walked along the narrow streets, gloomy notwithstanding the
sunlight, and between the old windowless walls, made of the _débris_ of
all epochs of history and into which Hebraic stones and Roman marbles
are fitted here and there. As we advanced towards the sacred quarter
everything became more ruined, more devastated, more dead,--infinite
desolation, which even surrounded the Mosque, the entrances to which
are guarded by Turkish sentinels who prohibit passage to Christians.
Thanks to the janizary, we clear this zone of fanatics, and then, by a
series of little dilapidated doors, we pass into a gigantic court, a
kind of melancholy desert where the grass pushes up between the stones
as it does in a meadow where no human foot ever treads:--this is _Harâm
es Sherif_ (The Sacred Enclosure). In the centre, and very far from us,
there rises a solitary and surprising edifice, all blue, but of a blue
so exquisite and rare that it seems to be some old enchanted palace
made of turquoise; this is the Mosque of Omar, the marvel of all Islam.
How wild and magnificent is the solitude that the Arabs have succeeded
in preserving around their Mosque of blue!
On each of its sides, which are at least five hundred metres long,
this square is hemmed in with sombre buildings, shapeless by reason of
decay, incomprehensible by reason of restorations and changes made at
various epochs of ancient history: at the base are Cyclopean rocks,
remnants of the walls of Solomon; above, the _débris_ of Herod’s
citadel, the _débris_ of the _prætorium_ where Pontius Pilate was
enthroned and whence Christ departed for Calvary; then the Saracens,
and, after them, the Crusaders, left everything in a confused heap,
and, finally, the Saracens, again having become the masters of this
spot, burned or walled-up the windows, raised their minarets at
haphazard, and placed at the top of the buildings the points of their
sharp battlements.
Time, the leveller, has thrown over everything a uniform colour of
old reddish terra-cotta, and given to all the buildings the same
vegetation, the same decay, the same dust. This bewildering chaos of
bits and fragments, formidable in its hoary age, speaks the nothingness
of man, the decay of civilizations and races, and bestows infinite
sadness upon this little desert beyond which rises in its solitude
the beautiful blue palace surmounted by its cupola and crescent,--the
marvellous and incomparable Mosque of Omar.
As we advance through this desert broken by large white stones and
grass, giving it the feeling of a cemetery, the casing of the blue
Mosque becomes more defined: we seem to see on its walls jewels of many
colours and brilliantly cut, equally divided into pale turquoise and
a deep _lapis-lazuli_, with a little yellow, a little white, a little
green, and a little black, soberly combined in very delicate arabesques.
Among some cypresses, nearly sapless, several very ancient and dying
olives, a series of secondary edicules more numerous towards the centre
of the great court, lead to the Mosque, the great wonder of the square.
Dotted about are some little marble _mihrabs_, some light arches,
some little triumphal arches, and a kiosk with columns, which also
seems covered with blue jewels. Yet here in this immense square, which
centuries have rendered so desert-like, so melancholy, and so forsaken,
Spring has placed amid the stones her garlands of daisies, buttercups,
and wild peonies.
[Illustration: MOSQUE OF OMAR, JERUSALEM]
Coming nearer, we perceive that these elegant and frail little
Saracen buildings are composed of the _débris_ of Christian churches
and antique temples; the columns and the marble friezes have all
vanished, torn away from a chapel of the Crusaders, from a basilica
of the Greek Emperors, from a temple of Venus, or from a synagogue.
If the general arrangement is Arab, calm and stamped with the grace
of Aladdin’s palace, the detail is full of instruction regarding the
frailty of religions and empires; this detail perpetuates the memory
of great exterminating wars, of horrible sacks, of days when blood ran
here like water and when the wholesale slaughtering “did not end until
the soldiers were weary with killing.”
In all this conglomeration only that blue kiosk, neighbour of the blue
Mosque, can tell its companion of Jerusalem’s terrible past. Its double
row of marble columns is like a museum of _débris_ from all countries;
we see Greek, Roman, Byzantine, or Hebraic capitals, others of an
undetermined age, of a wild style almost unknown.
Now the tranquillity of death has settled over all; the remnants of so
many various sanctuaries at enmity have been grouped, in honour of the
God of Islam, in an unexpected harmony, and this will perhaps continue
until they crumble into dust. When one recalls the troublous past it is
strange to find this silence, this desolation, and this supreme peace
in the centre of a court whose white stones are invaded by the daisies
and weeds of the field.
Let us enter this mysterious mosque surrounded by death and the
desert. At first it seems dark as night: we have a bewildering sense
of fairy-like splendour. A very faint light penetrates the panes,
which are famed throughout the Orient and which fill the row of little
windows above; we fancy that the light is passing through flowers
and arabesques of precious stones regularly arranged, and this is the
illusion intended by the inimitable glass-workers of old. Gradually,
as our eyes grow accustomed to the dim light, the walls, arches, and
vaults seem to be covered with some rich embroidered fabric of raised
mother-of-pearl and gold on a foundation of green. Perhaps it is an old
brocade of flowers and leaves, perhaps precious leather from Cordova,
or perhaps something even more beautiful and rare than either, which
we shall recognize presently when our eyes have recovered from the
blinding effect of the sun on the flags outside and have adjusted
themselves to the dusk of this most holy sanctuary. The mosque,
octagonal in form, is supported within by two concentric rows of
pillars, the first octagonal, and the second circular, sustaining the
magnificent dome.
Each column with its gilded capital is composed of a different and
priceless material: one of violet marble veined with white; another
of red porphyry; another of that marble, for centuries lost, known as
_antique verde_. The entire base of the walls, as high as the line
where the green and gold embroideries begin, is cased with marble.
Great slabs cut lengthwise are arranged in symmetrical designs like
those produced in cabinet-work by inlaid woods.
The little windows placed close to the dome, from which altitude falls
the reflected light as though from jewels, are all of different colours
and designs; one is shaped like a daisy and composed of ruby glass;
another of delicate arabesques of sapphire mingled with the yellow of
the topaz; and a third of emerald sprinkled with rose.
What makes the beauty of these, as of all Arabian windows, is that
the various colours are not separated, like ours, by lines of lead,
but the framework of the window is a plate of thick stucco pierced
with an infinite number of little holes, ever changing with the light;
the effect is always some new and beautiful design; the pieces of
transparent blue, yellow, rose, or green, are inserted deep in the
thickness of the setting so that they seem to be surrounded by a kind
of nimbus caused by the reflected light along the sides of the thick
apertures, and the result is a deep and soft glow over all, and through
this light gleam and sparkle the pearl, and precious stones.