ST. PETERSBURG.
WE were in Russia, at Warsaw. At that point in the journey we were put
through a searching process, and the result having satisfied the
officials that we were not of the dangerous classes, and had no designs
upon the life of the Emperor, or the emancipation of Poland, we had been
allowed to enter. And now that we had come to St. Petersburg, there was
no need of overhauling us again, for we had been certified to already.
We were as free on arriving at the capital as if we had come to New
York.
At the station-house we were reminded at once that we were in a strange
land, by the peculiar costume of the porters and drivers, who were as
numerous and noisy as at home. They wore low-crown hats, with bevelled
rims; long coats reaching to the feet, and a belt about their loins.
They were as clamorous for hire as in more civilized countries, but they
pulled and hauled less. It was easy to see that the hand of government
was upon this most ungovernable class of men. We found the same kind of
omnibuses that run in our own streets, and on the one inscribed with the
name of the hotel to which we were bound we took our seats, and were
soon riding over the roughest paved streets that ever disgraced a city.
For a long series of years St. Petersburg was unpaved. At length an
imperial decree was issued that every vehicle coming into the city
should bring a certain number of stones to be left for paving. If each
carriage had dumped its load, without regard to size or order, just
where it happened, the result would have been about the same as we found
and felt the state of the streets to be, as we were bounced and tumbled
on our way to the Hôtel de France.
[Illustration: SCENE AT RAILWAY STATION.]
The manager of the hotel bade us welcome in good English. We were grimed
with the dust of thirty hours’ steady railroad travel, and the luxury of
a bath was more enjoyable than bed or board. The Russian is a very
different bath from the Turkish, where to the preliminaries of warm air
to set the system into a perspiration is added the thorough and
plentiful scrubbing with hot water, poured on mercilessly. The Russian
is the vapor bath only, and its effect is to open all the pores of the
skin, to empty them completely as the streams of perspiration gush from
every little mouth, and to incite a pleasurable languor, when all sense
of weariness, soreness, or stiffness is gradually steamed away. The
Russian dinner that followed was of the best: soup, fish, cutlet, roast
beef, partridges, vegetables, and varied dessert. Wines or not, as you
choose to order.
To see a city whose language is not one of your accomplishments, you
must have a guide, a _commissionaire_, a _valet de place_. Now we knew
precious little of the Russ. We had picked up a little Polish—mark, I do
not say polish—at Warsaw, and had startled the natives by sudden
outbreaks in what we supposed to be perfectly proper language, but which
only served to awaken their pity or make them laugh; but the Russian is
another thing, and not expecting to spend a winter here, nor to study
the literature of the country, we had given no time to the language. We
must have some one to be our mouth to the people, somebody who could
answer a thousand questions out of his own stores of information, or
serve as our interpreter when we attempted to get it out of others.
In the city of St. Petersburg resides an old Englishman whose name is
Russel. He has an understanding with the hotel men that whenever a guide
is wanted by travellers, he is to be sent for, and at our intimation he
made his appearance, and very respectfully offered his services to make
us familiar with the lions of the town. Mr. Russel is a venerable man in
years, having completed his threescore and ten some time since. Half a
century of these years he has dwelt in this capital of the Russian
empire, and toiled in this interesting service of expounding its wonders
to the visitors from other countries. Mr. Russel has become so familiar
with the objects of interest in his adopted city, that he imagines his
strangers to be equally familiar with them, and in no need of being
enlightened. He is so far gone in the loss of his faculties, if he ever
had any great quantity to lose, that a question must be proposed to him
often and in many forms, before he comprehends it, and when he answers,
you are not sure that he understood you, or that he knows any thing
about the matter. He never speaks except when he is spoken to, unless to
tell you something you knew before, or that was not worth knowing. He
would pass the most important and interesting buildings or monuments or
historic places in the city, and not mention them, unless you asked
him,—“What’s that?” Yet he was very English. He dropped the H
invariably. He exaspirated his vowels most unmercifully. Pointing to the
tombs of the kings and royal family, he said: “That’s the _hare_ to the
throne; that’s his _haunt_, and there’s his _huncle_.” In a
picture-gallery we came to Danae, and he was kind enough to say, “That’s
a woman, I believe,” and there was not much room for doubt on the
subject; and in a group of mythological sculpture he remarked for our
information, “That’s Jupiter,—these is all gods.”
This was the intelligent man who was to make us acquainted with the city
of St. Petersburg. If you are to be told only what he could tell me, it
would not be worth while to read any further. But we have eyes and ears
of our own, and already the barbaric splendor of this northern capital
is breaking upon us. You shall have our first impressions and our last,
for we have made two visits here, and have become familiar with the
city, if not in love with it. It is not a city to go into raptures over.
Perhaps it will become beautiful one day. But nothing in it is finished.
Streets with palaces on them are still disfigured with insignificant and
miserable dwellings. Palaces are not completed. Wealth has been
lavished, but nothing is done. It resembles our own capital in this,
that its public buildings are far apart, and the city is not half built
up.
In the year 1703, Peter the Great began to build a city, to be called
after his own name. He selected a miserable site on the banks of the
Neva, and here he gathered a host of Russians, Tartars, Kalmucks, and
Fins, and set them at this stupendous work. We expect to grow as the
people want houses to live in. Peter built a city, and then looked for
people to come and find it. The little cottage that he built for himself
on the shore is still standing where he placed it, and the tools with
which he worked, with his own industrious and skilful hands. For several
successive years, 40,000 men were annually raised by draft, as for an
army, to come from distant parts of the empire and build. The nobility
of Russia came and caused residences to be reared for them, when they
saw that Moscow was no longer to be the capital. Peter died, and
Catharine I. did not push on the work with energy. Her successor, Peter
II., loved Moscow more, and died there. Anne, the empress, adopted
Petersburg as her residence, and it flourished under her reign.
Catharine strove hard to defend it from the inroads of the river, but it
lies so low that no art can avert inundations. It lies in the midst of
waters, a vast morass. Canals easily traverse its bosom. Bridges and
islands and quays are part of the streets and squares of the city. The
houses are too many for the inhabitants. The thoroughfares are never
thronged. You may walk long streets and scarcely meet a person. Half a
million is the number of its inhabitants, but there is room for many
more.
The contrasts are more sudden and striking than in other capitals. The
rich are very rich; the poor are very poor. Society is rigid in its
laws. The nobles have no sympathies with the serf, though a serf no
longer. Caste is stronger in Russia than in England.
But I am impatient to be out in the town, sight-seeing. It is a very hot
day, and I asked Russel if they often had such hot weather in June.
“Well,” he said, “sometimes it is ’ot as this, and sometimes not so ’ot:
it depends very much on the weather;” and with this profound observation
he led the way into the city.
It was but a step from our lodgings, under the arch that divides and
connects the state apartments into the grand square in front of the
Winter Palace, the residence of the Emperor of Russia.
But before us rises a red granite column, the grandeur and beauty of
which instantly fix the eye. A single stone, eighty-four feet high and
fifty feet in circumference,—the loftiest single shaft of modern times,
only less in height than Pompey’s Pillar,—stands in the midst of the
square, surmounted by an angel and the cross. The pedestal bears a brief
inscription, but it tells the whole story,—“Grateful Russia to Alexander
I.” Originally this stone was cut out of the mountain, 104 feet long,
and the order was to make the loftiest monolith in the world; but from
fear that it was too long to stand firmly on its base, which was
fourteen feet in diameter, it was shortened to its present length. With
incredible labor it was erected upon a pedestal twenty-five feet high,
and there, polished, it stands, perhaps the most splendid shaft that now
presses upon the earth. It seemed to grow as I gazed upon it. And daily
as I caught sight of it from other parts of the city, or as I drove into
the magnificent area of which it is the central figure, its simple
majesty and exceeding beauty impressed me more and more. What vast labor
it cost to bring this block from the mountains of Finland, and plant it
perpendicularly on the banks of the Neva, in the heart of the city!
In the Admiralty Square is a more famous statue, and one of which we
have heard from childhood; pictures of it had made it so familiar that
it seemed an old acquaintance,—PETER THE GREAT, the founder of the city,
its inventor and builder, is on horseback, riding up a rock, to the
verge of which he has come, when he reins in his steed and sits looking
upon the river and the city he has raised upon its banks. The horse is
rearing, and the immense weight rests upon his hinder legs and the tail,
which touches a huge serpent, coiled at the horse’s feet. This is
deservedly reckoned one of the finest equestrian statues, and it honors
the most extraordinary man of his age.
Two boys were together crowned as Czars of Russia, at Moscow, by the
Greek patriarch, on the 15th of June, 1682. They were brothers, and one
of them soon yielded to the superior energy of the other, and resigning
his share of the government, left PETER the sole sovereign of an empire
but little above the range of barbarism. This Peter, who became PETER
THE GREAT, was then but seventeen years old. He was far in advance of
every one, and his reign marks the era of Russia’s rise to greatness
among the nations. Yet this man never rose to the conception of what
must be a nation’s true glory. His ideas all ran in the line of material
grandeur, and not in the direction of moral and mental progress. He was
a born mechanic, and he built a nation. He thought to build a people
just as he built the city that bears his name. His superstitious nobles
considered it wicked for him to go abroad, but he had heard of the arts
of civilization, that made France and Holland and England glorious in
the world, and he determined to see for himself what it was that made
them so. He laid aside his imperial purple (if he ever had any), and
travelled into distant lands. Sometimes he concealed his royal person in
the garb of a common workman, and wrought in the shops with his own
hands. I have seen many specimens of his handicraft that would do credit
to any artisan who earned his bread by his industry and skill. He was a
capital ship carpenter. Russia was in want of a navy. Peter learned how
to build ships, and made a navy for Russia. In foreign countries he
studied every thing, but learned nothing truly great in the art of
government. Going into the courts of Westminster with a friend one day,
in London, and seeing many men with wigs, he asked who they were.
“They are lawyers,” said his friend.
“Lawyers!” he exclaimed; “why, I have only two lawyers in my dominions,
and I mean to hang one as soon as I return.”
In all that he saw in England and Holland, where he spent most of his
time abroad, he never learned that _mind_ makes nations great; that
intelligence is the security of national progress and prosperity, and
that the people, even under despotic governments, have the power to help
themselves if their rulers will give them a chance. But he came back
with the idea of making his empire greater by making it broader, and he
took the sword as the instrument of success. He was partially
successful. After a reign of half a century, he died and left his empire
on the highway to civilization and glory. It is wonderful that Russia
has made so little progress since his death in 1725. Yet no monarch ever
reigned who descended to such minute details in legislating for his
people. Inured to hardships himself, and possessed with the idea that
nothing was invincible which his will was set to overcome, he undertook
to force his subjects into sudden and astounding reforms, from which
they revolted. He could not make them see with his eyes, nor work with
his hands. He made his clergy shave their faces, and the enemies of his
innovations called him the antichrist. No man ever lived who impressed
himself more indelibly upon a people than Peter the Great. His name is
held in honor second only to the Divine. The relics of his handiwork are
preserved with religious care. Every museum has some specimen of his
genius and industry, and the lapse of a hundred and fifty years since
these things were made by imperial fingers invests them with interest
approaching reverential awe.
But the greatest of all his works, and one that is the most
characteristic of the man, is the city of St. Petersburg itself. Why he
selected such a site for it, it is impossible to say, unless its very
unfitness and apparent impracticability developed that faculty for which
he was so remarkable, and impelled him to undertake what to others was
an impossibility. From the summit of a monument, or the dome of St.
Isaac’s Cathedral, the city seems to float in the waters. And this would
not be a fatal objection to the site if it stood in such relations to
the rest of the empire or the world as to make it important to fix it
here. But it does not. Winter shuts it out from communication with the
sea about half the time.
As we were walking on the most thronged of the thoroughfares in St.
Petersburg, the Nevski Perspective, a well-dressed gentleman paused,
and, turning toward a church which he was passing, took off his hat and
offered a silent prayer. What at first appeared the eccentricity of a
single individual, or excessive devotion, I soon perceived was the
practice of many, and indeed a custom of the country. In passing a
church, of course one passes an altar; and it may be, and indeed is, out
of sight, but the devout believer recognizes the fact by a token of
reverence, slight perhaps, but nevertheless sincere. Women hurrying by
with baskets of market stuff were often willing to put down their
burdens before the cross and pass a moment in thoughts of their Saviour.
I went into the church, the Kazan Cathedral, with a colonnade in feeble
imitation of St. Peter’s at Rome. The Greek religion is as nearly like
the Romish as this church is like St. Peter’s: it is a copy _after it_,
and a good ways after it, but still so near that it amounts to the same
thing. They do not make unto themselves graven images, because that is
forbidden by the second commandment; but they do make the likeness of
things in heaven and earth, although that is forbidden, and they do bow
down and worship these likenesses, or pay apparently the same honors to
a picture of the Virgin that the Romanist does to a statue. The
distinction is without a difference. But when I entered the cathedral, I
saw a sight that never met my eye in Rome or any Roman Catholic city. In
the middle of the day, and on a week-day too, respectably appearing,
well-dressed gentlemen were standing or kneeling before the altar
offering their devotions. Women were there numerously, and the poor,
whose garb denoted their poverty; and these classes are largely
represented in Romish churches everywhere; but the Greek religion had
such hold upon the people of another set, as to excite remark. The same
lavish expenditure upon the churches is to be seen here as in Italy and
Spain, though the architecture is far from being so effective as that
which prevails in Spain and Italy. This church was built sixty years
ago, at an expense of three millions of dollars then. A colonnade inside
in four rows extends from the centre pillars supporting the dome, which
is 230 feet above the floor, and from the three great doors. These
columns are fifty-six in number, each one a single stone, thirty-five
feet high, with bronze Corinthian capitals. In the midst of the main
door the name of God is recorded with precious stones, and a miraculous
painting of the Virgin blazes with gold and jewels of untold value. And
in the midst of this temple of religion, sacred to the worship of the
Prince of Peace, hung trophies of victories over France, Turkey, and
Persia.
But this church is not the wonder of the city. You must go with us to
the Isaac Cathedral, whose gilded dome has attracted our eye from every
part of the city, and whose glittering cross above the crescent we have
studied with an opera-glass, again and again, at a distance. Peter the
Great built a church of wood just here, and Catharine another when the
first was destroyed, but that gave way to this glorious pile, which was
forty years in building, and was completed in 1858. It is far more
imposing in its external appearance than St. Peter’s. Its proportions
are perfect and stupendous. Like all other Greek churches, it is four
square and in the form of the Greek cross. A grand entrance on each side
is approached by a broad flight of red granite steps, vast blocks of
stone from the quarries of Finland. Each flight of steps is surmounted
by a peristyle, each pillar of which is sixty feet high, one solid,
polished, red granite column! Above them, thirty pillars support the
central cupola, and on the crown of this vast hovering cupola is a
miniature of the temple below, a beautiful finish to the whole, on the
summit of which stands the shining cross.
Within, the splendor is amazing. Think of columns of solid malachite
fifty feet high! A bit of this stone is a gem to be set in gold for an
ornament on a lady’s dress. But here it is in lofty pillars, and steps
for altars, with lesser pillars of lapis lazuli standing near. The
worship is in the form and manner of the Greek Church, and is strikingly
Oriental, more so than that we see in the Church of Rome. Men and women
not merely bow and kneel and cross themselves, touching their fingers to
their foreheads and breasts, but they prostrate themselves with their
faces on the cold stone floor, and lie there as if dead. Women thus
lying in a heap looked more like a bundle of rags or old clothes, than
human beings worshipping the Almighty. Others brought candles and
lighted them, to be burned before the images, that is, the pictures of
the Virgin Mary and the Holy Child. Some of the people lighted the
candles themselves, repeating a prayer; the verger lighted them for
others, and presented them to the Virgin as he proceeded with the
service.
One woman brought a napkin or some cloth embroidered, and gave it to the
verger, who opened a golden door into the Virgin’s panel, and placing
the offering in it, locked it again. This was as truly idolatrous as any
worship you would see in Romish churches, and wherein it differs from
offerings to idols in pagan temples I do not see.
A collection was now taken up, by assistants going around with bags, and
gathering from the multitude standing before the altar. Every one seemed
to put in something, and their alms and prayers went together.
Three priests were officiating. One went about swinging a censer with
burning incense. A choir of men-singers stood near the altar and made
the responses with great power and singular sweetness of tone. The
sacristan came to us and offered to show us the sacred things in the
temple, and when we objected that the service was in progress, and we
did not wish to be sight-seeing at such a time, he assured us it was all
right, and we need not stand upon ceremony. He led us to the holy
places, and pointed out the sacred relics, which were useful to him in
extracting a fee from the stranger, and that is the only miracle they
are able to work. If they do this every day, and often enough every day,
they will be held in honor as long as the temple stands.
In the course of our wanderings under the lead of the sacristan, we
found ourselves behind the veil, or the hanging curtain which was opened
for the priests to go out and in during the service. Fearful of
intrusion, we were about to retire, when one of the priests came from
his place, and invited us into the apartment where he was standing, and
responding as his associate read the service. The inmost shrine, perhaps
it may be called the Holy of Holies, is in a round temple, whose dome is
held by eight pillars of solid malachite, and the walls and floors are
of polished marbles of various colors. The steps by which we ascend to
it are of polished porphyry.
The freedom with which a stranger was admitted “behind the scenes” in
the midst of the service was surprising to me, and I had an opportunity
not expected, of coming into contact with the priests and ministers of
the Greek religion, while in their service. The priests are a very
inferior order of men; very unlearned, of low extraction, and in their
appearance and manners what you would expect after such a statement.
They are obliged to be married once, and if the wife die, they are not
allowed to marry a second time, but the widower continues to serve at
the altar as before. It is said that the priests are very watchful of
the health of their wives, on the principle that a good thing which
cannot be replaced must be preserved with the greatest care. This is
better than the celibacy of Romish priests, which is offensive to nature
and good morals, a curse to the church and the world. You cannot be long
in any country where the Romish priests abound without hearing of their
bad morals, but the reputation of the priests in the Russo-Greek Church
is better. In their religious services, the most effective part is the
singing, and indeed the praying is intoning, which is a drawling kind of
singing, now coming into use in the ritualistic churches, which are only
feeble imitations of the Romish and Greek. Boys are employed in the
choirs, and for some parts of the service, the solos particularly, they
get the deepest bass voices that can be hired, and sometimes they render
the sublime passages with great effect. I have said the men, as well as
the women, appear to be religious in Russia. And it struck me as very
strange to see a fine-looking, full-grown man coming in at noonday into
a church, bringing a little wax candle, walking up to a shrine over
which is a picture of the Virgin, kneeling before it, bowing his head to
the floor, crossing himself again and again, lighting his candle and
sticking it into a hole prepared for the purpose, and once more
prostrating himself to kiss the pavement, and then retire! This lighting
of candles is an emblem of life, and is designed to keep the spiritual
nature of man continually in view. The Russians have no religious
ceremonies without this symbol of the Spirit. It is fast finding its way
into the churches of England and America that copy after these Oriental
customs, without apprehending their meaning.
Nothing in the mode of worship distinguishes the Greek from the Roman
Catholic. I would not speak with confidence, but it appeared to me that
the people were more _deeply_ religious than they are in Roman Catholic
countries. It is not, as with the people in Italy and Spain, and more
especially in France, merely a matter of form to be gone through with,
and that the end of it. In the Romish cathedrals, it was rare that I
could get into sympathy with the worshippers so as to feel devotional in
a service foreign from that with which I was familiar. For anywhere on
earth where men are worshipping God in their way and we are present,
from curiosity, or any other motive, I would desire also to be a
worshipper, and offer among strangers the incense of a loving heart,
touched with a sense of sin, and longing for divine favor. There is no
danger of becoming an idolater by worshipping the only living and true
God in the midst of idolaters. The soul goes out to him who heareth
prayer for those who are bowing down to stocks and stones. And he whom
they ignorantly worship I would find in their temples, for the way to
him is through the open door in the side of his crucified Son. But the
Roman Catholics do not get so near to God as these Greek Christians do,
for the former seem to be so much engrossed with saints and the mother
of Jesus, that they lose the joy and blessedness of coming right to
Christ, who is in the Father, and by whom they are saved.
The Russians keep Lent very rigidly, and are also careful to fast every
Wednesday and Friday. They have four great fasts in the year: Lent,
Peter’s fast, Conception fast, and St. Philip’s fast. The children are
taught the catechism of the Greek Church. The Sabbath is not observed
with any more regard to rest and worship than it is in France or Italy.
They make long pilgrimages to monasteries and holy places. There are no
pews or seats in the churches; all stand, the rich and poor, the emperor
and empress, high and low alike on a level in the presence of God. When
the Emperor was assailed in the park by an assassin, a few years ago,
and escaped the blow aimed at his life, he rode directly to this Isaac
Cathedral, and here in the midst of the thronging multitude, gave thanks
for his deliverance from sudden death. The language of the church
service is the Slavonic, and it is quite as unintelligible to the masses
as the _ora pro nobis_ and the rest of the Latin to the Roman Catholics
in our country. The whole service is quite as imposing as the Romish,
with processions and banners and sonorous responses. Religious services
are often celebrated in private houses to cast out evil spirits; and
always the fortieth day after a person’s death is observed in memory and
improvement of the event. In one corner of every room that you enter
from the street is the image of the Virgin, and you are expected always
to remove your hat on coming in; at first, it seems to be required as a
token of respect to the persons in the house, but it is solely to honor
the Virgin in the corner. The Russians are a very superstitious people,
and they believe in houses haunted with good and evil spirits,
especially the evil, and the constant presence of a pictured Mary is a
protection; at least they think so.
[Illustration: A RAINY DAY IN A RUSSIAN CITY.]