The Baltic sea, by the dull hues of its unfrecµiented waters, proclaims the vicinity of a continent depopulated under the rigours of the climate. The barren
114THE RUSSIAN MARINE —
shores harmonise with the cold aspect of the sky and water, and chill the heart of the traveller.
No sooner does he arrive on this unattractive coast than he longs to leave it; he calls to mind, with a sigh, the remark of one of Catherine's favourites, who, when the Empress complained of the effects of the climate of Petersburg upon her health, observed, " It is not God who should be blamed, Madame, because men have persisted in building the capital of a great empire in a territory destined by nature to be the patrimony of wolves and bears."
My travelling companions have been explaining to me, with much self-satisfaction, the recent progress of the Russian marine. I admire this prodigy without magnifying it as they do. It is a creation, or rather a re-creation of the present emperor's. This prince amuses himself by endeavouring to reahse the favourite object of Peter I., but however powerful a man may be, he is forced sooner or later to acknowledge that nature is more powerful still. So long as Russia shall keep within her natural limits, the Russian палу will continue the hobby of the emperors and nothing more !
During the season of naval exercises, I am informed that the younger pupils remain performing their evolutions in the neighbourhood of Kronstadt, while the more advanced extend their voyages of discovery as far as Riga, and sometimes even to Copenhagen.
As soon as I found that the sole object of all this display of naval power which passed before my eyes, was the instruction of pupils, a secret feeling of ennui extinguished my curiosity.
lord Durham's opinion of it. 115
All this unnecessary preparation which is neither the result of commerce nor of Avar, appears to me a mere parade. Now, God knows, and the Russians know, whether there is any pleasure in a parade ! The taste for reviews in Russia is carried beyond all bounds, and here, before even landing in this empire of military evolutions, I must be present at a review pn the water. But I must not laugh at this. Puerility on a grand scale appears to me a monstrous thing, impossible except under a tyranny, of which it is, perhaps, the most terrible result! Everywhere, except under an absolute despotism, men, when they make great efforts, have in view great ends; it is only among a blindly abject people that the monarch may command immense sacrifices for the sake of trifling results.
The view of the naval power of Russia, gathered together for the amusement of the Czar, at the gate of his capital, has thus caused me only a painful impression. The vessels which will be inevitably lost in a few winters, without having rendered any service, suggest to my mind images — not of the power of a great country, but of the useless toils to which the poor unfortunate seamen are condemned. The ice is a more terrible enemy to this navy than foreign war. Every autumn after the three months' exei·cise, the pupil returns to his prison, the plaything to its box, and the frost begins to wage its more serious Avar upon the imperial finances. Lord Durham onee remarked to the Emperor himself, with a freedom of speech which wounded him in the most sensitive part, that the Russian ships of war were but the playthings of the Russian sovereign.
116KRONSTADT.
As regards myself, this childish Colossus by no means predisposes me to admire what I may expect to see in the interior of the empire. To admire Russia in approaching it by water, it is necessary to forget the approach to England by the Thames. The first is the image of death ; the last, of life,
On dropping anchor before Kronstadt, we learned that one of the noble vessels we had seen manœuvering around us had just been lost on a sand bank. This shipwreck was dangerous only to the captain, who expected to be cashiered, and, perhaps, punished yet more
severely. Prince К said to me privately, that
he would have done better to have perished with Ins
vessel. Our fellow-traveller the Princess Lhad a
son attached to the unlucky ship. She was placed in a situation of painful suspense, until news of his safety was brought to her by the governor of Kronstadt,
The Russians are incessantly repeating to me that it is requisite to spend at least two years in their country before passing a judgment upon it; so difficult is it to understand.
But though patience and prudence may be necessary virtues in those learned travellers who aspire to the glory of producing erudite works, I, who have been hitherto writing only for my friend and myself, have no intention of making my journal a work of labour. I have some fear of the Russian customhouse, but they assure me that my écrìtoire will be respected.
Nothing can be more melancholy than the aspect of nature in the approach to St. Petersburg. As one advances up the Gulf, the flat marshes of Ingria
KRONSTADT.
117
terminate in a little wavering line drawn between the sky and the sea; this line is Russia. It presents the appearance of a wet lowland, with here and there a few birch trees thinly scattered. The landscape is void of objects, and colours ; has no bounds, and yet no sublimity. It has just light enough to be visible; the grey mossy earth well accords with the pale sun which illumines it, not from overhead, but from near the horizon, or almost indeed from below, — so acute is the angle which the oblique rays form with the surface of this unfavoured soil. In Russia the finest days have a blueish dimness. If the nights are marked by a clearness which surprises, the days are clothed with an obscurity which saddens.
Kronstadt, with its forest of masts, its substructures, and its ramparts of granite, finely breaks the monotonous reverie of the pilgrim, who is, like me, seeking for imagery in this dreary land. I have never seen, in the approaches to any other great city, a landscape so melancholy as the banks of the Neva. The campagna of Rome is a desert, but what picturesque objects, what past associations, what light, what fire, what poetry, if I might be allowed the expression, I would say, what passion animates this religious land. To reach St. Petersburg, you must pass a desert of water framed in a desert of peat earth ; sea, shore, and sky, are all blended into one mirror, but so dull, so tarnished, that it reflects nothing.
The thought of the noble vessels of the Russian navy, destined to perish without having ever been in action, pursues me like a dream.
The English, in their idiom, which is so poetical when it relates to maritime subjects, call a vessel of
118 APPEOACII TO ST. PETEESBURGH.
the royal navy, a man of tear. Never will the Russians be thus able to denominate their ships of parade. These men of court, or wooden courtiers, are nothing more than the hospital of the imperial service. If the sight of so useless a marine inspired me with any fear, it was not the fear of war but of tyranny. It recalled to mind the inhumanities of Peter I., that type of all Russian monarchs, ancient and modern.
Some miserable boats, maimed by fishermen as dirty as Esquimaux, a few vessels employed in towing timber for the construction of the imperial navy, and a few steam-boats, mostly of foreign build, were the only objects that enlivened the scene. Such is the approach to St. Petersburgh: all that could have influenced against the choice of this site, so contrary to the views of nature or to the real wants of a great people, must have passed before the mind of Peter the Great without striking him. The sea, at any cost; — such was his sentiment. Whimsical idea in a Russian to found the capital of the empire of the Slavonians among the Finns, and in the vicinity of the Swedes ! Peter the Great might say that his only object was to give a port to Russia; but if he had the genius which is ascribed to him, he ought to have foreseen the scope of his work; and in my opinion he did foresee it. Policy, and, I fear, the revenge of imperial self-love, wounded by the independence of the old Muscovites, have created the destinies of modern Russia.