Fig. 13REINDEER TRAVELLING
REINDEER TRAVELLING
Snow vanishes from the plains towards the middle (or end) of May, but remains the whole year round in the gorges of the mountains. The rivers are clear of ice about the beginning (or middle) of May, and within a month from that time the first shoots of verdure begin to appear on the meadows and hill-sides. The sun never sets from the 24th of May to the 21st of July. There is neither twilight nor night,—the long Arctic Day has set in. During this period the sun warms the soil only at noon, simply shining for the rest of the day, seemingly a golden orb without heat. Summer, beginning about the middle (i. e., end) of June, barely lasts two months. By July flowers are already shedding their blossoms, their rapid growth being aided by the unbroken daylight.
Any attempts at agriculture in such a climate are, of course, foredoomed to failure, but along the river banks some fairly good meadows enable the settlers of the Murman to rear all the cattle they need. Turnips are the only vegetables that can be raised, with, here and there, a few potatoes.
The southern and western portions of the Peninsula are covered with pretty good timber, mostly pine (Pinus silvestris). As you go further north, the timber becomes more and more stunted, consisting chiefly of birchwood, till you reach the opentundra, which is clothed in moss and low-growing shrubs.
The Lapps lead a semi-nomadic life. The settlements in which they live are calledpagosts, each group of Lapps having its particular summer and winterpagost. The latter is usually inland near the forests, where they herd their deer in winter. In summer they wander nearer to the coasts and lakes for the sake of the fishing. The winter dwelling of the Lapp is called atoopa, a small smoky sod-covered hut, covering some 150 to 200 square feet; whereas in summer he lives in hisvieja, a large wigwam resembling a Samoyedechoom, but covered over, not with skins as with the Samoyedes, but with branches, tree-bark and turfs.
The typical Lapp is dwarf-like and thick-set. He usually wears a grey cloth jacket, his head being encircled in a high woollen cap tapering to a tassel at the top, while his feet, wrapped up in rags, are then covered with big shoes. In general, his whole appearance, with his pointed beard, bears a striking resemblance to the familiar representations of "gnomes," as these denizens of the subterranean world are pictured to us in fairy books. Few of the Lapps, however, confine themselves to this characteristic type of Lapp costume, but wear whatever comes to their hands,—hats, caps, clothes "made in Germany" and so on.
Among the women, especially the younger ones, some fairly pretty faces may be met with. Their dress is usually a calicosarafan, and generally speaking, there is nothing specially distinguishing about their apparel.
The Lapp race is evidently dying out, or rather, is gradually intermingling with, and being absorbed by, the neighbouring races. With neither written memorials nor a historic past to cling to, nor any particular religious belief, they are all of the Orthodox Faith. In assuming the customs and civilization of the Russians, the Lapps often abandon their own tribe, and assimilate with the stronger race. I have often heard such sayings as the following from Lapps who have more or less settled down: "I'm not a Lapp at all, I'm a Russian now," or "He's a good man" (i. e., active, energetic) "and not a Lapp."
So that they evidently have no particularly high opinion of themselves, and put no great value on their tribal individuality; and yet, as the free-born child of the broad and boundlesstundra, the Lapp dearly loves his home and open roving life.
The chief occupations of the Lapps are reindeer-rearing and fishing, and in winter, the transport of goods by means of their deer. They are unfortunately bad husbandmen, utterly reckless about the increase of their herds, and never dreaming of looking upon them as sources of gain. Deer-herding is not, in their eyes, a regular business, they merely keep such head as are required for domestic uses, that is, for food, clothing and travelling. Very few Lapps own big herds, while most of them hardly know or care how many in reality they have. In summer, when the deer are not wanted for travelling purposes, they dismiss them to range at large, without any surveillance whatever. To escape the persecutions of gadflies and mosquitoes the deer generally flock to the Hibinski Mountains, or else wander to the sea-shore. When thus at large they multiply freely of themselves, and, by this time half wild, often stray away from the herds altogether.
The rearing of reindeer might easily be made such a profitable business as to be sufficient in itself to insure a comfortable livelihood to the Lapps. The deer itself hardly requires any looking after the whole year round. All through the summer it feeds on various grasses, and in winter on theyagel, or reindeer lichen (Cladonia rangiferina), which it scratches out from under the snow, with its hoofs. This lichen, or moss, grows in profusion all over thetundrasand forests of the Kola Peninsula. It is his deer which supply the Lapp with food and clothing, convey his family and goods hundreds of versts in his wanderings, and, finally, give him the opportunity of adding to his income by acting as carrier, and by supplying teams to the government postal-stations, etc. Some years ago some Ziriàns from the Petchora settled in the Kola Peninsula with their herds, numbering some 5,000 head. The Lapps welcomed them into their community, looking upon them, indeed, as benefactors, as the Ziriàns, a smart and enterprising race, get everything needed for household purposes, which they obtain much cheaper than the Lapps themselves could before, at the same time giving good prices for the skins of reindeer and other wild animals killed by the Lapps. So far no want of grazing plots has been felt. The Ziriàns have already over 10,000 head of deer, deriving, comparatively speaking, enormous gains from them. But then, unlike the Lapps, the Ziriàns go about their business in systematic and sensible fashion, safeguarding their stock from the incursions of beasts of prey, tending them carefully winter and summer, driving them from time to time to suitable pastures, etc.
The Kremlin and its treasuries. The Ancient Regalia. The Romanoff House
ALFRED MASKELL
Moscow is the second capital of the Empire, but by ancient right the first, although now surpassed both in commerce and population by the modern city of Peter the Great. Moscow occupies almost exactly the geographical centre of European Russia. Artistically it is of far greater interest to us than its northern rival. It has preserved the old oriental type: in its palaces has been displayed the barbaric pomp of the Muscovite Tsars of which much yet remains, not only in their renovated halls but also in what is left of the plate, jewels and ornaments with which they once abounded.
The general plan resembles somewhat that of Paris; the different quarters have gradually developed around a centre, and the river Moskva meanders through them as the Seine. The centre is the Kremlin; in shape an irregular triangle surrounded by high walls, outside which is the first walled-in quarter—the Kitai-Gorod, that is the Chinese city, about the meaning of which term there is some dispute. It is not, nor ever has been, in any way Chinese.
The name of Moscow appears first in the chronicles in 1147, when Youri, a son of Vladimir Monomachus, built the first houses of a town on the hill where the Kremlin now stands, but it was not until at least a century later that the city became of any importance. In 1237, it was burned by the Tartars and the real founder was Daniel, a son of Alexander Nevski. He was the first prince buried in the church of St. Michael where, until the time of Peter the Great, all the sovereigns of Russia have been buried; as in the metropolitan Cathedral of the Assumption, but a few steps distant, they have all been crowned up to the present day. From the Fifteenth to the Seventeenth Centuries, at the time when the arts flourished in Russia, in the greatest profusion and magnificence, Moscow was endowed with her richest monuments. It was then the numerous churches arose, the Kremlin, and the palaces of the boyars. At that time the city consisted of the Kremlin and the three walled-in enclosures which encircle it and each other as the several skins and shell inclose the kernel of a walnut. It appears to have been built in a haphazard fashion, though the old plans, with the houses sketched in rows, exhibit an uniformity of streets and buildings. They show us also that the houses were for the most part of wood, having each a covered outside staircase leading to the upper stories. Built so much of wood it was exposed to frequent conflagrations, the last being the great burning at the time of the French invasion in 1812. But so quickly was it always rebuilt and on the same lines that it has ever retained its original and irregular aspect. The Kremlin was at first of wood, but under the two Ivans it was surrounded by the solid stone walls of white stone cut in facets, which have given to the city the name "White Mother," or "Holy Mother Moscow with the white walls."
Fig. 14MOSCOW.
MOSCOW.
The Kremlin is at the same time a fortress and a city contained within itself, with its streets and palaces, churches, monasteries, and barracks. Eighteen towers and five gateways garnish the long extent of the inclosing wall; two of the gateways are interesting; that of the Saviour built by Pietro Solario in 1491, and that of the Trinity by Christopher Galloway in the Seventeenth Century. Here, among the churches are those of the Assumption and of St. Michael; here are the new palace of the Tsar, the restored Terem (what is left of the old palace), the sacristy and library of the patriarchs, the treasure and regalia, the great tower of Ivan Veliki in which hangs the largest bell in the world that will ring, and beneath it the "Tsar Kolokol," the king of bells, which it is supposed has never been rung and the king of cannons which has never been fired.
The ancient "Kazna," or treasury of the Kremlin, where the riches of the Tsars have been preserved from time immemorial was in the reign of Ivan III. situated within the walls of the Kremlin, between the Cathedrals of St. Michael and of the Annunciation. Here it remained until the great fire of 1737. The treasure had already suffered a heavy loss: in the early part of the Seventeenth Century, at the time of the war with Poland, a large quantity of plate was melted down to provide for the payment of the troops. The fire of 1737 caused a further and greater loss and destroyed also a large part of the armoury. At the time of the French invasion in 1812 the whole of the treasure, together with the regalia, was removed to Novgorod, and thus escaped destruction of seizure. On its return to Moscow in 1814, systematic arrangements were made for its preservation, and for the formation and arrangement of the museum in which it is now exhibited. In the year 1850 the new building of the Orujénaia Palata which forms part of the modern palace of the Kremlin was completed, and to this the entire collection was transferred.
The treasury of Moscow has been almost from the time of the establishment of the Russian Empire the place where the riches of the Tsars have been kept; consisting of the regalia, of the state costumes, of the plate and vases used in the service of their table, of their most magnificent armour and horse-trappings, of their state carriages and sledges and of the presents which from time to time the sovereigns of other countries sent through their ambassadors, of whose embassies so many interesting accounts have come down to us.
The collection of plate is exposed on open stands arranged in tiers round the pillars, or otherwise displayed in a vast hall of the new building of the Orujénaia Palata.
The riches thus brought together have suffered many changes. The court was frequently moved, the state of the empire was continually disturbed, fires were of frequent occurrence, and necessity at times caused much treasure to be melted down. The Tsar's favourites received no doubt from time to time acceptable marks of his approbation in the shape of rich presents, and many specimens of plate found their way probably in a similar manner to the churches and monasteries. But notwithstanding all this, there still remains permanently installed and carefully guarded in the treasury of the Kremlin a collection of plate which, for extent, variety, and interest, may rival that in any other palace in the world.
It appears to have been customary during the last two centuries at least to make a grand display of this treasure on the occasion of the visit of the sovereign, and especially during the ceremonies of the coronation. Then, in the centre of the hall in the ancientTerem, known as the gold room, where the Tsar dines in solitary state, a kind of buffet is arranged and other stands disposed, loaded and groaning with this rich accumulation.
Great splendour and richness of material, the lavish use of jewels in the decoration, and the brilliant colour derived from the employment of enamels are characteristics of eastern art in the precious metals. But while we are struck by the delicacy and refinement with which these are employed by many eastern countries, and while we admire the taste and harmony of colour displayed by the workmen of India or of Persia, it must be confessed that the Russian tempted by the glitter and display which are so much in accordance with his own taste, has been unable to use the same judgment as those whom he has taken as his models. Few would deny that there reigns throughout his work that quality which is best expressed by the term—barbaric magnificence. This is not vulgarity: such a term is not applicable; it is the outcome of the desire which is to be found amongst all nations who have attained a certain degree of civilization and riches to impose respect and awe by a lavish display of material wealth or by the use of gorgeous colour, which always calls forth the admiration of the multitude.
In the plate and jewelled ornament which we find in the treasury of the Kremlin, we shall find that Russian taste was fond of solid material and ornament, enriched with many and large precious stones of value. All Oriental nations have ever loved to accumulate riches of this description which, at the same time that they are of use as ornament, are also of intrinsic value. The crowns, and thrones, and sceptres, the ornaments of the imperial costume, the gold and silver plate and vases and other precious objects of the court of the Tsars have, therefore, a character of solid splendour, a want of refinement and delicacy, which is almost uniformly characteristic. Still they are not deficient in a certain grandeur and even elegance, and in details there is much that is admirable, much that is strikingly original.
By far the greater number of pieces that we shall find in the Kremlin and elsewhere belong to the Seventeenth Century. In the treasury of the Kremlin we have but one piece of the Twelfth Century and some few of the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Centuries. All the rest are later.
The entire number of pieces in the Kremlin amounts to sixteen hundred. After the disasters of 1612, all the ancient plate for the service of the Tsar's table was melted down and converted into money; many objects in gold and silver and jewelled work being at the same time given in pledge to the troops of Vladislas IV. There are therefore few examples earlier than the dynasty of the Romanoffs.
The treasure contains also some of the most highly venerated icons, crosses, and reliquaries in Russia. As regards many of these it is difficult to assign a date or a place of production. Many of them have histories more or less legendary, but while some may appear to belong absolutely to the Greek school, we must not forget that Russia sent its workmen to Mount Athos to be instructed and to work there, and on their return the traditions and models of the school were scrupulously observed in the workshops of Moscow.
The regalia of the ancient Tsars scarcely yield in interest to that of any other country. They consist of a large number of crowns or jewelled caps of peculiar form, of orbs and sceptres, of the imperial costume, and especially of that peculiar part of the latter, a kind of collar or shoulder ornament, known as thebarmi.
Other important pieces of the regalia of Alexis Michailovitch are the orbs and sceptres, the bow and arrow case of the same description of workmanship. These are gorgeous specimens of jewelled and enamelled work attributed to Constantinople. The sceptre of the Tsar Michailovitch is of similar enamelled work, and is probably a good specimen of the effect of western influence on the goldsmiths of Moscow. The figures especially appear to be of the Italian renaissance. Another sceptre is unmistakably Russian work, and if not of pure taste is at least of fine workmanship and imposing magnificence.
The thrones are of high interest from more than one point of view. We must content ourselves with choosing two from amongst them, viz.: the ivory throne of Ivan III. (Antiquities of the Russian Empire, ii. 84-100), and the throne known as the Persian throne (Ibid, ii. 62-66).
The first was brought from Constantinople in 1472 by the Tsarina Sophia Paleologus, who, by her marriage with Ivan III., united the coats of arms of Byzantium and Russia.
There is a certain resemblance between this throne and that known as the chair of St. Peter at Rome. The general form is the same, as is the manner in which the ivory plaques and their borderings are placed. The second throne is a magnificent work, which, according to a register as theBook of Embassies, was sent from Persia in the year 1660 to the Tsar Alexis by a certain Ichto Modevlet, of the Shah's court. M. Weltman, in his enumeration of the treasury of the Kremlin, says: "It was therefore probably made in the workshops of Ispahan about the same time that the globe, sceptre, andbarmiwere ordered from Constantinople."
Fig. 15THE KREMLIN, MOSCOW.
THE KREMLIN, MOSCOW.
The Kremlin contains a large number of pieces of decorative plate of all kinds made for the service of the table of the Tsars, or displayed on buffets on state occasions. Much of it is the production of other countries, presented by their ambassadors or purchased for the Tsar. The frequent fires and the melting down of treasure during the Polish disturbances have much diminished this collection, and possibly also many of the finest pieces have disappeared. Of the large service of gold plate of the Tsar Alexis, which consisted of 120 covers, two plates are all that remain. These are, however, sufficient evidence of the skill and taste of the Moscow goldsmiths of the period and of their dexterity in the use of enamel.
The Treasury of the Kremlin contains a large number of cups or vases of silver-gilt, for table use, of Russian work. There is no great variety in the cups, but some forms are peculiar to the country. There are especially the cups calledbratini(loving cups, frombrat, a brother), the bowls or ladles termedkovsh, and the small cups with one flat handle for strong liquors. Tall beakers expanding at the lip and contracted at the middle are also favourite forms, but the bulbous shape is the most frequent. Indeed, that form of bulb or cupola which we see upon the churches is peculiarly characteristic. We find it with more or less resemblance, in the ancient crowns, in the mitres of the popes, in the bowls of chalices and in vases and bowls for drinking. In thebratiniandkovshthe bulging form of ornament, the coving up of the bottoms of the bowls, and the use of twisted lobes are very common.
The Cathedral of the Assumption is one of the many churches situated within the precincts of the Kremlin. It was reconstructed by Fioraventi in 1475 after the model of the Cathedral of Vladimir, and in spite of the frequent calamities and fires which have half ruined Moscow still preserves in a great measure its primitive character. The church of the Assumption has five domes resting in the centre of the building on four massive circular pillars, and the sanctuary is composed of four hemicycles. The Cathedral of the Archangel Michael is close by and was built in 1507 in imitation of it. Near this again is the Cathedral of the Annunciation. This, which was built in 1416, is more original in style and recalls the churches of Mount Athos, or that of Kertch, which dates from the Tenth Century.
Mention must be made of an ancient building, the house known as the Romanoff House in Moscow. It was the birthplace of the Tsar Michael Theodorovitch, founder of the now reigning family, and also of his father Theodore Nikitisch, who became patriarch under the name of Philaret. In its restored state the Romanoff House is still perhaps the most remarkable ancient building existing in Russia as a perfect specimen of the old dwelling-houses of the boyards. It is built of stone, and the solid exterior walls are as they originally stood. The interior restoration, completed by the emperor Alexander in 1859, has been carried out with great care in the exact style of the time, the furniture and ornaments being authentic and placed as they would have been.
(St. Basil the Blessed)
THÉOPHILE GAUTIER
We soon reached the Kitai-Gorod, which is the business quarter, upon the Krasnaia, the Red Square, or rather the beautiful square, for in Russia the words red and beautiful are synonymous. Upon one side of this square is the long façade of the Gostinnoi-Dvor, an immense bazaar with streets enclosed by glass-like passages, and which contains no less than 6,000 shops. The outside wall of the Kremlin rears itself on another side, with gates piercing the towers of sharply peaked roofs, permitting you to see above it the turrets, the domes, the belfries and the spires of the churches and convents it encloses. On another side, strange as the architecture of dreamland, stands the chimerical and impossible church of Vassili-Blagennoi, which makes your reason doubt the testimony of your eyes. Although it appears real enough, you ask yourself if it is not a fantastic mirage, a building made of clouds curiously coloured by the sunlight, and which the quivering air will change or cause to dissolve. Without any doubt, it is the most original building in the world; it recalls nothing that you have ever seen and it belongs to no style whatever: you might call it a gigantic madrepore, a colossal formation of crystals, or a grotto of stalactites inverted.
But let us not search for comparisons to give an idea of something that has no prototype. Let us try rather to describe Vassili-Blagennoi, if indeed there exists a vocabulary to speak of what had never been imagined previously.
There is a legend about Vassili-Blagennoi, which is probably not true, but which nevertheless expresses with strength and poetry the sense of wondering stupefaction felt at the semi-barbarous period when that singular edifice, so remote from all architectural traditions, was erected. Ivan the Terrible had this cathedral built as a thank-offering for the conquest of Kasan, and when it was finished, he found it so beautiful, wonderful and astounding, that he ordered the architect's eyes to be put out—they say he was an Italian—so that he could never erect anything similar. According to another version of the same legend, the Tsar asked the originator of this church if he could not erect a still more beautiful one, and upon his reply in the affirmative, he cut off his head, so that Vassili-Blagennoi might remain unrivalled forever. A more flattering exhibition of jealous cruelty cannot be imagined, but this Ivan the Terrible was at bottom a true artist and a passionate dilettante. Such ferocity in matters of art is more pleasing to me than indifference.
Imagine on a kind of platform which lifts the base from the ground, the most peculiar, the most incomprehensible, the most prodigious heaping up of large and little cabins, outside stairways, galleries with arcades and unexpected hiding-places and projections, unsymmetrical porches, chapels in juxtaposition, windows pierced in the walls at haphazard, indescribable forms and a rounding out of the interior arrangement, as if the architect, seated in the centre of his work had produced a building by thrusting it out from him. From the roof of this church which might be taken for a Hindu, Chinese, or Thibetan pagoda, there springs a forest of belfries of the strangest taste, fantastic beyond anything else in the world. The one in the centre, the tallest and most massive, shows three or four stories from base to spire. First come little columns, and toothed string-courses, then come some pilasters framing long mullioned windows, then a series of blank arches like scales, overlapping one another, and on the sides of the spire wart-like ornaments outlining each spire, the whole terminated by a lantern surmounted by an inverted golden bulb bearing on its tip the Russian cross. The others, which are slenderer and shorter, affect the form of the minaret, and their fantastically ornamented towers end in cupolas that swell strangely into the form of onions. Some are tortured into facets, others ribbed, some cut into diamond-shaped points like pineapples, some striped with fillets in spirals, others again decorated with lozenge-shaped and overlapping scales, or honeycombed like a bee-hive, and all adorned at their summit with the golden ball surmounted by the cross.
Fig. 16VASSILI-BLAGENNOI (ST. BASIL THE BLESSED), MOSCOW.
VASSILI-BLAGENNOI (ST. BASIL THE BLESSED), MOSCOW.
What adds still more to the fantastic effect of Vassili-Blagennoi, is that it is coloured with the most incongruous tones which nevertheless produce a harmonious effect that charms the eye. Red, blue, apple-green and yellow meet here in all portions of the building. Columns, capitals, arches and ornaments are painted with startling shades which give a strong relief. On the plain spaces of rare occurrence, they have simulated divisions or panels framing pots of flowers, rose-windows, wreathing vines, and chimæras. The domes of the bell-towers are decorated with coloured designs that recall the patterns of India shawls; and, displayed thus on the roofs of the church, they recall the kiosks of the Sultans.
The same fantastic genius presided over the plan and ornamentation of the interior. The first chapel, which is very low and in which a few lamps glimmer, resembles a golden cavern; unexpected stars throw their rays across the dusky shadows and make the stiff images of the Greek saints stand out like phantoms. The mosaics of St. Mark's in Venice alone can give an approximate idea of the effect of this astonishing richness. At the back, the iconostas looms up in the twilight shot through with rays like a golden and jewelled wall between the faithful and the priests of the sanctuary.
Vassili-Blagennoi does not present, like other churches, a simple interior composed of several naves communicating and cut at certain points of intersection after the laws of the rites followed in the temple. It is formed of a collection of churches, or chapels, in juxtaposition and independent of each other. Each bell-tower contains a chapel, which arranges itself as it pleases in this mass. The dome is the terminal of the spire or the bulb of the cupola. You might believe yourself under the enormous casque of some Circassian or Tartar giant. These calottes are, moreover, marvellously painted and decorated in the interior. It is the same with the walls covered with those barbaric and hieratic figures, the traditional designs for which the Greek monks of Mount Athos have preserved from century to century, and which, in Russia, often deceive the careless observer regarding the age of a building. It is a peculiar sensation to find yourself in these mysterious sanctuaries, where personages familiar to the Roman Catholic cult, mingle with the saints peculiar to the Greek Calendar, and seem in their archaic Byzantine and constrained appearance to have been translated awkwardly into gold by the childish devotion of a primitive race. These images that you view across the carved and silver-gilt work of the iconostas, where they are ranged symmetrically upon the golden screen opening their large fixed eyes and raising their brown hand with the fingers turned in a symbolic fashion, produce, by means of their somewhat savage, superhuman and immutable traditional aspect, a religious impression not to be found in more advanced works of art. These figures, seen amid the golden reflections and twinkling light of the lamps, easily assume a phantasmagorical life, capable of impressing sensitive imaginations and of creating, especially at the twilight hour, a peculiar kind of sacred awe.
Narrow corridors, low arched passages, so narrow that your elbows brush the walls and so low that you have to bend your head, circle about these chapels and lead from one to the other. Nothing could be more fantastic than these passages; the architect seems to have taken pleasure in tangling up their threading ways. You ascend, you descend, you seem to go out of the building, you seem to return, twisting about a cornice to follow the curves of a bell-tower, and walking through thick walls in tortuous passages that might be compared to the capillary tubes of madrepores, or to the roads made by insects in the barks of trees. After so many turnings and windings, your head swims, a vertigo seizes you, and you wonder if you are not a mollusk in an immense shell. I do not speak of the mysterious corners, of inexplicable cœcums, low doors opening no one knows whither, dark stairways descending into profound depths; for I could never finish talking of this architecture, which you seem to walk through as if in a dream.
THOMAS MICHELL
The Tsar still bears the title of King of Poland, but the constitutional kingdom created at the great settlement of political accounts in 1815 has been officially styled "The Cis-Vistula Provinces," ever since the absolute incorporation with the Russian empire in 1868. The provinces in question, ten in number, have an aggregate area of 49,157 English square miles, and a population of eight millions, composed to the extent of sixty-five per cent. of Poles, the remainder being Jews (in the proportion of thirteen per cent., and settled chiefly in towns), Lithuanians, Russians, Germans, and other aliens.
The Poles (the Polacks of Shakespeare), are a branch of the Sclav race, their language differing but little from that of the Russians, Czechs (Bohemians), Servians, Bulgarians, and other kindred remnants. Contact and co-operation with Western civilization, and escape from Tartar subjugation, permitted the Poles to work out their own development on lines so widely apart from those pursued by their Russian brethren, that the complete amalgamation of these two great Sclav branches has long been a matter of practical impossibility.
Polish history begins, like that of Russia, with Scandinavian invasion; Szainocha, a reliable authority of the present century, asserted that the Northmen descended on the Polish coast of the Baltic, and became, as in Russia, ancestors of the noble houses. On the other hand, it is on record that the first Grand Duke of Poland (about A. D. 842), was Piastus, a peasant, who founded a dynasty that was superseded only in 1385 by the Lithuanian Jagellons. Christianity was introduced by the fourth of the Piasts, A. D. 964, and it was a sovereign of the same House, Boleslas I., the Brave, who gave a solid foundation to the Polish State. He conquered Dantzig and Pomerania, Silesia, Moravia, and White Russia, as far as the Dnieper. After being partitioned, in accordance with the principle that long obtained in the neighbouring Russian principalities, the component territories of Poland were reunited by Vladislaf (Ladislaf) the Short, who established his capital, in 1320, at Cracow, where the Polish kings were ever after crowned. Casimir the Great, the Polish Justinian (1334-1370), gained for himself the title ofRex Rusticorum, by the bestowal of benefits on the peasantry, who wereadscripti glehœ, and by the limitation of the power of the nobles, or freeholders. On his death, Louis, King of Hungary, his sister's son, was called to the throne; but in order to insure its continued possession he was compelled to reinstate the nobles in all their privileges, under aPacta Conventa, which, subject to alterations made at Diets, was retained as part of the Coronation Oath so long as there were Polish kings to be consecrated. He was the last sovereign of the Piast period. After compelling his daughter to marry, not William of Austria, whom she loved, but Jagellon, Duke of Lithuania, who offered to unite his extensive and adjacent dominions with those of Poland, and to convert his own pagan subjects to Christianity, the nobles, in virtue of their Magna Charta, elected Jagellon (baptized under the name of Ladislas) to the throne of Poland, which thus became dynastically united (1386), with that of Lithuania.
On the death, in 1572, of Sigismund II., Augustus, the last of the Jagellons, the power of the king, already limited by that of two chambers, was still further diminished, and the crown became elective. While occupied in besieging the Huguenots at Rochelle, and at a time when Poland enjoyed more religious liberty than any other country in Europe, Henry of Valois was elected to the throne, in succession to Sigismund II.; but he quickly absconded from Cracow in order to become Henry III. of France. The Jesuits, introduced in the next reign, that of Stephen Bathori, brought strong intolerance with them, and one of the reasons that led the Cossacks of the Polish Ukraine to solicit Russian protection was the inferior position to which their Greek religion had been reduced in relation to Roman Catholicism. The Russians and Poles had been at war with each other for two centuries. Moscow had been occupied in 1610 by the Poles in the name of Ladislas, son of Sigismund III., of the Swedish Wasa family, elected to the Muscovite throne by the Russian boyars, but soon expelled by the patriots, under Minin and Pojarski. Sobieski, who had saved Vienna for the Austrians, could not keep Kief and Little Russia for the Poles. Such was the outcome of disorders and revolutions in the State, and of wars with Muscovy, Turkey, and Sweden, as well as with Tartars and Cossacks. Frederick Augustus II., Elector of Saxony, succeeded Sobieski, and reigned until 1733, with an interval of five years, during which he was superseded by Stanislas I.
Fig. 17NOWO ZJAZD STREET, WARSAW.
NOWO ZJAZD STREET, WARSAW.
Dissension and anarchy became still more general, in the reign of the next sovereign, Augustus III. Civil war, in which the question of the rights of Lutherans, Calvinists, and other "dissidents" obnoxious to the Roman Catholic Church played a great part, resulted in the intervention of Russia and Prussia, and in 1772 the first partition of Poland was consummated. The second followed in 1793, under an arrangement between the same countries, which had taken alarm at a liberal constitution voted by the Polish Diet in 1791, especially as it had provided for the emancipation of theadscripti glebœ. The struggle made by Thaddeus Kosciuszko ended in the entry of Suvoroff into Warsaw over the ashes of the Prague suburb, and in the third dismemberment (1795), of ancient Poland, under which even Warsaw was absorbed by Russia.
Previous to these several partitions, Poland occupied a territory much more extensive than that of France. In addition to the kingdom proper, it included the province of Posen and part of West Prussia, Cracow, and Galicia, Lithuania, the provinces of Volhynia and Podolia, and part of the present province of Kief. In 1772, Dantzig was a seaport of Poland, Kaminets, in Podolia, its border stronghold against Turkey; while to the west and north its frontier extended almost to the walls of Riga, and to within a short distance from Moscow. In still earlier times, Bessarabia, Moldavia, Silesia, and Livonia were embraced within the Polish possessions.
These successive partitions gave the most extensive portion of Polish territory to Russia, the most populous to Austria, and the most commercial to Prussia. Napoleon I. revived a Polish state out of the provinces that had been seized by Prussia and Austria. This was first constituted into a Grand Duchy under the King of Saxony, and in 1815, when Galicia (with Cracow) was restored to Austria, and Posen to Prussia, Warsaw became again a kingdom under a constitution granted by Alexander I. The old Polish provinces that had fallen to the share of Catherine II. at the partitions remained incorporated with the Russian Empire, but were not fully subjected to a Russian administration until after the great Polish insurrection of 1830, when also the constitution of 1815 was withdrawn, the national army abolished, and the Polish language proscribed in the public offices.
Notwithstanding the wide measures of Home Rule introduced by Alexander II. into the administration of the kingdom, and which, in combination with many liberal and pregnant reforms in Russia Proper appeared to offer to the Poles the prospect of no inconsiderable influence over the destinies of the Russian Empire, the old spirit of national independence began to manifest itself, and in 1862, not without encouragement from Napoleon III., an insurrection broke out at Warsaw.
Outside Warsaw and its immediate vicinity there is little in Russian Poland to interest the tourist. The country is generally level and monotonous, with wide expanses of sand, heath, and forest, and it is only towards the north and east that the ground may be said to be heavily timbered. Dense forests stretch down from the Russian, anciently Polish, province of Grodno, and now form the last retreat in Europe of theBison Europeans, the survivor of the Aurochs (Bos primigenius), which is supposed to have been the original stock of our horned cattle. Although much worried by the wolf, the bear, and the lynx, the bison is strictly preserved from the hunter, and are not therefore likely to disappear like theBos Americanus, or buffalo, which has so long been ruthlessly slaughtered in the United States.
Interspersed among these barren or wooded tracts are areas containing some of the finest corn-bearing soil in Europe, supplying from time immemorial vast quantities of superior grain for shipment from ports in the Baltic. It is produced on the larger estates of two hundred to fifteen hundred acres, belonging to more than eight thousand proprietors. The peasantry, who hold more than 240,000 farms—seldom exceeding forty acres—contribute next to nothing towards exportation, their mode of agriculture being almost as rude as that of the Russian peasantry, and their habits of life but little superior, especially in the matter of drink. Towns, large and small, occur more frequently than in Russia, and while some are rich and industrial, others—we may say the great majority—are poor and squalid, affording no accommodation that would render possible the visit of even the least fastidious traveller.
Consequently we confine ourselves to Warsaw, which we take on our way by rail to or from St. Petersburg or Moscow. Founded in the Twelfth Century, and, during the Piast period, the seat of the appanaged Dukes of Masovia, Warszawa, replaced Cracow as the residence of the Polish kings and therefore as the capital of Poland, on the election of Sigismund III. (1586). It has now a population of about 445,000, not including the Russian garrison of 31,500 officers and men. The left bank of the Vistula, on which Warsaw is chiefly built, is high, and the pretty, gay, and animated city, with its stately lines of streets, wide squares, and spacious gardens, is picturesquely disposed along the brow of the cliff and on the plains above. Across the broad sandy bed of the stream, here "shallow, ever-changing, and divided as Poland itself," and which is on its way from the Carpathians to the Baltic, is the Prague suburb, which, formerly fortified, has never recovered from the assault by Suvoroff in 1794, when its sixteen thousand inhabitants were indiscriminately put to the sword. A vast panorama spreads out in every direction from this melancholy and dirty point of vantage. Opposite is the Zamek, or castle, built by the Dukes of Masovia, and enlarged and restored by several of the Polish kings, from Sigismund III. to Stanislas Augustus Poniatovski. Its pictures and objects of art are now at St. Petersburg, and Moscow, and the old royal apartments are occupied by the Governor-General. The square in front of the castle was the scene of the last Polish "demonstrations," in 1861, when it was twice stained with blood.
In the Stare Miasto, or Old Town, strongly old German in aspect, stands the cathedral, built in the Thirteenth Century, and restored on the last occasion by King John Sobieski. A still more ancient sacred edifice is the Church of Our Lady in the Nove Miasto, or New Town; but it certainly retains no traces of deep antiquity. Beyond the great Sapieha and Sierakovski Barracks towers the Alexander Citadel, with its outlying fortifications, built in 1832-35, at the expense of the city, as a penalty for the insurrection in 1830. In the same direction, but a considerable distance from the town, is Mariemont, the country seat of the consort of John Sobieski; also Kaskada, a place of entertainment much frequented by the inhabitants of Warsaw, and Bielany, a pretty spot on the Vistula commanding a fine view. The churches and chapels, mostly Roman Catholic, are numerous (eighty-five), and so are the monasteries and convents (twenty-two).
Near Novi Sviat (New World) Street, we find the Avenues, orChamps Elysées, bordered by fine lime-trees, in front of elegant private residences. Crossing a large square, in which the troops are exercised, and the military hospital at Uiazdov, formerly a castle of the kings of Poland, we reach the fine park of Lazienki, a country seat of much elegance built by King Stanislas Augustus, and now the residence of the Emperor when he visits Warsaw. The ceilings of thischâteauwere painted by Bacciarelli, and its walls are hung with portraits of numerous beautiful women.
Contiguous to the Lazienki Park are the extensive gardens of the Belvedere Palace, in which the Poles attempted in 1830 to get rid of their viceroy, the Grand Duke Constantine. We drive hence in less than an hour to one of the most interesting places near Warsaw. This is the Castle of Villanov, built by John Sobieski, who died in it. To this retreat he brought back the trophies of his mighty deeds in arms, and here sought repose after driving the Turks from the walls of Vienna. Thechâteau, now the property of Countess Potoçka, is full of historical portraits, objects of art, and other curiosities, of which the most interesting is the magnificent suit of armour presented by the Pope to Sobieski in memory of his great victory. The apartments of his beautiful consort are of great elegance. In the gallery of pictures we notice an admirable Rubens—theDeath of Seneca; although we are more strongly attracted by an original portrait of Bacon, which is but little known in England.
Fig. 18HOTEL DE VILLE, WARSAW.
HOTEL DE VILLE, WARSAW.
For want of space, again we must plead guilty of omitting to describe many palatial residences, and several noticeable monuments, among which is one to Copernicus, the Polish founder of modern astronomy. On the same ground we pass over handsome public buildings, theatres, gardens and cemeteries, in one of which, the Evangelical Cemetery, is buried John Cockerell, to whom Belgium owes so much of her industrial prosperity.
J. BEAVINGTON ATKINSON
Kief, the Jerusalem of Russia, is by nature marked for distinction; she rises like an Etruscan city from the plain; she is flanked by fortifications; she is pleasantly clothed by trees, and height beyond height is crowned by castle or by church. Fifty thousand pilgrims annually, many of whom are footsore from long and weary journeying, throw themselves on their knees as they see the sacred city from afar: her holy places shine in the sun as a light set upon a hill which cannot be hid. Three holy shrines which I can recall to mind—Kief, Assisi, and Jerusalem—are alike fortunate in command of situation; the approach to each is most impressive. In Kief particularly the natural landscape is heightened in pictorial effect by the picturesque groups of pilgrims, staves in hand and wallets on back, who may be seen at all hours of the day clambering up the hill, resting under the shadow of a tree, or reverently bowing the head at the sound of a convent bell.
Kief is not one city, but three cities, each with its own fortification. The old town, strong in position, and enclosing within its circuit the Cathedral of St. Sophia and the Palace of the Metropolitan, was in remote ages a Sclavonian Pantheon, sacred to the Russian Jupiter and other savage gods. The new town, separated from the old town by a deep ravine, stands on a broad platform which rises precipitously from the banks of the Dnieper. The walls are massive, the fort is strong, and the famous monastery, the first in rank in Russia, with its gilt and coloured domes, shines from out the shade of a deep wood. The third division, "the Town of the Vale," situated between the hills and the river, is chiefly devoted to commerce. Without much stretch of fancy it might be said that Kief, like Rome, Lisbon and some other cities, is built on seven hills. And thus the pictorial aspect changes almost at every step; a winding path will bring to view an unsuspected height, or open up a valley previously hid. The traveller has in the course of his wanderings often to feel thankful that a kind providence has planted sacred places in the midst of lovely scenery. The holy mountain at Varallo, the sacred hill at Orta, are, like the shrines of Kief, made doubly pleasant for pilgrimage through the beauties of nature by which they are surrounded. It is said that at the monastery of the Grande Chartreuse the monks do not permit themselves to look too much at the outward landscape, lest their hearts should by the loveliness of earth be estranged from heaven. I do not think that Russian priests or pilgrims incur any such danger. When they are neither praying nor eating they are sleeping; in short, I did not among the motley multitude see a single eye open to the loveliness of colour in the sky above, or to the beauty of form in the earth beneath. It is singular how obtuse these people are; I have noticed in a crowded railway carriage that not a face would be turned to the glory of the setting sun, but if a church tower came into view on the distant horizon, every hand was raised to make the sign of the cross. While taking my observations among the pilgrims at Kief I was struck with the fact, not only that a superstitious faith, but that a degraded art blinds the eye to the beauty of nature. It is one of the high services of true art to lead the mind to the contemplation, to the love and the better understanding, of the works of creation. But, on the contrary, it is the penalty of this Byzantine art to close the appointed access between nature and nature's God. An art which ignores and violates truth and beauty cannot do otherwise than lead the mind away from nature. This seemed one of the several lessons taught by Kief, the city of pilgrimage.
Sketchers of character and costume will find excellent studies among the pilgrims of Kief. The upper and educated classes, who in Russia are assimilating with their equals in other nations, and are therefore not tempting to the pencil or the brush, do not, as we have already seen, come in any numbers to these sacred shrines. It is the lower orders, who still preserve the manners and customs of their ancestors, that make these church festivals so attractive to the artist. The variety of races brought together from afar—a diversity only possibly within an empire, like Russia, made up of heterogeneous materials—might serve not only to fill a portfolio, but to illustrate a volume; the ethnologist equally with the painter would find at the time of great festivities curious specimens of humanity. I remember some years ago to have met with the French artist, M. Théodore Valerio, when he had brought home theAlbum Ethnographiquefrom Hungary, Croatia, and the more distant borders of the Danube. It was quite refreshing, after the infinite number of costume-studies I had seen from Italian peasantry, to find that art had the possibility of an entirely new sphere among the Sclavonic races. A like field for any painter of enterprise is now open in Russia. The large and famous composition,The Butter Week (Carnival) in St. Petersburg, by C. Makowski, may serve to indicate the hitherto undeveloped pictorial resources of the empire. When the conditions are new there is a possibility that the art may be new also. The ethnology, the physical geography, the climate, the religion, the products of the animal and vegetable kingdoms, so far as they are peculiar to Russia, will some day become reflected into the national art. It is true that the painter may occasionally feel a want of colour, the costumes of the peasant are apt to be dull and heavy, yet not unfrequently rags and tatters bring compensation by picturesque outlines and paintable surface-textures. At Kief, however, the traveller is sufficiently south and east to fall in with warm southern hues and Oriental harmonies, broken and enriched, moreover, among the lower orders by that engrained dirt which I have usually noted as the special privilege and prerogative of pilgrims in all parts of the world. The use of soap would seem to be accounted as sacrilege on religious sentiment. What with dust, and what with sun, the wayfarers who toil up the heights leading to the holy hill have gained a colour which a Murillo would delight in. The face and neck bronzed by the hot sun tell out grandly from a flowing mass of hair worthy of a patriarch.