standards. Man will follow interest to the edge of the precipice, but place honour on the opposite side and he will leap into her arms. When this is the spirit of an army, it is invincible. Such were the soldiers of Peter the Great; such of Suwarroff; and many are now in the armies of the present emperor, who emulate the character and fame of that unconquered general.

The keys of Derbent had been deposited in this church a few days only before I visited it, it being the third time that place had fallen under the Russian arms. Peter the Great was the first to whom it surrendered. Platon Zuboff, in the reign of Catherine II., reduced it a second time. And it is rather extraordinary, in its last defeat, the very man who presented the keys to Zuboff was fated, at a very advanced age, to lay them at the feet of a third conqueror. Here is also the bread and salt which was given with the keys of Warsaw to field-marshal Suwarroff, as a mark of the entire subjection of that kingdom to the imperial arms. The spire of this edifice is high like that of the admiralty, and gilt with ducat gold.

In one quarter of the fortress are extensive buildings appropriated to coining. For the apparatus, the government is indebted to Mr. Bolton of Soho. Several of his people are now here engaged in completing the necessary works.

In the walls and bastions which bulwark this castellated island are cells, or rather state prisons, where many a wretched being has lingered out an anxious life. In one of these places died the son of Peter the First after his condemnation. And here the unhappy and beautiful princess Tarrakanoff met her fate. In 1771 the Neva rose to a tremendous height, and inundating part of the city, entirely overflowed the fortress. All who were in the dungeons perished under the waters; and amongst the number, it is said, was her whose tale so darkly shadows the brilliant career of the great empress.

Take the whole of this fortified island together, with its embattled towers and pinnacles; and when under a setting sun you view it from the long perspective of the opposite street, no object can be finer. The burnished spire burning in brightness, and casting its stream of light over the turrets of the for

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tress; the Neva flowing in shining waves at its base, and bearing on its bosom myriads of boats passing and repassing, some filled with the treasures of merchandise, and others in which the happy navigators chant their national strains as they float along. No scene can possess more of the picturesque and beautiful. And when we contrast the gay court air of these northern gondolas with the savage barks from more distant quarters, and take in the variously attired groupes busy on the shore, a wilderness is mingled with the polished features of the view, which makes the whole appear the effect of enchantment.

Having led you through this fatal, romantic island, I shall reconduct you across the waves, and bring you before the walls of the marble palace and church. The ideas suggested by the names of those two edifices are those of elegance and splendor. When we speak of a marble structure, and consider the costliness of the material, with the classic uses to which it has generally been appropriated, we expect to behold every beauty of architecture displayed on its splendid surface. But here we see neither the one nor the other: and I will venture to assert, that any person who was not told the palace and church in question were built of marble, might pass them by a hundred times as unworthy of his notice. This valuable stone, when not white, is unfit for any but small and internal decorations, where its composition will be more near the eye. Its veins, blending shades and polish, are lost in the infinite parts and height of a gigantic and extensive building. The marble palace and church are perhaps the most expensive, most observed, and least admirable of any in the city. The first is the residence of the grand duke Constantine; but has nothing to boast of either in the fitting up or furniture.

The foundation of the church was laid by the empress Catherine, and finished wretchedly with brick by the emperor Paul. For the honour of the empire, I hope that it will either be altered to the empress's original design, or pulled down altogether. It stands in one of the finest squares in Europe, called Isaac's Place, and particularly celebrated for containing the admirable equestrian statue of Peter the Great. This work

of modern art was erected by the commands of the late empress; and like all her projects bears the stamp of greatness. The name of the artist is Falconet; he was a Frenchman: but this statue, for genius and exquisite execution, would have done honour to the best sculptors of any nation. A most sublime conception is displayed in the design. The allegory is finely imagined; and had he not sacrificed the result of the whole to the prominence of his groupe, the grand and united effect of the statue and its pedestal striking at once upon the eye, would have been unequalled in the works of man. A mass of granite of a size at present immense, but formerly most astonishing, is the pedestal. A steep aclivity like that of a rugged mountain carries the eye to its summit, which looks down on the opposite side to a descent nearly perpendicular. The figure of the hero is on horseback, supposed to have attained the object of his ambition, by surmounting all the apparent impossibilities which so arduous an enterprise presented. The victorious animal is proudly rearing on the highest point of the rock, whilst his imperial master stretches forth his mighty arm as the father and protector of his country. A serpent, in attempting to impede his course, is trampled on by the feet of the horse, and writhing in all the agonies of expiring nature. The emperor is seated on the skin of a bear; and habited in a tunic and a sort of toga which forms the drapery behind. His left hand guides the reins; his right (as I before observed) is advanced straight forward on the same side of the horse's neck. The head of the statue is crowned with a laurel wreath.

Having described its disposition, I shall now speak more minutely of its merits; and, if you will allow me to find any defect in so glorious a piece of workmanship, glance at the few imperfections I was able to discern. The thought seems almost sacrilege; and yet as a mortal's creation, we have no reason to expect it should be exempted from the mark of fallibility. The design is faultless; and executed in a style of greatness worthy the character to whom it is dedicated. The majestic features and heroic expression of the head prove how deeply the artist was impressed with the grandeur of the soul whose outward covering he was thus called upon to pourtray. And yet

I must not give the honour entirely to genius, for much of it belongs to love. We all know that it was this tender passion which first discovered the art of commemorating the human form. What the maid of Corinth did by her lover was done by a young damsel of France with regard to Peter the Great. She loved his person and adored his mind. The wonderful bust which she modelled of him, declares what a godlike image of himself he had stamped on her heart; and the divine manner with which she has given this impression to the eyes of men, is beyond description perfect. Falconet saw this bust, and from its breathing lines formed the head of his statue. The contour of the face expresses the most powerful command; and that exalted, boundless, expansion of thought which so wisely dictated his measures, and confirmed him to pursue them with unabated energy, till they met the full fruition of his wishes in the prosperity and happiness of his people. The position of his outstretched arm is rather stiff; being almost a straight line from the shoulder to the point of the middle finger; in some views we know not whether it be a hand or a truncheon. The waist is too long. Mr. Falconet might plead in excuse that the emperor was so shaped. That is true; but the artist might have availed himself of the license allowed to taste, and without any violation of truth a few folds of drapery would have concealed this glaring want of grace. The legs and thighs appear too short for the upper part of the figure; and when we suppose it dismounting and standing by itself, we cannot but think that such insufficient supports would sink under the weight of so colossal a body. The horse, in my opinion, is not to be surpassed. When I was in Paris I saw those fine equestrian statues which the French took from Venice, and set up in the Place de Carrousel; but remember nothing in them that was superior to this. To all the beauties of the ancient form, it unites the easy grace of nature, with a fire which pervades every line, and gives such a life to the statue, that as you gaze you expect to see it leap from the pinnacle into the air. There is nothing gravitating in this sublime steed: it would not touch the ground; but seems framed to tread the fields of ether with those of the sun.

The difficulty of keeping so great a mass of weighty metal in so volant an attitude, has been most ingeniously and admirably overcome by the artist. The sweep of the tail, with the hinder parts of the horse, are interwoven with the curvatures of the expiring snake; and together compose a sufficient counterpoise to the figure and fore-part of the animal.

To form an adequate pedestal for so magnificent a work the empress, at an enormous expense and expenditure of the most indefatigable labour, brought a huge rock of granite from Wyborg. It was transported on large iron balls, and with other mechanical aids, safe and whole to St. Petersburgh. I saw a curious model of it, with the dimensions of the stone, journeying machines, and groupes of natives employed about it, at the academy of arts. It was the original wish of the empress Catherine that on this rough piece of nature the grand founder of St. Petersburgh should be placed. But the sculptor, perhaps from the reason I before hinted, decided otherwise. He said it ought to be adapted to the rules of art: and taking it under his own chissel, by fine curves and studied shapes soon robbed it of all sublimity; and left nothing of nature but the matter of which it was composed. Originally perfect for its object, its bold lines and precipitous sides were fine emblems of the country whose ruggedness he had subdued, and whose prejudices of a thousand years he had surmounted and laid at his feet. The present form of the rock, lessened one half from its first dimensions, expresses nothing but the awkward bulging shape of a heavy cloud. Indeed, so bad was the business, that after all the cutting and carving, a large piece was obliged to be joined on again to replace what the jealousy or the false taste of the artist had destroyed. When Catherine beheld the erection for the first time, she expressed so much disappointment at the sight, as to ask with an air of displeased surprise, “what had been made of the rock!" I cannot omit mentioning an interesting circumstance which took place at the presentation of this statue.

The empress, surrounded by her court, took a station admirably adapted to behold at once the monument she had commanded to be raised to the honour of her predecessor; her ex