CHAPTER X

ST. PETERSBURG

What must the man have been who, born and bred in this atmosphere, conceived and by one tremendous wrench, almost by his own manual labour and his own sole gigantic strength, executed the prodigious idea of dragging the nation, against its will, into the light of Europe, and erecting a new capital and a new empire among the cities and kingdoms of the world.

St. Petersburg is indeed his most enduring monument. A spot up to that time without a single association, selected instead of the Holy City to which even now every Russian turns as to his mother; a site which but a few years before had belonged to his most inveterate enemies, won from morass and forest, with difficulty defended, and perhaps even yet doomed to fall before the inundations of its own river.--DEAN STANLEY.

Russia, or Garthrealm, was not outside the circuit of saga lands. The _Heimskringla_ indeed has much to tell us concerning it in days when the country formed a most hospitable refuge for those in trouble at home. And at one time or other most prominent men of the viking age were in that uncomfortable position.

Of the Slavs themselves, indeed, we do not learn a great deal. The saga writers were not much interested in foreign countries except as they affected the Norse, but the regard for law in Russia evidently made an impression, as did also the respect entertained for woman there, at any rate as she was represented by the queen. The chief town of Russia in those days was called by the Norsemen Holmgarth, because it stood on an island, to the Slavs it was known as Novgorod, or new town, although about the oldest we wot of in the land. It became in rather later days the eastern outpost of Hansa trade (p. 155).

Russia herself, like Normandy, was originally a Scandinavian state, and there seems to be little doubt that the name Russ was originally applied to the Norse. Even to-day the Finns know the Swedes as Ruotsi.[132] Thus Ruric and his viking followers[133] gave a name to the Slavs of the North, even as Bulgars from Asia named a portion of the Slavs of the South and the German Franks gave a new designation to Gaul. In all three cases the conquerors who gave a new name to the conquered received from them language and nearly everything else. It is quite possible, however, that Scandinavian vigour was potent in giving to northern Slavland that political unity which neither Mongol domination, nor the long lapse of centuries nor a series of drunken and incapable monarchs ever succeeded in breaking up.

While the disastrous failure of the southern Slavs to unite is patent to the whole earth.

Closely in touch with the Northlands Garthrealm long remained; it was clearly a district in which the Norse could feel themselves perfectly at home, however much at times they might feel the call of the rockbound fjords. Thus for several centuries, from the British Isles to the heart of Russia, all lands were Scandinavian pure, or under the influence of the ever conquering Norse. Had the race possessed a spark of Roman organising power, here had been established a dominion greater than any that the Southlands knew, for such an empire had hardly failed to girdle the world, expanding eastward through northern Asia, westward from Vinland the Good. Knut the Rich (p. 114) seems to have been about the only individual to whom any such ideas occurred, and the very keenness of all the Norse about local autonomy and parochial Things was a hopeless bar to such plans.

It is one of the chief characteristics of the Norse easily to be absorbed by other races, whether in ancient viking times or in the American North-West to-day. On Ireland they left no further impression than a few traditions and a church dedication or two; to Russia they gave a name, but little more. Norsemen failed to be absorbed by other races only in Iceland and Faroe, where no other races were.

Both Olaf, son of Tryggvi, and Olaf the Saint, were at different times resident in Russia, when Norway proved unkind. The former was nine winters old when he came into Garthrealm, and he abode with King Valdimar other nine winters.

One day the boy was standing idly in the gate of the city when he suddenly noticed the person who had slain his fosterer. "Olaf had a little axe in his hand, which same he drave into Klerkon's head, so that it stood right down in the brain of him; then he fell to running home to the house, and told Sigurd his kinsman thereof." Such a spirited action would not have mattered much in Scandinavia, for in those days the Norse were very tolerant toward such effervescence of youthful spirits, but it was otherwise in Russia.

"Now in Holmgarth was the peace so hallowed, that, according to the law thereof, whoso slew a man undoomed should himself be slain. And now all the people made a rush together, according to their custom and law, and sought after the lad, where he were; and it was told that he was in the queen's garth, and that there was an host of men all armed.

"Hereof was the king told, and he went thereto with his folk, and would not that they fought, and so brought about truce and peace thereafter; and the king adjudged the weregild, and the queen paid the fine.

"Thereafter abode Olaf with the queen, and was right dear to her."[134]

Why the queen, to whom Sigurd had hastily entrusted the boy, was able to do so much is explained to us later on: "Now it was much the wont of mighty kings in those days, that the queen should have half the court, and sustain it at her own costs, and have thereto of the scat and dues what she needed. And thus it was at King Valdimar's, and the queen had no less court than the king; and somewhat would they strive about men of fame, and either of them would have such for themselves.

"Now so it befell that the king trowed those redes aforesaid which folk spake before him, and became somewhat cold to Olaf, and rough. And when Olaf found that, he told the queen thereof, and said withal that he was minded to fare into the Northlands, where, said he, his kin had dominion aforetime" and where he deemed it like that he should have the most furtherance.

"So the queen biddeth him farewell, and sayeth that he shall be deemed a noble man whithersoever he cometh."[135]

The reasons for the king's suspicion are rather delicately explained: "Yet it befell, as oft it doth when outland men have dominion, or win fame more abundant than they of the land, that many envied him the great love he had of the king, and of the queen no less. So men bade the king beware lest he make Olaf over-great: 'For there is the greatest risk of such a man, lest he lend himself to doing thee or the realm some hurt, he being so fulfilled of prowess and might and the love of men; nor forsooth wot we whereof he and the queen are evermore talking.'"

Olaf the Holy was in slightly later days to find a refuge in Russia and to be welcomed there by a Scandinavian queen, daughter of his old enemy and namesake, the King of Sweden. This was the manner of the royal marriage, and somewhat modern it sounds. "The next spring there came to Sweden messengers from King Jarisleif east away from Holmgarth, and they fared to see to the matter of King Olaf's promise from the past summer to give Ingigerd his daughter to King Jarisleif. King Olaf put the matter before Ingigerd, and said it was his will that she should wed King Jarisleif."

Driven from his kingdom and somewhat broken in his fortunes, "King Olaf arrayed his journey and got him a ship. And he fared that summer, and letted not till he came east to Garth-realm to the meeting of King Jarisleif, him and his queen, Ingigerd.... King Jarisleif gave King Olaf a hearty welcome, and bade him abide there with him and have land as much as he needed for the costs of holding of his company. That King Olaf took with thanks, and tarried there. So it is said, that King Olaf was devout and prayerful unto God all the days of his life. But from the time that he found his reign was waning, and his enemies were waxing mightier, then he laid all his heart to the serving of God; he was then hindered herefrom no more by other cares, or the toil which aforetime he had had on hand."[136]

"Sithence King Olaf came to Garth-realm he had great imaginings, and turned it over in his mind what rede he had best take. King Jarisleif and Queen Ingigerd bade King Olaf dwell with them, and take over the dominion called Vulgaria, and that is one part of Garth-realm; and there in that land the folk was heathen. King Olaf bethought him in his mind of this offer; but when he laid it before his men, they all were loth to take up their abode there, and egged the king on to betake himself north to Norway to his own kingdom. The king would be still further thinking of this, to lay down his kingdom, and fare out into the world unto Jerusalem, or into some other holy places, and there to go under the Rule."[137]

Not infrequently the Norse passed through Russia to the great metropolis of the eastern world (whence Russia had received her faith), New Rome, or Constantinople itself. So much were they impressed by that splendid city that they knew it as Micklegarth. The stalwart arms of the Norsemen, organised in the Vaeringian Guard, propped the Byzantine Empire against its Asian foes and gained for the Scandinavians much wealth. Among others the founder of Oslo (p. 95) had in that realm gotten enormous riches. "But when Harald came to Holmgarth, King Jarisleif gave him a wondrous good welcome, and there he tarried the winter over, and took into his own keeping all the gold which he had sent afore thither from Micklegarth, and many kinds of dear-goods. That was so mickle wealth, that no man in northern lands had seen such in one man's owning. Harald had three times come into palace-spoil whiles he was in Micklegarth. For that is law, that whenever the king of the Greeks dies the Vaerings shall have palace-spoil; they shall then go over all the king's palaces where are his wealth hoards, and there each one shall freely have for his own whatso he may lay hands on."[138]

Strangely similar, both in weakness and in strength, were Alexander and Peter, both of them most justly surnamed Great. Each was born to a kingdom, each had marvellous foresight and each had imperial ideas. Semi-barbarous sceptres they both inherited, and they realised how much might be done by importing the civilisation of sea-powers further west; each was a worker with his own hands, each cared much for the science and art of his generation, but neither was superior to amusements of the grossest and pastimes of the beastliest. Both drank themselves into the other world at an untimely age, leaving their work half done.

Each is commemorated by a city placed on the sea with the express purpose of attracting foreign influence, beyond the ancient limits of the country whose capital it became. More attractive in some ways the career of the Ptolemaic successors of Alexander at Alexandria than that of the immediate Romanoff descendants of Peter at Petersburg, but the story of an ancient nation ruled from a corner of its territory by a half foreign court is in both cases very much the same.

Many of the capitals of Europe know at least traditional founders, but on none is impressed the stamp of an individual to such an extent as here. No city on earth of anything like equal importance is so entirely the creation of a single mind, nor so truly a monument to individual force of character. No capital except Tokyo is to such an extent the symbol of a new era in a nation's life.

Peter heard the call of Europe and saw that it had something to offer that Asia could not give. Asiatics have felt a strange attraction toward European lands in all the ages of the world. Persian, Hun, Saracen and Turk have each in turn sought a footing on European soil. Despite administrative inconvenience the successive rulers of the House of Othman early desired to have as their capital some city famous in the story of the West. Peter's people were not Asiatics; their early organisation had come from the purest European stock, the conquering Norse themselves, their civilisation and religion had come straight from Rome. Not indeed old Rome on the Tiber, but during the tenth century the daughter city by the Bosphorus was probably the more cultured of the two.

On the border-land of the continents the Russians had for centuries looked east and not west, the very year of Peter's accession to power (1689) they had fixed their first frontier with China. He desired that Russia should be definitely European, and in order to consolidate his reforms a westward-looking window was essential. Its communications must be by sea, Poland shut out direct intercourse with Europe overland. Southward was the better climate, but a Black Sea port would have increased relations with a purely Oriental Empire. At the farthest end of the icy Baltic, where the Neva flows into the Gulf of Finland, as near to ancient Novgorod as a seaside town could be, there eventually he decided the new capital of Russia should stand.

From a glance at the map it is difficult to realise why no town had risen in so convenient a spot long before, but it is at once explained by a glance at the ground. Swampy forest, liable to floods and dangerous to health, extended over all the land where the City of Peter was to rise. The island that became the nucleus of the settlement had received a name from its hares. A few Finnish fishers, alone among mankind, broke the silence of its woods. The noble river communicates with little except timber forests, and wood is to-day brought down to Petersburg in temporary boats remarkable for their size, their frailty, and their graceful appearance.

The difficulties in the way of founding a city in such a spot were such as might well have appalled any ordinary mind. The site had but a few years before belonged to the Swedes, who maintained a small fort on the edge of Ladoga, the lake which the Neva drains. They were constantly making attacks; Charles XII. remarked that Peter was founding cities only that he might capture them. Petersburg might well have anticipated the fate of Port Arthur.

The wretched conditions in which operations had to be carried on brought about an appalling mortality among the workmen employed in building the new town, however much exaggerated may have been the foreign reports that two hundred thousand died. The mechanical appliances available were so extraordinarily poor that earth had to be carried by each workman as best he could; there was no one about who could construct a wheelbarrow! Brigands made communications with Russia unsafe and sometimes did as they pleased in the city itself, while sentries on duty or citizens going about their business were occasionally carried off by the wolves. Provisions had to be fetched from an enormous distance, the cost of living was extremely high. Though the woods were all around, fuel was so scarce that even the nobles (who most unwillingly had been compelled to live here for part of the year) were not allowed to have hot baths excepting once a week.

To add to all this no one except Peter could see the slightest need for any other capital than Moscow, still less the point of building a city on this forbidding and man-forsaken spot. But to the Tsar the rising town was a Paradise, so well loved that he had soon decided to make it not merely the chief seaport of his Empire, but the capital as well.

The objection which the sagas tell us the eleventh century Russians showed to outland men having dominion was fully shared by eighteenth century Russians, and the huge number of them employed about St. Petersburg helped still more to increase the general loathing for the new capital. Hardly a nation of Europe failed to supply Peter with friends and fellow-workers. He honoured them above his own subjects. Nor did it matter in the least in what circumstances he happened to encounter them. One day as he was inspecting the operations he chanced to notice working with the other convicts a scion of the fightingest family of Scotland, who, born in Sweden, combined with the surname of Douglas the designation of Gustaf Otto. Captured at Pultowa he entered the Russian service; having slain a general in wrath, he entered a Russian jail. But to Peter his failings did not appear at all seriously to cry to heaven for vengeance. He could well make allowance for the spirit of a Douglas when provoked, so restored him to all his honours. In 1719 the now Russified Swede-Scot seized the ancient capital of Finland, and bore in triumph from the cathedral of Abo the bones of Henry the English saint (p. 188).[139]

The only antiquities of St. Petersburg are the structures connected with the life of the strenuous founder. Peter's cottage, which was erected soon after the works began in 1703, is a large four-roomed, shingle-roof, log-hut; and the living-room which still contains the simple wooden furniture that he used enables one to some extent to picture the backwoods life of the imperial pioneer. The whole is enclosed in a larger structure of brick, and a miracle-eikon is the central feature of the shrine that now occupies the chamber where the great Tsar slept.

Never perhaps was Peter so happy as when he was living here. He hated lofty rooms and luxurious furniture and costly food. He liked to wear his oldest clothes and enjoyed working with his own hands. As a great concession to his wife he consented at Catherine's coronation to wear a gold-embroidered coat, but could think of nothing except the fact that its cost would have paid for several soldiers. In Paris he found the luxury of the Louvre absolutely insupportable. After looking impatiently at the sumptuous feast set out, he dined off radishes and bread which he washed down with two glasses of beer. After a contemptuous survey of the superbly fitted French bedrooms, he rested for the night on a camp-bed set up in a closet.

Close by the cottage was the small wooden church of the Trinity with two towers and onion domes which Peter built, but which was burned down early in 1913.

A picturesque appearance is given to the Neva's northern bank by the old fort with its needle spire of gold that stands on a little island of its own, close to the cottage and Trinity church. Peter's old earth bastions were faced with granite in later days and the east gate is dated 1740. For defending anything whatever the fortress is no more use than the Tower of London, but within are pleasant avenues of trees, and over the roofs of the barracks and other buildings rises the famous Cathedral of SS. Peter and Paul, where rest the city's founder and the later Tsars.[140] A soldiers' city from the very first St. Petersburg has been, and such it is to-day. Troops constantly pass along the streets; sentries with bayonets fixed are to be seen on every hand. The thoroughfares are patrolled by policemen, each armed with baton, revolver and sword.

Peter planned to build rather a canal town of Holland than a boulevard city of France. Many of the canals have been filled up, but beside one of those that remain, in the corner of the beautiful Summer Gardens, stands the delightful two-storey house with plaster bas-reliefs and metal roof that Dutch workmen built for Peter; it is known as his palace to-day. The rooms inside, doored and shuttered with panelled oak and partly lined with blue Dutch tiles, have a most cheerful and pleasant character; they contain some rather good carved work that was tooled by the great Tsar; a mirror-case with stag, foliage, birds and other things is signed and dated "Peter. 1710."[141]

In this same year he founded a Battle Abbey in thanksgiving for his victories, although he fully realised the need for reducing the extremely large number of monks that Russia contained. This convent helps one to realise how well Peter came to understand the people that he ruled. If the new city was really to be the capital of this pious land, something of old Russia, of Holy Russia, must be brought into its midst. Most fortunately for Peter's plans it chanced that as early as 1241 a Russian general had gotten the surname of Nevski from a victory he gained over a Swedish army on the banks of the Neva; he had also become one of the most venerated of Russian saints. Thus the enshrining of his relics in the cloister church brought to St. Petersburg one of the holiest things in all the land. Venerable associations that meant much to the devout were secured to the brand new town.

The very ornate silver shrine stands at present in the south transept of the church or cathedral which was erected for Catherine II. by a Russian architect named Staroff.[142] The peace that broods over this quiet cloister rather reminds one of the south of Europe. The picturesque convent buildings of yellow and bluish-white plaster are seen among gardens and trees, while over them appear the towers and dome of the cathedral and the steeples of the smaller chapels, in one of which Suworof is at rest. Across a placid canal is the burial ground of the monks. Even in Russia these men are famous for the beauty with which they sing the daily offices of the church, unaccompanied by any kind of instrument--for such is never allowed in buildings of the Communion of the East.

A roadway cut straight through the forest between this convent and the Admiralty formed the beginning of the chief street of the present day city, the well-known Nevski Prospect. The Admiralty stands on the Neva side where Peter built his first boat on the Baltic; it forms the chief centre of the city, to which many of the streets converge. The building in some ways is one of the best in the city, erected in the Renaissance style by a Russian architect named Zucharoff. A ship in full sail forms a vane on the needle spire that rises from a square tower lined with Ionic columns, while the vast building, measuring over 1,300 by 500 feet, is well managed, the long façade being relieved from serious monotony by an imposing gateway in the centre and by the pilastered wings rising much higher than the plainer middle part.

Close by is the splendid Winter Palace, another Renaissance building, designed in 1754 by Rastrelli but considerably modified after a fire in 1837.[143] One side faces the river, the other looks on, to the square in which rises the tall monolith column that commemorates Alexander I.--the site of the terrible scenes of January, 1905. By an archway over the street the palace is joined to the Hermitage, which houses one of the finest collections on the earth.[144]

While St. Petersburg has been greatly influenced by the street architecture of Italy and France, its broadways have a distinct character of their own and resemble the thoroughfares of no other city. Over streets roughly paved with sharp-edged stones, or the upturned ends of logs, rattle droskeys, whose shafts and traces both start from the axle-trees. The horses wear high hames and the drivers long beards, for Peter's commands that all must shave are now no longer enforced.[145] The pace at which the horses move is a great contrast to the leisurely dignity that characterises the citizens.

Over the windows of most of the shops are painted pictures of what men sell within, for many of the customers are unable to read and appreciate this guide. Huge gargoyles shoot waterfalls from rain or melting snow on to the pavements below them, so that much caution must be used in walking about in wet weather. Something of the café life of the Continent is to be seen under the creepers and trees of the pleasant courtyards of hotels. The way in which men kiss each other both here and in the public streets is at first sight rather startling to races trained to keep emotions more suppressed, but there is nothing insincere, and--coupled with many qualities one would fain see changed--there is a certain gentle and affectionate disposition about the Russians that becomes more and more attractive as one gets to know them better.[146]

The most prominent, and in some ways the most interesting, building in the city is the Metropolitan Church of Russia, the great Cathedral of St. Isaac of Dalmatia, on whose festival Peter was born. Other statesmen have chosen new capitals but have been satisfied to leave the ecclesiastical centre in the older town. No half measures for Peter. Even the holy Patriarchate of Moscow, sacred to the whole of Eastern Christendom in a sense from making up again the number of five after the western one had lapsed into heresy (from the eastern point of view), he insisted upon sweeping away.[147] It was one of the duties of the Tsar to lead the donkey upon which the Patriarch rode on Palm Sunday, and that seemed to Peter to be putting the relations between Church and State on to a footing wholly wrong. A patriarch once found fault with the shabby-looking European dress of the emperor, who had discarded the flowing robes of the East, and Peter had retorted that he would have expected the head of the Church to be otherwise engaged than in minding the business of tailors. So when the patriarch died he did not name another, and at last when the priests begged that some one might sit in the throne, he is said to have sat there himself with the remark that he would be patriarch. The Holy Synod was organised instead and the Church lost almost entirely its old comparative independence of the State. The synod building is close to the cathedral and the highest dignitary of the Russian Church is now the Metropolitan of St. Petersburg.

Between St. Isaac's and the river are really beautiful gardens in which stands the famous equestrian statue of Peter (by the French sculptor, Falconet), that Catherine II. erected in 1782, on a huge block of granite.[149] The composition is extremely spirited and it certainly ranks very high among monuments of a similar kind over the whole world. The general effect of this wide open space with fine Renaissance structures all round, including those on the far side of the river, is exceedingly stately, especially when seen for the first time.

National character is always mirrored in national architecture, but seldom quite as here. The plan of the city is European and the conception is of the stateliest; the flat and rather featureless site on both sides of a noble river is just such as to give the very utmost opportunity for splendid architectural display. The style chosen for the buildings, the Classic Renaissance as it was developed in France and Italy, is perhaps more suited than any other for the objects which successive emperors had in view. The magnificence of the great broad streets and boulevards, the ample squares and frequent monuments all give the impression in very truth of one of the grandest of European capitals.

The effect that should be produced by the lavish expenditure of money and the splendour of much of the material are somewhat neutralised, however, by the fact that the great palaces and churches (with the exception of St. Isaac's) profess to be what they are not, and expose to the air no other material than stucco. The very elements rebel against so much imposture and bring down great patches of plaster, while western rulers have been utterly powerless to prevent the appearance of extremely eastern features in every corner of the town.

But in spite of all defects of detail these uniform Classic buildings, well grouped and set off by wide spaces and trees, produce a really magnificent effect, and as often as the black peaty earth is exposed by taking up the streets for drains one realises more fully the miracle of all these sumptuous structures founded in security upon a quaking bog.[150] Here is a city, one feels, that was raised by a people of iron will, a nation that was only invigorated by the centuries of Mongol domination; a people who seek to be western Europeans, but as a nation are not, though many individuals among them are leaders in European thought and science too. In some respects St. Petersburg gives one the impression of being the capital of a vast dominion more than any other city on the globe. Even in the British Empire there is nothing that appeals to the imagination quite in the same way as the fact that from the Russian capital one may travel entirely on Russian territory to the frontier of Austria, to the frontier of Japan or to a point within thirty-six miles of American soil.

Nevertheless, whether for evil or good, the spirit of the West is not here. The leaders of Asia think, but the leaders of Europe act. Tolstoy and Kropotkin, household words in countless English homes, have done as much as almost any others to sustain the present conditions in Russia by the very elaborateness of their programmes. When England yearned as Russia yearns she found a Cromwell, not a Tolstoy. He grasped a sword and the scabbard was thrown away. He had little to say to the world, but plenty to say to the king. The gentler Russian masses idolise a man who held an open book for all the world to read, yet did little to change the constitution of his own times--so far as on the surface shows. And for all practical purposes the great Russian Empire still retains the constitution that Ruric gave his conquering hordes. Law is the word of the prince.

With the House of Commons (ten years after it had put a new sovereign on the throne) Peter seems to have been less favourably impressed than with any other English institution. On seeing the lawyers in Westminster Hall he is recorded to have remarked that there were only two such people in all Russia and he was going to hang them on his return. Peter did not see that, however much they may be sneered at, Parliaments and Law Courts are of the very essence of western civilisation. Japanese guns at Port Arthur greatly helped to set up indeed a _duma_ in the city of Peter, but the very place where it meets indicates the extent of its power. The Taurida Palace stands far east of the imposing mass of really important Government buildings and is in a somewhat squalid quarter of the town.

European indeed is this city at first glance, wholly western in style, in fact one of the most striking groups of European buildings anywhere on earth to be seen. But step into a side street. Behold the life of the East! Behold Asiatic bazaars! Goods displayed on quaint little open stalls whose owners sit among their wares and make their calculations on the _abacus_ just as one may see in China. And the smells of Asia are there, and the leisurely pigeons of the East. The unhastening manner in which everything goes on likewise does much to intensify the underlying oriental atmosphere of the city. Look up to where the church towers are crowned by the onion domes of Tatary against a European sky. Europe in the square, Asia in the lane! Vast Government buildings reflect the spirit of the West, but toward the painted screens of the churches moves the changeless mind of the East. The concealed spear of the Tatar pierces the garment of the European. There is no need to scratch.

It is a very real relief that one important building openly reverts to the ancient native style, and brings to the new capital a breath of Russian mediævalism. It need hardly be said that it is a church; it commemorates Alexander II. (p. 244) and is appropriately dedicated to the Resurrection, raised over the spot where he fell.[151] The outlines of the national story may be read in those of the church. The style is an attempt at Byzantine, and that reminds us of the fact that it was to Constantinople and the Eastern Church that Russia eventually went when in search of a new faith long centuries ago. The effort to produce the kind of effect of which St. Sophia is the noblest example is, however, extremely crude; Slavs could never really fathom the subtlety of the mind of Greece. The nine cupolas[152] are surmounted (and the character of the building is greatly influenced) by onion domes so common in the turbaned East, imposed upon Russia with much else during the long centuries of Mongol rule. The presence of this feature gives to all truly Russian churches something of the look of Indian and Central Asian mosques. But this point is concealed by the Russian priests, who, with their natural proneness to symbolism, will explain that these onion domes are in reality modelled on rosebuds, thus typifying the embryo Church on earth, destined to blossom hereafter in Heaven. Each cupola supports a cross with chains (p. 186) which surmounts a crescent to symbolise the triumph of Christianity over Islam and the long series of eastern wars in which Russia has been engaged. The interior with its glorious and most striking Italian mosaics evidences the western influences that have spread over Russia in latter years.

Suburbs of singular beauty are provided for St. Petersburg by the lovely islands among which the Neva winds, its different branches crossed by rough bridges of wood. In places reeds and swamps still border the woods, giving some idea of the original nature of the hopeless-looking spot on which Peter decided to build. Here are large private houses with avenues and flower beds in the style of France, and many of them have such large grounds that the general impression in places is very much like that of the Bois de Boulogne.

Even to-day the city of Peter is very largely isolated from the world, approached by road or rail through long miles of forest and swamp. Only on a small scale is agriculture or market gardening to be seen. Nevertheless two country palaces that the founder erected in the vicinity are centres of some population, Tsarske Selo among the woods on the way to Moscow and Peterhof on the southern shore of the gulf. The new Tatar-Byzantine church of the latter is a conspicuous landmark from the decks of vessels steaming along the Morskoi canal through the shallow waters between the heavily fortified island of Cronstadt and the timber port of the city itself.

Of early days at this place we get a rather graphic description in a letter written by the Hanoverian Resident named Weber in 1718: "When at last we arrived at Cronslot, the Tsar invited us to his villa at Peterhof. We went with a fair wind, and at dinner warmed ourselves to such a degree with old Hungarian wine, although His Majesty spared himself, that on rising from the table we could scarcely keep on our legs, and when we had been obliged to drain quite a quart apiece from the hands of the Tsaritsa we lost all our senses, and in that condition they carried us out to different places, some to the garden, some to the woods, while the rest lay on the ground here and there. At four o'clock they woke us up and again invited us to the summer-house, where the Tsar gave us each an axe and bade us follow him. He led us into a young wood where he pointed out trees which it was necessary to fell in order to make an alley straight to the sea, about a hundred paces long, and told us to cut down the trees. He himself began work on the spot (there were seven of us besides the Tsar), and although this unaccustomed work, especially in our far from sober condition, was not at all to our liking, we nevertheless cut boldly and diligently, so that in about three hours the alley was ready and the fumes of wine had entirely evaporated. None of us did himself any harm except Minister X, who unconsciously cut one tree and was knocked down by another, badly scratched. After verbal thanks we received our real recompense after supper in a second drink, which was so strong that we were taken to our beds unconscious."[154]

Peter's old villa still exists, a compromise between the styles of building that prevailed two centuries ago in Holland and France, but on the top of the wooded slope a long and beautiful palace has been erected in the style of the Renaissance.[155] The chapel alone is Russian under five gilded onion domes.

The French-looking grounds are famous for their many fountains, whose water is brought from a lake miles away. A large number of jets play in front of the palace itself, and also beside the straight watercourse that runs down from it to the sea. The effect looking up through the trees from the road at the bottom is one of the most fairy-like things on the earth. Walking through the woods one comes upon all sorts of fountains where they would be expected least. Water runs downstairs or slips along a marble way under ferns, or sprinkles a statue or an artificial tree or plays among the columns of an Ionic temple in ruin, or forms a sort of birthday cake by jets rising higher and higher toward the centre. The effect of all these fountains among the trees is really most impressive, no other land has the like. But just as one is beginning to feel that it is the most magnificent thing upon earth one remembers that a cold bath in a St. Petersburg hotel costs two shillings and reflects on the water supply of the capital.

By an artificial tree are hidden jets to throw water all over an ordinary-looking seat. Such was the idea of a joke entertained by former Tsars, who also liked to ride in carriages containing musical boxes under the seats that used to play as they were drawn[156] along by horses harnessed in red and gold. One may incidentally pick up many interesting facts about the dead rulers of Russia that are not inscribed on the page of history.

Judged by results Peter was great indeed if mortal ever was. We are not asked to call him morally good. Alexandria has a magnificent position on the shores of the busiest of seas. Constantinople has few rivals in situation among all the cities of the world. But both are eclipsed in importance by this whimsical city that Peter insisted upon building among remote and frozen swamps.

To turn a great people round and force them to look west not east, to compel them to expect a golden future who before looked to a golden past--this is as near to an impossibility as ever was attempted in the history of man. Yet to an amazing extent this Peter actually did.

One's astonishment that he achieved so much is yet further increased when it is realised that his life was devoted very largely to frivolity and amusement, that in serious and earnest endeavour he was far surpassed by many who contrived to accomplish far less.

Of no individual that ever lived perhaps can it be said that he consciously and deliberately influenced the history of the world to the same extent as the high-thinking, hard-working, hard-drinking, founder of Petersburg.

INDEX

AACHEN, 155

Abo, 188, 238

Absalon, Bp., 131

Adam of Bremen, 118, 186

Adrian IV., Pope, 82

Agdaness, 71

Agni's thwaite (position uncertain), 211

Akers Elv, 94

Akuliakattamiut, 64

Akureyri, 61

Alaska, 67

Albert of Mecklenburg, 121

Alexander the Great, 234

Alexander Nevski, St., 241-242

Alexander II. (Russia), 244, 253

Allthing, 39, 43-46, 49, 53

Almenningen, 84

Amager, 131, 143-143

_Ambales Saga_, 149

America, 14, 40, 62, 63, 65, 104, 125, 130, 137, 141, 145, 220, 251

Anderson, Hans, 131, 134, 141-142, 145-148

Anlaf of Black-fen, 42

Arabia, 152

Arboga, Diet of, 189

Arnliot Gellini, 79

Asgarth, 177

Aun, 185

BALTIMORE, 140

Bathridge, 53

Bellman, 206

Bergen, 83, 108, 155

Bernadotte, 102, 215

Berzelius, 219

Birchlegs, 85, 99

Birger, Jarl, 212, 215

Birger, Persson, 195

Bjoörnson, 103, 109

Blood Bath of Stockholm, 217-218

Bo Jonsson, 215

Boston, 29

Brahe, Ebba, 223

Brahe, Tycho, 133-134

Bredablick, 221

Brita, St., 122, 124, 195-196

Bryce, James, 44

_Burnt Njal, Saga of the_, 44

Bygdö, 107

Byström, 192

CALMAR, Union of, 121

Catherine II. (Russia), 242, 249

Charles XI. (Sweden), 164

Charles XII. (Sweden), 196, 197, 203, 214, 236

Charles XV. (Sweden), 223-224

Celsius, 187

Cetil, Bp., 53

China, 108

Christian II. (Scandinavia), 142, 217

Christian IV. (Denmark), 100, 123, 132

Christiania, 100-109

Christianity, Spread of, 15-18, 32, 48-58, 75, 79-80

Christiansten, 88

Christie, 82

Christina, 192, 223

Christopher the Bavarian (Denmark), 132

Cinque Ports, 155

_Codex Argenteus,_ 190

Columbus, 63

Constantinople, 161, 233, 253

Copenhagen, 26, 113, 127-145

Cowper, 23

_Cristne Saga,_ 50, 51

Cronstadt, 256

DAVID, St., 196

Dicuil, 32

Djurgarden, 220

Domald, 184-185

Douglas, Count, 188, 238

Drammensfjord, 94

Dublin, 69-70

Du Chaillu, 82, 87, 191, 223-224

Duf-thac's Scaur, 37

Dyrehaven, 144

EDSVIK, 222

_Egil's Saga_, 51

Eith, 37

Ekhoff, Dr., 167

Ellidaar, 60

Elsinore, 145-146

Enlart, C., 65, 172

Eric IX. (Sweden) St., 187, 192

Eric of Pomerania, 132, 164

Eric the Red, 33, 63

Esia-rock, 48

Esja, 40

Ethelred the Redeless, 114, 152

Etienne de Bonneuil, 193

Ewald, 100

Eyafjordr, 64

_Eyrbyggja Saga_, 38, 51, 54

Eystein, Abp., 84, 85

_FAEREYINGA SAGA_, 14-18, 73

Faroes, 14-27, 31, 32-33, 83

Faxefjoth, 33, 38, 39

Fergusson, 133, 203, 242, 244, 248

Finland, Finns, 187, 212, 236

Finsen, N. R., 25-26

Floki, 23

Flosi, 44-46

Fogelberg, 215

Frederick V. (Denmark), 123, 135

Fredericksborg, 134

Frey, 178, 180

Fyrisa, 188

GAINSBOROUGH, 114

Gard-here, 31

Gardie, de la, 223

Garthrealm, 152-153, 226-233

Gate, 17

Geiger, 191

Geikie, 68

Gilli, 19

Gizor, Bp., 50-52, 55, 61

Gogstad, 104

Gol, 108

Gorm the Old, 12, 113

Gotenburg system, 219

Gothland, 57, 150-175

Goths, 151

Greenland, 34, 63, 83, 127

Grim Camban, 14

Grimkel, Bp., 79

Gudleik, 153

Gustaf Vasa, 192, 197, 217-219

Gustavus Adolphus, 187, 189, 192, 214

Gustavus III. (Sweden), 205

Gyda, 12

HAGGARD, RIDER, 124

Hakluyt, 29

Hakon, Earl, 69-74

Hakon the Good, 104

Hakon IV. (Norway), 99-100

Hallward, St., 94, 99

Hamar, 83, 92

Hamilton, 191

Hanseatic League, 154, 162, 163, 227

Hansen, 131, 139

Harald Blaatand, 113

Harald Fairhair (Shock-head), 11-14

Harald Gilli, 96

Harald Hardredy, 85, 95, 233

_Havards Saga_, 42

Heimaey, 37

_Heimskringla_, 12, 13, 22, 54, 69, 73, 77, 86, 95, 99, 104, 113, 177, 181, 226, 233

Hell, 92

Henry, St., 187-188, 213, 238

Heor-leif, 35

Herd-holt, 41

Hill of Laws, 46, 49

Hodgkin, Dr., 114

Holar, 29, 34, 50, 55, 57, 58, 83

Holger Danske, 134, 146-148

Hollmenkollen, 109

Holmgarth, 153, 227, 233

Holy Roman Empire, 113, 155, 158

Hordaland, 12

Hudson, R., 67

Hugo, Victor, 89

Hultersta, 186

_Hungrvaca_, 53

Hveen, 133

IBSEN, 103

Ingigerd, 231-232

Ingwolf Arnerson, 35-39

Iona, 31

Ireland, Irish, 31-32, 36, 37, 43, 96-99, 229

Isaac, St., 246-248

Isafjordr, 61

JACOBSEN, Carl, 139

Jarisleif, 231-233

_Joans Saga_, 55, 57

John, St., of Holar, 55-57

Jomsburg Vikings, 71

Jutland, 94

KALFSKINSHUSET, 164

Kark, 71-74

Karl Nilsson, 215

Karl o'Mere, 19

Kaupstadr, 37

Keel-ness, 39

Kirkebö, 23, 83

Kirkwall, 83

Klenze, von, 244

Klint, 154, 174

Knut the Holy, 118, 124

Knut the Rich, 80, 94, 114-117

Köln, 163

Kronborg Castle, 145-146

Kungshögar, 180

LADE OR LADIR, 68-76, 77, 80

Ladoga, 236

Laing, Samuel, 134, 165, 204, 223

_Landnama-bok_, 38, 39, 43, 48, 49, 54, 61

Lapps, 221

Larson, L. M., 117

Lava, 54

_Laxdaela Saga_, 41

Leif Ericson, 63

Leif, son of Ozur, 19-21

Lerfos Falls, 91

_Libellus Islandorum_, 32, 34, 35, 50

_Linnæus_, 142, 172, 192, 206, 209, 219

_Liosvetninga Saga_, 30

London Bridge, 114, 152

Longfellow, 52, 198

Longshanks mission, 159

Lowe, R., 28

Lübeck, 119, 163, 164

Lucius, St., 116-117

Lund, 56, 71, 83, 128

Lyngby, 125

MAGNUS, Bp., 53

Magnus the Good, 85

Magnus Ladulaas, 213

Magnússon, 22

Mälar, Lake, 188, 201, 202, 212, 222

Mallet, P. H., 30, 58, 152

Man, 83

Margaret, Queen, 120-122, 143, 164

Marryat, Horace, 186

Micklegarth, 233

Montelius, 106, 181

Montferrand, Chevalier de, 247

Morris, William, 22, 127

Munketorp, 196

NADDODH, 32

Naerofjord, 26

Nelson, 143

Nestor, 227

Neva, 236, 241, 243, 249

Newport, R.I., 65

New York, 225

Nid, R., 68, 75, 76, 91

Niebuhr, 135

Nils the goldsmith, 161

Nolsö, 22

Nova Scotia, 67

Novgorod the Great, 155, 227

ODIN (WODEN), 57, 177-178, 180, 185

Olaf, St., 18, 21, 76-81, 85, 94, 124, 153-154, 168-169, 210-211, 231-233

_Olaf, St., Saga of_ (part of _Heimskringla_), 152, 168, 179

Olaf Tryggvison, 15, 16, 70-76, 113, 229-231

_Olaf Tryggvison, Saga of_ (part of _Heimskringla_), 63, 230

Olavus Petri, 216

_Origines Islandicæ_, 38, 83, 106, 182

Oslo, 83, 95-99

Ostero, 17

Otté, 122, 215

Otto, 113

PARIS, 193, 239

Patrec, St., 48

Peter the Great, 234-260

Peterhof, 256-258

_Pols Saga_, 58

Powell, York, 15, 38

RASTRELLI, 242, 243

Reek-ness, 33

Republic of Iceland, 44

Reykjavik, 32, 33, 38, 40-41, 46-47, 58-61

Riddarsholm, 213

Rognvald, Jarl, 13

Rosenborg, 134

Roskilde (Roiswell), 111-126

Ruric, 227

ST. EDMUNDSBURY, 84

St. Petersburg, 152, 226, 234-260

Salts Vedel, 169

Schuyler, 257

Scotland, 25, 26, 67, 222

Sergei, 206

Shakespeare, 149

Siegfrid, St., 124, 213

Sigmund, 15, 18, 73

Sigtuna, 177, 210, 212

Sigurd, Bp., 80

Sigurd Jerusalem-farer, 96

Skalholt, 50, 53, 54, 58, 83

Skansen, 220

Slite, 154

Smolni, 242

Snaefells Jökull, 40

Snoni Sturluson, 12, 54, 177, 181

Snowland, 32

Sodor (South Isles), 31, 70, 83

Southey, 66

Staroff, 242

Stavanger, 83

Steelyard, 155

Sten Sture, 189

Sticklestead, 80

Stockholm, 199-225

Stralsund, Treaty of, 163

Stromo or Streamsey, 15, 19

Styrmir hinn fródi, 61

Suworof, 242

Svein Twibeard, 113

Svein Wolf son, 117

Sverker house (Sweden), 187, 192

Sverre Sigurdsson, 84, 85

Svoldr, 113

Swedenborg, 197

Sylvanus, 35, 138

TEGNÉR, 68, 198, 199

Tessin, de, 194, 203

Thangbrand, 51-52

Thingvellir, 43

Thjelvar, 151

Thomas, W. W., 207

Thor, 49, 57, 180

Thore, 18

Thor-gar, 49-50

Thorild, 190

Thorir Klakka, 70-71

Thor-kell Moon, 39

Thorlac, Gudbrand, 29

Thorlak, St., 54

_Thorlacs Saga_, 54

Thorshavn, 15, 19, 22-25

Thorwaidsen, 47, 138-140

Thorwolf Butter, 33

Thrand o'Gate, 19-21

Thrond, 16-18

Tokyo, 235

Tolstoy, 251

Tressini, 240

Trondhjem, 76-90, 124

ULFILAS, Bp., 151, 191

Ulriksdal, 222

Upsala, 124, 159, 176-197, 210

VADSTENA, 196

Vaeringian Guard, 233

Varonikin, 248

_Vatzdaela Saga_, 25, 39, 181

Verestchagin, 254

Videy, 61-62

Vigfusson, Gudbrand, 38

Viking ships, 103-106

Vinland the Good, 63

Virginia, 123

Visborg Castle, 164

Visby, 154-175

Vossevangen, 107

Vulgaria, 232

WALDEMAR IV. (Atterdag), 130, 161-163

Weber, 256

Wellesley, 143

Westmen Isles, 37

Wheaton, 12

Wilde, Lady, 93, 140, 142, 176

William the Conqueror, 115

Winchester, 115

Wolf, Earl, 115-117

Worm Lyrgia, 71

_YNGLINGS, SAGA OF_ (part of _Heimskringla_), 117, _seq._, 184

ZIMMERN, HELEN, 154

Zucharoff, 243

THE LONDON AND NORWICH PRESS, LIMITED, LONDON AND NORWICH

FOOTNOTES:

[1] The skald was Thornbiorn Hornklofi; the lay was quoted by Snorri Sturluson in the _Heimskringla_; it was Englished by Henry Wheaton, _History of the Northmen_ (1831).

[2] One thing very much to his credit the _Heimskringla_ lets us know: "Whensoever swift rage or anger fell on him, he held himself aback at first and let the wrath run off him, and looked at the matter unwrathfully."

[3] Or Streamsey, the isle of streams, on which Thorshavn stands.

[4] _Faereyinga Saga_, XXX.-XXXI.

[5] All these details are taken from the CLIII. Chapter of the _Saga_ _of Olaf the Holy_, being part of the _Heimskringla_ of Snorri Sturluson (p. 54), done into English out of Icelandic by William Morris and Eiríkr Magnússon.

[6] All the places described in this work, except St. Petersburg, are Lutheran, but see p. 195.

[7] Other derivations have been suggested, but the traditional one appears by far the most satisfactory.

[8] Of which the best known is Iona.

[9] Dicuil, the Irish chronicler, was greatly impressed by the long Arctic days of summer.

[10] _Libellus Islandorum_, VI. 1.

[11] It is printed in full in _Origines Islandicæ_, by Gudbrand Vigfusson and F. York Powell, an extremely useful work, to which I am greatly beholden.

[12] An excellent account of the constitution of the Republic is given in James Bryce's _Studies in History and Jurisprudence_, 1901.

[13] _Njals Saga_, translated by Sir George Webbe Dasent, D.C.L.

[14] The lower house is elected by Icelandic males, aged over twenty-five, paying 8kr. a year in direct taxes, who are their own masters--a rather restricted suffrage--the upper house is partly nominated, partly chosen by the lower.

[15] _Landnama-bok_, VI. 1.

[16] _ib._ XIV., 13.

[17] _Cristne Saga_, VIII. 8.

[18] _Liber Islandorum_, X., 3.

[19] _Egils Saga_, 50.

[20] _Eyrbyggja Saga_, 49.

[21] _Thorlaks Saga_, Epilogue and XI., 1. He was never recognised as a saint in Rome, but that did not in the least affect the reverence felt for him in Iceland.

[22] _Joans Saga_, II., 1.

[23] _ib._ VII., 3.

[24] The saga distinctly says that the pope approved of the consecration; it would be interesting to know whether this can be corroborated. At that time, as is well known, the clergy were in fact very frequently married in Northern Europe, but it was always papal policy to prevent it.

[25] _Joans Saga_, XI., 3.

[26] Mr. St. John Hope, to whom I have shown a photograph of the alabaster retable, says it is certainly of English origin.

[27] _Joans Saga_, XIII., 3.

[28] After leaving the Orkneys or Shetlands, the vessel would touch at one or more ports in the Faroes, Iceland, Greenland, Labrador, Newfoundland, Nova Scotia and New England.

[29] By an old chronicler quoted, but not named, by C. A. Vansittart Conybeare in his _Place of Iceland in the History of European Institutions_, 1877.

[30] It is extremely interesting to find so eminent a French antiquary as C. Enlart seeking to revive the theory that the famous Round Tower at Newport, R.I., was a church erected by the Norse. See _Revue de l'Art Chrétien_, Sept.-Oct., 1910. I cannot help feeling, however, that the balance of probability leans heavily against this view.

[31] I have never seen the Alaska sea-coast; the deep bays and arms of Nova Scotia, lovely as they are, only mildly recall some of the tamest of Norwegian seascapes.

[32] The district of which Nidaros or Trondhjem is the centre.

[33] He was Pope Adrian IV., but the _Dictionary of National Biography_ suggests a doubt as to his name having been Nicolas Breakspear at all.

[34] See p. 31. The title of this diocese is still attached to that of the Isle of Man, but the southern islands are the same as the Isles attached to the Scottish Diocese of Argyll.

[35] A very interesting account of the foundation of this distant bishopric is given in _Graenlendinga Tháttr_, a work that gives us a peep of Greenland in the twelfth century after nothing has been heard of the colony for a hundred years. It is printed in _Origines Islandicæ_, Vol. II. See p. 38. The first bishop for Greenland was consecrated by Archbishop Auzur, of Lund.

[36] "That was a great minster, and wrought strongly of lime, so that it might scarce be got broken when Archbishop Eystein let take it down" (_Heimskringla_, Vol. 3, Ch. XXXIX.). All my citations from the _Heimskringla_ are from the translation by Morris and Magnússon, except the lay at the beginning of the first chapter.

[37] The corona is very rich. Clustered pillars, with arches divided by shafts and closed by stone screens, sustain the triforium, whose two-light openings have large carved caps and varied tracery, and the clearstorey with tall lancets. The dome-vault, which rises above, is steadied perhaps, but hardly supported, by very thin flying buttresses of rounded unconstructive form. The surrounding aisle has the richest of mural arcading and little chapels open from it to east and north and south.

Into the east end of the quire a large arch opens from the corona itself, and a small one each side from the aisle. The quire is almost all rebuilt, pillars clustered or octagonal deeply fluted, with huge carved caps, sustain triforium, clearstorey and vaulting of character not dissimilar to those of the corona. The general effect is extremely fine, and one is reminded a little of Holyrood Chapel at Edinburgh and again of Lincoln Angel Quire. The corona recalls the similar feature at Canterbury, but is very much more beautiful.

The most remarkable feature of the nave is the long and unbuttressed west front, 120 feet in extent. Two tiers of arches, dating from about the year 1300, still remain; there is no division of nave or aisle or tower, but three of the lower arches are pierced by doors, the others are divided by shafts. The upper arches do not correspond with the lower ones, than which they are much smaller; they are trefoil-headed and by corbels converted into niches. The general effect is a little like that of the west front of Wells, but not to any very striking extent.

The cathedral is entirely detached, but a short distance to the south, forming barracks and a military museum to-day, are some remains of the L-shaped Palace of the Archbishops, displaying Romanesque and early pointed windows.

[38] Used for Anglican services.

[39] Trondhjem is connected with the interior by some of those superbly made roads for which Norway is so justly famed. They rest upon about four feet of stonework, the pieces diminishing upwards so far as size is concerned. The smaller streams are frequently spanned by arches of hard granite or other rock so neatly cut that no mortar need be used. Sometimes the road itself is cut in the living rock of the hills. The engine sheds are quite a feature of the city, and railways run southward to the new capital by the valleys of Gula and Glommen and past Hamar on its lake, also eastward into Sweden, among the mountains and the lakes. And at a place called Hell the latter line branches northward to Sunnan, near the head of Trondhjem Fjord.

[40] _Heimskringla, Story of Harald the Hardredy._ Ch. LX.

[41] _ib._ Ch. CIV.

[42] _Heimskringla, Tale of Sigurd Jerusalem-farer._ Chs. XXXIV., XXXV.

[43] Unbuttressed massive walls of stone surround a five-bayed nave with aisles, and chancel with north chapel, both round-apsed. The chapel opens to chancel and aisle by doorways rather than arches. The low clearstorey is lighted only on the south, over the east bay of the nave rises a tower that forms a lantern. The nave arcades have thick round pillars with the simplest caps; the chancel is vaulted at a much lower level than the wooden roof of the nave. The inside is very striking.

[44] It is difficult, in reading over the play, to understand by what mental process Nora's preposterous conduct in leaving husband and children on the very vaguest of quests can be justified or even palliated. Ibsen merely professed to point out the hardships endured by women treated as dolls, the remedy for such social evils he did not essay to prescribe. Some of his most charming works, such as _Dame Inger of Östraat_, deal with Norwegian history.

[45] Ch. XXVII.

[46] _Origines Islandicæ_, Vol. I., p. 318.

[47] _Civilisation of Sweden in Heathen Times_, by Oscar Montelius.

[48] Close to Vossevangen is a building very similar to this one, but much more interesting, both from its still standing where its builders wished, and from its greater size; it also seems rather earlier in date than the stabbur re-erected at Bygdö, and was probably built about 1300. It is called the Finneloft, and is locally believed to be the oldest wooden building in Norway that was not a church. The basement is of slate stone, roughly walled, instead of, as at Bygdö, timber-work resting on big stones. The first floor in both is framed of flattened horizontal beams, dovetailed to fit at the corners; but at the Finneloft there are little passages at the sides occupying the space which at Bygdö is merely covered by the overhanging of the upper storey. This stage in both cases is walled with thick boards, placed vertically and overlapping each other. The roofs are of flattish pitch and in the pleasant manner of the North simple patterns are carved on doorpost and lintel and beam. The little side passages and the manner in which the horizontal beams are often mortised into the vertical remind one very much of Chinese carpentry, an impression greatly strengthened by the far more obvious resemblance that Norwegian Stavekirkes bear to Chinese temples. (See title-page.)

[49] This remarkable little building, like several others of its class, consists of nave with aisle all round, aisled chancel with apse and an open cloister girdling the structure. The interior is lofty and dark, pillars, walls and roof all of timber. The three roofs, of cloister, aisle, and clearstorey, rising one above another, are increased to six by a turret-like structure that rises in three stages from the middle of the nave roof. The effect produced is singularly like that of a small Chinese temple, especially as queer objects like dragons project diagonally from the corners of the ridges. The cloister part seems far more suited to China than to Norway. In England there is a stavekirke at Greensted, near Ongar, supposed to have been erected in 1013 as a resting-place for the body of St. Edmund. The side walls are built of oak-trunks, but it is as plain as it could possibly be.

[50] _Heimskringla, Saga of Olaf the Holy_, Ch. XI.

[51] In his first volume to the _Political History of England_, edited by Hunt and Poole.

[52] L. M. Larson. _Canute the Great, and the Rise of Danish Imperialism during the Viking Age._ 1913.

[53] It is doubtless largely for this reason that Adam sometimes writes rather from the Danish point of view. The Icelandic Sagas are as free from bias as any history works in the world.

[54] The quire has but a single bay with a round apse, there are transepts, there is a nave of seven bays. At the west end this is flanked by towers and an aisle girdles the structure from one tower and back to the other, running all round the apse--for the transepts, which no longer project, are reduced very largely to sections of the aisles. In the sacristy may be seen remains of the arch between the south transept and the eastern chapel which extended it before it was cut back.

The interior is very striking from the unusual and pleasing combination of white and red. Bricks are exposed where are shafts and at the edges of the arches; white plaster covers walls and vaults. Many of the arches are round, but pointed ones are always used for the plain quadripartite vaulting. The windows are all single, some in groups of three, but they are numerous and wide enough to make the building extremely light. The blindstorey (triforium) is open to the church by arches about the same size as those that communicate with the aisles. Round the apse these two tiers of arches rest on shafts of granite, elsewhere stone is very sparingly used for capitals and a few other details. The blindstorey, itself vaulted above the vaulting of the aisles, forms a passage the whole way round the church, a groined gallery on two pillars carrying it from tower to tower, and wooden balconies across the transepts. (These look like sixteenth century work; can they have been erected when the transepts were cut back, perhaps at the Reformation?) By means of a simple archway over a road the blindstorey also communicates with the old Bishop's Palace to the eastward. The clearstorey has no passage along its windows, but round the apse there is an extra arcade between it and the blindstorey, which greatly improves the effect.

The quire and apse with the central space and one bay of the nave are higher in floor-level than the rest of the church, and underneath is a crypt whose vaulting rests on a row of square columns, and whose small windows open to the aisles.

Some of the fittings are extremely beautiful Renaissance work, especially the reredos with folding wings. This, it is said, a Dutch skipper was trying to smuggle through the Sound; on being detected he placed on it a ludicrously low value, hoping that the duty might thus be extremely light. Unfortunately, however, the Danish authorities preferred to purchase the work at the figure that its too clever owner had named. The worrying resourcefulness of customs house officials is no new thing.

[55] The earliest that exists was built in 1384 by Bishop Ulfeld, who hallowed it to St. Laurence; the vaulting springs from little grotesque heads, and there are some beautiful wall paintings. In fact, many such have survived throughout the cathedral. Joining it on the west is another little square chapel, erected 1464, hallowed to St. Brita (p. 195). Here is some really beautiful old woodwork, and one of the wall paintings shows us a green devil writing. Westward it joins the north porch. Touching the south porch on the other side of the nave is the large chapel to the Three Holy Kings, erected 1459-64. A much older granite shaft with details of Byzantine character stands in the centre to support the vault which elsewhere rests on ancient corbels. Foliage and figure paintings cover vault and walls, and there are two sumptuous Classic Renaissance monuments to Christian III. (1533-59) and Frederic II. (1559-88). The former was chiefly responsible for the Danish Reformation, but neither king has so large a place in history as the columned canopies and numerous figures of their marble monuments might seem to imply. On the north side of the church Christian IV. (p. 132) built a fair chapel with star vaulting (whose character is indicated on the plan), resembling that of one bay in the sacristy. It is an interesting specimen of Gothic, dated 1615, the iron grill screen 1620, and the light streams in through two large four-fold windows, whose tracery is formed by the mullions intersecting, a common form in English work of that day, which is found also in a few of the oldest churches of Virginia. These are the only windows in the cathedral that are not single lights except the double ones in the upper stages of the western towers, which are later than the lower parts. The tall taper spires, copper-sheathed and nearly round, were added by the same king; they are a distinct improvement on those of the cathedral at Lübeck, which they rather resemble, and an ornament to the whole countryside.

The great Chapel of Frederick V. (1746-66) is cross-shaped with a huge dome rising above; there are pilasters against the walls, and two columns (all with Ionic caps) separate it from the wide vestibule which joins the church. It is lighted from high up, and is a very fine thing in itself, though hopelessly out of keeping with the cathedral. (It was built after the death of the king whose name it bears, p. 135.)

[56] _Rural Denmark and Its Lessons._ 1911.

[57] This is at Lyngby, about seven miles from Copenhagen. Near the museum are the Agricultural College and an experimental farm.

[58] The Danish West Indies are St. Thomas, St. John and Santa Cruz, just east of Porto Rico. No country in the Polar regions extends much further north than Greenland.

[59] What remained of Axelhus was destroyed in 1740, when Christiansborg Palace was erected to gratify a whim of the German Queen, Sophia Magdalena of Kulmbach-Bayreuth. This structure was burned down in 1794 to be replaced by the palace burned in 1884, which was built in 1828 from designs by Hansen. The Rigsdag met there.

The present citadel, protected by water and grass banks, buried in trees which hang over the moats, and dominated by a windmill, is on the Sound at the other end of the Amager channel. Most of the grass-grown rampart walls (near which was Andersen's Warton Almshouse) that surrounded the town and connected with the citadel have been removed, as Copenhagen had spread far beyond them, and they had become entirely out of date.

[60] Fergusson is most unkind in his references to Danish Renaissance buildings, particularly this structure, "of which the inhabitants of Copenhagen pretend to be proud."

[61] Trinity Church, of which this observatory is architecturally at any rate the tower, is a really noteworthy specimen of seventeenth century Gothic. Tall pointed windows pierce the walls along the sides and round the apse; octagonal pillars sustain the high-ribbed vault with painted bosses. There is no clearstorey, and the effect within is as striking as it is simple.

[62] Hans Andersen. Brahe did not accept the Copernican system, though he first noticed the variations in the motions of the moon, and has hardly been excelled as a practical astronomer. He died in the service of the Emperor at Prague, 1601.

[63] Practically forming part of the same design as the Amalienborg, and admirably completing it, is the Frederiks Kirke, which raises a great dome behind a Corinthian portico to the height of over 260 feet. Its construction dragged on from 1749 to 1894. The view from the top passes that from the Round Tower.

[64] But while interest in the past, far more widespread than in most other countries, has done very much to bring objects of interest to the National Museum, England has been incomparably more happy than Denmark in preserving for generations yet to come the buildings of mediæval and Renaissance days (p. 125).

[65] English education, in some ways excellent, attaches far too little importance to stimulating the imagination. I once met a very intelligent Cornishman who had been through the schools of his native county with credit, and could speak interestingly on many subjects, but he had never even heard of King Arthur. That is anything but an isolated instance.

[66] Nor is it well to forget that the main reason for their great success is that the Danes are sufficiently educated to co-operate, instead of deeming every neighbour a necessary rival. Both town and country benefit alike. The capital is provided with pure milk at about half the London prices by the Copenhagen Milk Supply Company, from which the very poor may have milk for their babies without money and without price.

[67] The church was designed by Hansen, and erected about a century ago. The general appearance of the neighbourhood will be greatly improved by the tall spire in the style of Wren, which Dr. Carl Jacobsen is giving, but the portico will be still further crushed. No one ever yet designed a Greek temple that would look well surmounted by a tall Christian steeple.

[68] All the figures were designed by Thorwaldsen, but some were finished by pupils. There is a reproduction of that representing Christ in the Johns Hopkins Hospital at Baltimore.

[69] Lady Wilde, _Driftwood from Scandinavia_, 1884.

[70] Knut the Holy (p. 118), dedicated to St. Alban his church at Odense.

[71] It is, of course, impossible that a work like the present should even refer to all the collections and interesting buildings in such a city as Copenhagen.

[72] The sound dues which the owners of the castle collected from all the ships that sailed by dated from Hanseatic days. For Sweden they were abrogated by treaty in 1645, for other nations they were commuted for money in 1857.

[73] E. C. Otté, _Scandinavian History_.

[74] It does not seem certain that the term Gothic was applied to architecture in contempt of mediæval work. Evelyn in 1641 speaks of "one of the fairest churches of the Gotiq design I had seene," at a time when "Gothic" was used much as we employ "Teutonic" to-day. In 1713 Wren (_Parentalia_, a family biography by his son) says, "This we now call the Gothick manner of architecture so the Italians called what was not after the Roman style." The depreciatory use of the term seems first to occur in Dryden, 1695: "All that has not the ancient gust is called a barbarous or Gothique manner." So that it seems quite possible that Gothic architecture merely signified the style of the North of Europe as opposed to that of the South. Mallet (_Northern Antiquities_, translated from _Introduction à l'Histoire de Dannemarc_, 1770) refers to so many mediæval "edifices wherein we can find nothing to admire but the inexhaustible patience and infinite pains of those who built them!"

[75] Helen Zimmern. _The Hansa Towns; Story of the Nations._

[76] Only a few miles from Visby is the ruined monastery known as Roma Kloster.

[77] In a most interesting paper on the Walls of Visby read before the _Royal Institute of British Architects_, December 16, 1912, which I have found of much value.

[78] Another sea-tower is known as Silfverhättan from the material with which it was roofed in the very wealthy days of old.

[79] It finally became Swedish again in 1645.

[80] There are still some slight remains, but the greater part was carried away by Charles XI. for the building of Karlskrona in the seventeenth century.

In the grounds of the Burgomaster's House are some remains of the Kalfskinshuset, which seems to have been built originally in the early fourteenth century, the land being secured by making a calf's skin cover a fair area by cutting it into strings, much as was done with an ox-skin at Carthage. The owner of the ground when making the arrangement imagined he was only parting with about one square yard.

[81] _Tour in Sweden_, 1838.

[82] The main part is square, and the roughly vaulted roof is supported on four round arches that rest on square columns, placed close to the four corners. To the north and south and also to the west there project very shallow arms the same height as the rest. Over the western one and resting its corners on two of the large columns, rises a great square tower, three two-light windows aside in its upper stage. In the thickness of the walls there are stairs and galleries on three levels, whence varying views of the interior are gained. A comparatively low arch in the eastern wall opens to a small chancel, rib-vaulted and extended by a horseshoe apse. The details throughout are Romanesque of the plainest and the best, but the inspiration is clearly Byzantine. On a small scale the same sort of combination is attempted that La Farge has essayed in the great Cathedral of St. John at New York.

[83] The square nave and four pillars were preserved, but instead of being close to the corners the columns were so spaced that the nine compartments of the vaulting should be practically equal squares. The vaulting ribs or arches, three against each wall, now look into the roofless nave. Not quite in the centre of the middle one on the east a round arch opens into the roofless chancel with horseshoe apse. A two-bay chapel projects on the south, and westward is a huge oblong tower with stairways in the thickness of its north and southern walls.

[84] There is the same kind of oblong tower and the vaulting of the square nave rested on four octagonal pillars, which were placed near the corners of the walls. From a clustered respond in the chancel it is evident that there was a north chapel.

[85] This is a late Romanesque building whose nave vault rested on four fairly equally spaced pillars, and the strong wide tower opened by arches both to nave floor and to the space above the vault. An arch just pointed, resting on clustered responds, opens to the roofless chancel which has a square east end; buildings joined it north and south; that on the latter side was evidently a transeptal chapel.

Another square four-pillared late Romanesque nave was apparently that of St. Hans (Johans = John), but hardly a thing remains except a large and lofty chapel of later date with beautifully moulded corbels, in the north-east corner.

These square churches are extraordinarily interesting to the student of architecture from the fact that they display Byzantine forms exercising an influence on the development of Gothic in the far north of Europe. Unfortunately the new idea does not seem to have spread beyond the island, but it is full of suggestion for small town churches at the present day, especially where the site is awkward and cramped.

[86] The lower one just pointed, the upper round.

[87] There are a few British instances of Romanesque churches, square without and apsidal within. Such are the Oratory of St. Margaret in the Castle at Edinburgh, two chapels in Romsey Abbey, and one in the ruined Abbey at Shaftesbury. A Renaissance instance of the same thing exists in the Chapel of Clare College, Cambridge.

[88] It is a fine late Romanesque building, quite moderate in scale. For five bays extend nave and aisles, and the square chancel is flanked by small towers which become octagonal above the roof. (These are a characteristic German feature, and recall Trier or Mainz, but this Visby church has no resemblance to any existing building in Lübeck.) Pillars of some variety with figure-and leaf-carved caps sustain the triple vault, nor is the centre carried higher than the aisles. The great south door, six times recessed with shafts both round and square, is a magnificent example of what in England is called Norman work. There are many such fine doorways in the town, but no other is as good as this. Rather later than the rest a great west tower was built, and on the northern side it has a gallery open by a rich arcade.

Extensive alterations and additions to the church were undertaken when men first began to build large traceried windows; they probably went on for long, but it may safely be assumed they were in progress about the year 1300. Most beautiful windows with foliated circles in their heads, not all alike, were pierced through the elder walls. A fair chapel was added west of south, adorned with pinnacles and gargoyles and statues and recessed carved door; clustered shafts hold up its vault. The climate doubtless caused it to open by a doorway, not arches, to the church. A tall addition was raised over the church with blindstorey arches and trefoil lancets in the clearstorey walls. It is a tempting hypothesis that it was intended to break through the central vault and to double the height of the nave, but C. Enlart is almost certainly right in saying: "These lofty halls above Scandinavian churches are sometimes habitable. The one which still rises over the nave of the church of St. Mary, now the cathedral, at Visby, had a chimney. It was the seat of the consulate of the Lübeck merchants, to whom the church belonged" (_Revue de l'Art Chrétien_, Sept.-Oct., 1910). In the middle ages churches served for the most miscellaneous purposes, and meetings of all kinds were held in them. In much the same style two stages were added to each of the eastern towers. In later days Renaissance spires were added to all the three towers, the largest having a balcony all round. A canopied pulpit was set up in the church, which is dated 1684.

[89] At first sight the remains of Romanesque work are by no means clear, but the spacing of the pillars through the seven bays is exceedingly irregular, and on the south by the ruined cloister is an older chapel, the vault below quadripartite, above a tunnel. This church was finally consecrated, it seems, only in 1412, and it is apparently the only important mediæval building which is subsequent in date to the raid of 1361. The tower stood at the west end till 1885, and then it had to be removed or it would have tumbled down.

[90] Square pillars, thirty feet in height, sustain the vaulting arches and fragments of the rough rubble vault. One of them has a shield inscribed "IACOB CHABBA A." At the east end two pillars are octagonal for a change; at the west old Romanesque responds are used. On the north remains a newel stair that led, it seems, to pulpit, rood and roof. Along the same side are still the remains of the vaulted cloister of the friars.

[91] St. Göran is of late twelfth century date, and the low chancel still retains its vault, rising from corbels to a sort of dome at the top. From the keystone of the chancel arch started the vault-supporting arches that ran down the centre of the nave and rested on two pillars, round and square. Tall round-arched windows pierce the walls; there are twin west doors and three high gables mark the sky.

[92] _Heimskringla; Story of the Ynglings_, Ch. II.

[93] _Story of the Ynglings_, Chs. X. & IX.

[94] _Story of the Ynglings_, Chs. XII. & XIII.

[95] _ib._, Ch. XL.

[96] _Story of the Ynglings_, Ch. LXXVI.

[97] _Preface to the Heimskringla._ Presumably there was a transition period.

[98] _The Civilisation of Sweden in Heathen Times_, by Oscar Montelius. Englished by Rev. F. H. Woods, 1888.

[99] There is a ghost story about the dead men in an Icelandic howe in the _Tale of Thorstan Oxfoot_. Printed in _Origines Islandicæ_. Vol. II., p. 585.

[100] _Story of the Ynglings_, Ch. XIV.

[101] _Story of the Ynglings_, Ch. XVIII.

[102] This is certainly not the real derivation of the term. Morris and Magnússon suggest that it may be "land of ten hundreds." Snorri was wrong in his belief that it meant "Tithe-land."

[103] _Story of the Ynglings_, Ch. XXIX.

[104] However, Horace Marryat, _One Year in Sweden_, 1862, tells us that when in 1803 Hultersta Church was destroyed there were discovered "two pagan altars of sacrifice, fitted with chimney-pipes, still containing ashes and bones of animals, bricked up when the building was adapted to Christian worship."

[105] _Monumenta Hist. Vet. Upsaliæ_, 1709, by E. Benzelius.

[106] Within there are interesting fittings both of mediæval and Renaissance date; including a carved reredos of the thirteenth century. There are the graves of Fornelius, chaplain to Gustavus Adolphus and of another pastor, named Celsius, who died in 1679. His grandson, of thermometer fame, is commemorated by a tablet.

[107] There are women students as well as men.

[108] The present building is a little later than his time, an interesting early pointed structure, partly of brick and partly of granite. Saddle roof tower, nave and aisles of five bays with transepts small and low. Brick arches and piers are partly cut into mouldings and clustered shafts, while angel paintings over the rib-vaulted roof have been restored with care.

[109] There is a nave of seven bays and a quire of four, each with aisles and outer chapels, the western towers being the full width of both; each transept is of two bays and aisleless, the apse is three-sided with ambulatory and five radiating chapels, themselves apsidal. The corresponding chapels of Notre Dame, no less than thirteen in number, are not apsidal except the central one (though they usually are in other great French Gothic churches), but they were not built at the time Upsala was erected. In the case of Notre Dame the nave has two more bays and the quire one more, while the chapels, which were additions, are beyond the outer aisles. The length of Notre Dame is 430 feet, that of Upsala 360 feet, while across the transepts the French cathedral measures 165 feet, the Swedish 135 feet. The building of Upsala Cathedral was not finished till the fifteenth century, and the traceried windows in aisles and clearstorey are rather poor. The arches of the nave chapels are without caps, those of the quire in the same position are rather elaborate, and there is some good carved work over doors and round the ambulatory, though hardly in the same class with that at Notre Dame. The church was largely rebuilt in 1885-93, when the tall metal spires replaced rather ugly eighteenth century turrets and the central flèche was built. Both inside and outside look very new. The former is largely covered with modern paintings, and nearly all the fittings are recent except the beautiful Renaissance canopied pulpit by Tessin (p. 203).

(I am unable to agree with Fergusson in thinking this "an extremely uninteresting church." T. Francis Bumpus, in his beautiful work, _The Cathedrals and Churches of Norway, Sweden, and Denmark_, 1908, comes to the conclusion that French influence in the design was small, and that it is to be attributed to a Swedish architect under very strong North German influence, but his reasons do not seem very conclusive.)

[110] _Hale Lectures_, 1910; _The National Church of Sweden_, by John Wordsworth, Bishop of Salisbury. They were delivered in St. James' Church, Chicago, and grew out of the proposals for the union of the Swedish Church with the Anglican Communion. When in 1593 the Swedish Church in council at Upsala accepted the Augsburg confession of faith, the succession of Bishops and the ancient order were zealously guarded. Nevertheless, clergy ordained by the superintendents or Bishops of the other Scandinavian Churches (who have no succession from the mediæval Church) are admitted to Swedish altars.

[111] Among other monuments, which are not very remarkable, is one with a marble effigy to John III. (d. 1592), which was executed in Italy.

[112] _Rambles in Sweden and Gothland_, by "Sylvanus," published 1854.

[113] The names of the nine islands are these: Stadsholmen (on which was the original settlement), Kungsholmen, Riddarsholmen, Helgeandsholmen, Skeppsholmen, Kastellholmen, Stromsborg, Djurgarden, Beckholmen. They are of extremely unequal size. The greater part of the city is on the mainland north and south, and the suburbs spread on to an indefinite number of other islands.

[114] Many fine structures all over Sweden were erected by the same architect. Most of them were country seats for the nobility, who desired to house worthily the magnificent collections of art that had been the spoils of the Thirty Years' War, the only lasting monument for Sweden of the victories of her armies of old.

[115] _Tour in Sweden in 1838._

[116] Within the effect is very splendid with many halls, a fine chapel and bewilderingly numerous suites of apartments. The great marble stair on the east with double columns in the three orders on the three levels is a magnificent feature. The inlaid floors and carved panelling, the really well-planned decorations, largely in white and gold, with ceiling paintings by Jacques Fouquet and others, all give the impression that the mansion has for generations been the home of people of culture and taste. The traditional absence of formality in the Swedish court is displayed by the way in which the public are admitted to the comfortable private rooms, where copies of the English _Graphic_ lie about and unbound Tauchnitz editions provide an admirable selection of English literature. A forest of horns and other trophies of sport in the billiard room, in fact to a great extent the whole atmosphere, suggest a large English country house.

[117] Miss M. E. Coleridge wrote a novel about him called _The King with Two Faces_.

[118] In his excellent work, _Sweden and the Swedes_ (one of them his wife), 1893. He was U.S. Minister to Sweden and Norway.

[119] The National Museum, among many other things including a gallery of pictures old and new, possesses a collection of prehistoric antiquities rivalled only by that of Copenhagen. In the Humlegard (Botanic Garden) is a bronze statue of Linnæus in the centre of flower patterns; it also contains the Riks-Bibliotek, or National Library, among whose treasures are the Latin _Codex Aureus_, and the _Gigas Librorum_, one of whose illuminations is a huge coloured figure of the devil--spoils of the Thirty Years' War.

[120] According to one legend the women of Wärend gained their ancient privilege of inheriting on equal terms with men by similar service against the Danes. The privilege is now extended all over the country.

[121] He was crusading in Finland when his son Valdemar, first of the Folkungar Line, was chosen king by the Council on the collapse of the House of Sverker.

[122] Quoted by Otté.

[123] A nobler English saint (who with St. Peter shares the dedication of the Anglican Church in Stockholm), was one of the earliest and best Apostles of the Faith in the Swede-realm. Coming once to the borders of a lake, St. Siegfrid (or Sigurd) saw a bright vision of glistening angels, and vowed to raise a church where the cathedral of Vexio now stands.

[124] Rhyming Chronicle, quoted by Otté.

[125] There is a statue to him just east of the church.

[126] It is often called the cathedral, but incorrectly. Stockholm is extra-diocesan, forming a sort of "enclave" administered by the Pastor Primarius and his consistory; necessary episcopal functions are performed by the Archbishop of Upsala. The church, originally about the same age as the Riddarsholmskyrka, was largely reconstructed about 1736, the chancel being removed, and the outer aisles apparently built. The square clock-tower has pilasters, the church has Classic buttresses, cornices, etc., but there are some mongrel-decorated windows. The interior is still largely mediæval, and most impressive from the wide dimensions--eight bays and five aisles all vaulted at the same level. The brick pillars are mostly clustered, the central vault has most ornate brick ribs, and the aisle roofs have remains of old paintings. There are really splendid Renaissance fittings, including a lovely Augsburg carved wooden reredos, stone font with Runic patterns dated 1514, two canopied thrones, carved pulpit and organ case, some fine tombs and tablets with several effigies and one canopy, besides a knight on horseback larger than life slaying a dragon.

[127] Canon Wieselgren, of Göteborg (Gotenburg), was the main leader in the triumphant temperance movement, aided by the great chymist, Berzelius, who has a statue in the little Stockholm park that bears his name. Gustavus III. in 1775 had made distilling and selling spirits a Government monopoly, yielding a chief item of revenue. When this was abolished and distilling became absolutely free to all the state of Sweden became much worse than before.

Eventually drinking was reduced to its present very moderate dimensions by confining the manufacture and sale of spirits to companies which may make what profit they can on everything else, but are only allowed five per cent. on drinks, any surplus being handed over to the local authority for providing such things as lectures, sports, excursions and libraries. As in America, districts may vote to be entirely "dry" if they prefer. This arrangement, generally called the Gotenburg system, with local variations, is in force over most of Norway and Sweden. Göteborg adopted it in 1865, and Stockholm followed in 1877. Beer is outside the arrangement.

[128] Judging from the Lapp huts outside museums and the ordinary Zulu kraal of Natal, the African natives are the cleaner of the two races.

[129] Not far from Skansen is the Hasselbacken Restaurant, whose cooking is unsurpassed in France.

[130] Both thistle and globe artichokes are extensively cultivated for the markets of Stockholm. Tobacco is another crop very often to be seen; its growth is no new industry, it is mentioned by Laing in 1838, and he says it is used largely for snuff. Mere frames of poles on wheels serve for the ingathering of harvest.

[131] _The Land of the Midnight Sun_, by Paul Du Chaillu, 1881. The author was French by birth.

[132] The form Russia was not known till the end of the seventeenth century. In Great Blakenham Church, Suffolk, there is a monument of 1645 to a London merchant, named Swift

"Honoured abroad for wise and just, Aske the Russe and Sweden theis."

[133] The original authority for Ruric and his viking followers settling at Novgorod in 862 is the _Chronicle_ of Nestor, a monk of Kiev, who died about 1114. There is a very good account of early Russian history in W. R. Morrill's _Russia_ in the _Story of the Nations_.

[134] _Heimskringla, Saga of Olaf Tryggvison_, Ch. VII.

[135] _ib._, Ch. XXI.

[136] _Saga of Olaf the Holy_, Ch. CXCI.

[137] _ib._, Ch. CXCVIII.

[138] _Heimskringla, Saga of Harald the Hardredy_, Ch. XVI.

[139] My friend, A. Rothay Reynolds, author of _My Russian Year_, has very kindly elicited for me the information that these relics no longer exist. Although the sagas give no hint of any difference of religious views between Russians and Norse (p. 233), the bones of St. Henry were evidently insulted at St. Petersburg, where they might with more appropriateness have been shrined.

[140] The present building was erected about 1733 from designs by Tressini, an Italian architect. It is a rather commonplace Classic church whose details are extremely poor, though the interior has a certain impressiveness from the tall pillars supporting the roof, for the usual galleries are not there. Over the windows are cherubs. Over the eastern octagon rises a little onion dome. The tower that surmounts the western front is crowned by the gilded needle spire which soars, out of all proportion to the church, no less than 364 feet into the air, sometimes most impressively catching the light of the setting sun while all is in shadow around.

[141] This house contains the very distorting panes of glass that were the earliest to be made in Russia. The only large buildings in the city that Peter ever saw are part of the University and an adjacent palace of Menshikóf, now a school of cadets. Both are stucco and uninteresting; one bears the date 1710.

[142] So that it is rather curious that this building should be on the whole the most perfect reproduction of an Italian church in St. Petersburg. There is nothing Russian about it; just an ordinary cruciform domed Renaissance building, 255 feet long.

The other large monastery in St. Petersburg, Smolni, by the bend in the river, has buildings surrounding two huge courts which are made very pleasant by trees. The first, which is much the larger, has a covered cloister all round and a high dome in each corner. The centre of the western side is left open to expose to the street the chief façade of the church, which, like the Chantry at Winchester, stands detached in the centre of the court. It is a simple and impressive Italian Renaissance building, 245 feet long, with pilasters on two levels and in the centre a lofty tower, open to the top within. The interior is all white, some marble shafts giving relief to the eternal plaster. Designed by Rastrelli in 1734, the structure follows the type of his native country, except that five great onion domes mark as Russian the top of the tower. The faults of the building are glaring enough, but Fergusson seems rather severe in his remark: "It would be difficult to find in Europe anything so really bad as this."

[143] Its dimensions are 731 by 584 feet. There are three stories with pilasters on two levels, but the architrave bends over each of the upper windows, and the consequent loss of the horizontal line that is of the very essence of Classic architecture, is absolutely fatal to the effect. Several halls and other chambers within are extremely magnificent, but the most glorious columns of marble support gilded capitals of plaster, and there is a good deal to justify Fergusson's observation about a man of taste recoiling in horror from such a piece of barbaric magnificence. The chapel is frankly Russian with the customary onion dome. The figures of the eikonastasis stand out detached, though the Eastern Church as a rule holds anything more than very slight relief as a breach of the Second Commandment. This little building contains some priceless relics, hands of the Baptist and of the Virgin, a fragment of the body of St. George, a piece of the true cross, a picture painted by St. Luke! There are relics nearer our own day in the chamber where the second Alexander died in 1881, after being wounded by the bomb (p. 253). His empty study chair, the books as he left them on the table, the few coins in his pocket when he went out for the last time, his unfinished cigarette, his coat thrown over the back of a chair, the couch on which he passed away.

[144] This structure is more Greek in design, the architect was Baron Leo von Klenze, of Munich, and it was erected about the middle of the nineteenth century. There are two large courts, but one of them is divided by the great staircase which rises between two rows of magnificent grey marble columns that support the plaster ceiling; other portions have a very rich effect from the profusion of coloured marbles and the beautiful inlaid wood flowers which almost give the impression of mosaic. The lower storey forms a very complete museum, beginning with ancient Egypt and including many interesting things from different parts of the Russian Empire. The upper storey, which is higher and much better lighted, houses the famous collection of pictures.

[145] The reason was that he wanted his people to look more European, but the Russians held a good deal of the oriental view of the sacredness of beards, and some preserved their cut-off hairs to be buried with them and enjoyed in the next world.

[146] This characteristic seems even more apparent among Russians in the Far East than in their own capital.

[147] The original Patriarchates were those of Jerusalem, Antioch, Alexandria, Constantinople and Rome. That of Moscow dated from the sixteenth century.

[148] Each portico has eight huge monolithic columns of red Finland granite, 56 feet high (bases and Corinthian caps of bronze), to support the sculptured tympanum, whose figures are in high relief, and is approached by a stately flight of steps. Except on the east there are splendid portals with grape patterns in stone and beautiful relief bronze doors. The side porticoes are deeper than the others and flanked by turrets for bells. The plan of the church is a simple oblong, 305 by 166 feet. Only four great windows admit light to the interior (except for a single one behind the altar opening into the eastern portico and those of the lantern dome), one on each side of the lateral porticoes. These naturally dwarf the design very much. A rather poorly planned circular colonnade and iron dome rise through the roof, resting on four huge piers in the church. The arrangement of the vaulting is made to suggest the ordinary cruciform plan, with a dome in each corner. The general effect is extremely rich from the magnificent shafts of malachite and lapis lazuli, and the lavish decorations of inlaid marble and mosaic, but nothing can redeem the poverty and commonplace character of the design. Fergusson calls the building a cold and unsatisfactory failure, and says there is not a week's thought in the whole design from pavement to dome cross. This it is not easy to deny, but there is much to redeem the failure, particularly in the splendour of the material.

The other Renaissance buildings of the city are very numerous, and in many cases very large, but for variety they cannot be said to be remarkable. Of the foreign architects successively employed, not one was really good, and decidedly the best buildings on the whole are those designed by Russians who had mastered the principles of the foreign style. One of the most successful, by Varonikin, was erected at the worst possible period--the early nineteenth century. It is the Cathedral of Our Lady of Kazan, an Italian building, 257 feet long. Inviting colonnades extend from the north transept to the street, forming a vast semi-circle and suggesting the piazza of St. Peter's. The portico of the transept appears in the centre with the dome rising above, and, material apart, this is one of the most successful things of its kind ever built. Nave and south transept also have porticoes. The columns throughout the building are in pairs, and within the effect is most striking from the granite columns that uphold the great entablature, the lofty flat roofs of the aisles, and the way in which the lantern rises from arches which terminate the tunnel vaults of the four arms. Much of the eikonastasis is of silver, and the floor is marble inlaid.

[149] The centre of gravity of the rearing horse is successfully preserved in the right place by making the metal almost solid at the back and quite thin in front. In November, 1770, Rev. J. C. King wrote to Lord Macartney: "I mean the great stone on which Falconet's statue is to be placed.... It is ... arrived at St. Petersburg: the Empress had earrings made of it for herself."

[150] In some parts of the city the soil is of a stiff blue clay.

[151] The bomb-splintered brougham in which he took his last drive is preserved unrepaired among the Imperial carriages.

[152] Surmounting the central octagon and its four corner turrets, the west tower, and the three eastern apses. Some are covered with extraordinary raised glazed tiles, the central one greatly resembling a turban. The interior is both simpler and better than the outside; four columns with round arches sustain the central lantern, and round arches open to apses and tower. The floor is of marble inlaid; walls, piers and vaults are covered with the most beautiful mosaics in prevailing colours of blue and gold, saints in four tiers varied by landscapes and lilies. The old church furniture displayed in the Museum of Alexander III. seems to show Byzantine forms getting more and more modified by increasing Tatar influences. In the same place are some very interesting paintings by Russian artists. Verestchagin has the place of honour, and is represented by some excellent pictures of battle scenes, some displaying the French at Moscow. The picture of Abram and Isaac done by Reutern with his left hand has faces that could hardly be better.

[153] The Honourable Russia Company is still patron of four of the English churches in Russia. "A faint legal trace of the ancient privileges of the Muscovy Company survives in the extra-territorial character belonging for marriage purposes to the churches and chapels formerly attached to their factories in Russia."--Sir Courtenay Ilbert.

[154] Quoted by Eugene Schuyler, _Peter the Great, Emperor of Russia_, 1884.

[155] One room has pictures of several hundred Russian maids dwelling in different parts of the Empire, another has living plants trained up the walls as part of its permanent decoration, ornate chandeliers hang from ceilings, pictures and tapestry cover the walls, and, as at Solomon's Court, everything is splashed with gold.

[156] Several such may be seen among the Imperial carriages in St. Petersburg.

TRANSCRIBER'S NOTE

-Plain print and punctuation errors fixed.

End of Project Gutenberg's Capitals of the Northlands, by Ian C. Hannah