Part 4

Issuing from the gate, we find ourselves in the large court of the Kremlin, in the midst of the most bewildering conglomeration of palaces, churches, and monasteries of which the imagination can dream. It conforms to no known style of architecture. It is not Greek, it is not Byzantine, it is not Gothic, it is not Saracen, it is not Chinese: it is Russian; it is Muscovite. Never did architecture more free, more original, more indifferent to rules, in a word, more romantic, materialize with such fantastic caprice. Sometimes it seems to resemble the freaks of frostwork. However, its leading characteristics are the cupolas and the golden-bulbed bell-towers, which seem to follow no law and are conspicuous at the first glance.

Below the large square where the principal buildings of the Kremlin are grouped and which forms the plateau of the hill, a circular road winds about the irregularities of the ground and is bordered by ramparts flanked with towers of infinite variety: some are round, some square, some slender as minarets, some massive as bastions, and some with machicolated turrets, while others have retreating stories, vaulted roofs, sharply-cut sides, open-worked galleries, tiny cupolas, spires, scales, tracery, and all conceivable endings. The battlements, cut deeply through the wall and notched at the top like an arrow, are alternately plain and pierced with little barbicans. We will ignore the strategic value of this defence, but from a poetic standpoint it satisfies the imagination and gives the idea of a formidable citadel.

Between the rampart and the platform bordered by a balustrade gardens extend, now powdered with snow, and a picturesque little church lifts its globular bell-towers. Beyond, as far as the eye can reach, lies the immense and wonderful panorama of Moscow to which the crest of the saw-toothed wall forms an admirable foreground and frame for the distant perspective which no art could improve....

The Kremlin contains within its walls many churches, or cathedrals, as the Russians call them. Exactly like the Acropolis, it gathers around it on its narrow plateau a large number of temples. We will visit them one by one, but we will first pause at the tower of Ivan Veliki, an enormous octagon belfry with three retreating stories, upon the last of which there rises from a zone of ornamentation a round turret finished with a swelling dome, fire-gilt with ducat-gold, and surmounted by a Greek cross resting upon the conquered crescent. Upon each side of each story little arches are cut so that the brazen body of a bell may be seen.

In this place there are thirty-three bells, among which is said to be the famous alarm-bell of Novgorod, whose reverberations once called the people to the tumultuous deliberations in the public square. One of these bells weighs not less than a hundred and ninety-three tons, and is such a monster of metal that beside it the great bell of Notre-Dame of which Quasimodo was so proud, would be nothing more than the tiny hand-bell used at Mass....

Let us enter one of the most ancient and characteristic cathedrals of the Kremlin, the first one built of stone, the Cathedral of the Assumption (_Ouspenskosabor_). It is not the original edifice founded by Ivan Kalita. That crumbled away after a century and a half of existence and was rebuilt by Ivan III. Notwithstanding its Byzantine style and archaic appearance, the present Cathedral dates only from the Fifteenth Century. One is astonished to learn that it is the work of Fioraventi, an architect of Bologna, whom the Russians called Aristotle because of his astounding knowledge. One would imagine it the work of some Greek architect from Constantinople whose head was filled with memories of Santa Sofia and models of Greco-Oriental architecture. The Assumption is almost square and its great walls soar with a surprising pride and strength. Four enormous pillars, large as towers and massive as the columns of the Palace of Karnak, support the central cupola, which rests on a flat roof in the Asiatic style, flanked by four similar cupolas. This simple arrangement produces a magnificent effect and these massive pillars contribute, without any heaviness, a fine balance and extraordinary stability to the Cathedral.

The interior of the church is covered with Byzantine paintings on a gold background. The pillars themselves are embellished with figures arranged in zones as in the Egyptian temples and palaces. Nothing could be more strange than this decoration where thousands of figures surround you like a mute assemblage, ascending and descending the entire length of the walls, walking in files in Christian panathenæa, standing alone in poses of hieratic rigidity, bending over to the pendentives, and draping the temple with a human tapestry swarming with motionless beings. A strange light, carefully disposed, contributes greatly to the disquieting and mysterious effect. In these ruddy and fawn-coloured shadows the tall savage saints of the Greek calendar assume a formidable semblance of life; they look at you with fixed eyes and seem to threaten you with their hands outstretched for benediction.... The interior of St. Mark’s at Venice, with its suggestion of a gilded cavern, gives the idea of the Assumption; only the interior of the Muscovite church rises with one sweep towards the sky, while the vault of St. Mark’s is strangely weighed down like a crypt. The _iconostase_, a lofty wall of silver-gilt with five rows of figures, is like the façade of a golden palace, dazzling the eye with fabled magnificence. In the filigree framework of gold appear in tones of bistre the dark heads and hands of the Madonnas and saints. The rays of their aureoles are set with precious stones, which, as the light falls upon them, scintillate and blaze with celestial glory; the images, objects of peculiar veneration, are adorned with breastplates of precious stones, necklaces, and bracelets, starred with diamonds, sapphires, rubies, emeralds, amethysts, pearls, and turquoises; the madness of religious extravagance can go no further.

It is in the Cathedral of the Assumption that the coronation of the Czar takes place. The platform for this occasion is erected between the four pillars which support the cupola and faces the _iconostase_.

The tombs of the Metropolitans of Moscow are placed in rows along the sides of the walls. They are oblong: as they loom up in the shadows, they make us think of trunks packed for the great voyage of eternity....

At the side of the new palace and very near these churches a strange building is seen, of no known style of architecture, neither Asiatic nor Tartar, and which for a secular building is much what Vassili-Blagennoi is for a religious edifice,--the perfectly realized chimæra of a sumptuous, barbaric, and fantastic imagination. It was built under Ivan III. by the architect Aleviso. Above its roof several towers, capped with gold and containing within them chapels and oratories, spring up with a graceful and picturesque irregularity. An outside staircase, from the top of which the Czar shows himself to the people after his coronation, gives access to the building and produces by its ornamented projection a unique architectural effect. It is to Moscow what the Giants’ Stairway is to Venice. It is one of the curiosities of the Kremlin. In Russia it is known as the Red Stairway (_Krasnoi-Kriltosi_). The interior of the Palace, the residence of the ancient Czars, defies description; one would say that its chambers and passages have been excavated according to no determined plan in some curious block of stone, for they are so strangely entangled, so winding and complicated, and so constantly changing their level and direction that they seem to have been ordered at the caprice of an extravagant fancy. We walk through them as in a dream, sometimes stopped by a grille which opens mysteriously, sometimes forced to follow a narrow dark passage in which our shoulders almost touch both walls, sometimes having no other path than the toothed ledge of a cornice from which the copper plates of the roofs and the globular belfries are visible, constantly ascending, descending without knowing where we are, seeing beyond us through the golden trellises the gleam of a lamp flashing back from the golden filigree-work of the shrines, and emerging after this intramural journey into a hall with a rich and riotous wildness of ornamentation, at the end of which we are surprised at not seeing the Grand Kniaz of Tartary seated cross-legged upon his carpet of black felt.

Such for example is the hall called the Golden Chamber, which occupies the entire Granovitaïa Palata (the Facet Palace), so called doubtless on account of its exterior being cut in diamond facets. The Granovitaïa Palata adjoins the old palace of the Czars. The golden vaults of this hall rest upon a central pillar by means of surbased arches from which thick bars of elliptical gilded iron go across from one arc to another to prevent their spreading. Several paintings here and there make sombre spots upon the burnished gold splendour of the background.

Upon the string-courses of the arches legends are written in old Sclavonic letters--magnificent characters which lend themselves with as much effect for ornamentation as the Cufic letters on Arabian buildings. Richer, more mysterious, and yet more brilliant decorations than these of the Golden Chamber cannot be imagined. A romantic person would like to see a Shakespearian play acted here.

Certain vaulted halls of the old Palace are so low that a man who is a little above the average height cannot stand upright in them. It is here, in an atmosphere overcharged with heat, that the women, lounging on cushions in Oriental style, spend the hours of the long Russian winter in gazing through the little windows at the snow sparkling on the golden cupolas and the ravens whirling in great circles around the bell-towers.

These apartments with their motley wall-decorations of palms, foliage, and flowers, recalling the patterns of Cashmere, make us imagine these to be Asiatic harems transported to the polar frosts. The true Muscovite taste, perverted later by a badly-understood imitation of Western art, appears here in all its primitive originality and intensely barbaric flavour.

I have frequently observed that the progress of civilization seems to deprive nations of the true sense of architecture and decoration. The ancient edifices of the Kremlin prove once again how true is this assertion, which appears paradoxical at first. An inexhaustible fantasy presides over the decoration of these mysterious rooms where the gold, the green, the blue, and the red mingle with a rare happiness and produce the most charming effects. This architecture, without the least regard for symmetry, rises like a honey-comb of soap-bubbles blown upon a plate. Each little cell takes its place adjoining its neighbour, arranging its own angles and facets until the whole glitters with colours diapered with iris. This childish and bizarre comparison will give you a better idea than anything else of the aggregation of these palaces, so fantastic, yet so real.

It is in this style that we wish they had built the new Palace, an immense building in good modern taste and which would have a beauty elsewhere, but none whatever in the centre of the old Kremlin. The classic architecture with its long cold lines seems more wearisome and solemn here among these palaces with their strange forms, their gaudy colours, and this throng of churches of Oriental style darting towards the sky a golden forest of cupolas, domes, pyramidal spires, and bulbous bell-towers.

When looking at this Muscovite architecture you could easily believe yourself in some chimerical city of Asia, fancying the cathedrals mosques, and the bell-towers minarets, if it were not for the sober façade of the new Palace which leads you back to the unpoetic Occident and its unpoetic civilization: a sad thing for a romantic barbarian of the present day. We enter the new Palace by a stairway of monumental size closed at the top by a magnificent grille of polished iron which is opened to allow the visitor to pass. We find ourselves under the large vault of a domed hall where sentinels are perpetually on guard: four effigies clothed from head to foot in antique and curious Sclavonic armour. These knights have a noble air; they are surprisingly life-like; we could easily believe that hearts are beating beneath their coats of mail. Mediæval armour disposed in this way always gives me an involuntary shiver. It so faithfully suggests the external form of a man who has vanished forever.

From this rotunda lead two galleries which contain priceless riches: the treasure of the Caliph Haroun al-Raschid, the wells of Aboul-Kasem, and the Green Vaults of Dresden united could not show such an accumulation of marvels, and here historic association is added to the material value. Here, sparkling, gleaming, and sportively flashing their prismatic light, are diamonds, sapphires, rubies, and emeralds--all the precious stones which Nature has hidden in the depths of her mines--in as much profusion as if they were mere glass. They glitter like constellations in crowns, they flash in points of light from the ends of sceptres, they fall like sparkling raindrops upon the Imperial insignias and form arabesques and cyphers until they nearly hide the gold in which they are set. The eye is dazzled and the mind can hardly calculate the sums that represent such magnificence.

_Voyage en Russie_ (Paris, 1866).

THE CATHEDRAL OF YORK.

THOMAS FROGNALL DIBDIN.

Let us go immediately to the Cathedral--the deepening tones of whose tenor bell seem to hurry us on to the spot. Gentle reader, on no account visit this stupendous edifice--this mountain of stone--for the first time from the Stonegate (Street) which brings you in front of the south transept. Shun it--as the shock might be distressing; but, for want of a better approach, wend your steps round by Little Blake Street, and, at its termination, swerve gently to the left, and place yourself full in view of the _West Front_. Its freshness, its grandeur, its boldness and the numerous yet existing proofs of its ancient richness and variety, will peradventure make you breathless for some three seconds. If it should strike you that there is a want of the subdued and mellow tone of antiquity, such as we left behind at Lincoln, you must remember that nearly all this front has undergone a recent scraping and repairing in the very best possible taste--under the auspices of the late Dean Markham, who may be said to have loved this Cathedral with a holy love. What has been done, under his auspices, is admirable; and a pattern for all future similar doings.

Look at those towers--to the right and left of you. How airy, how elegant, what gossamer-like lightness, and yet of what stability! It is the decorative style of architecture, in the Fourteenth Century, at which you are now gazing with such untiring admiration. Be pleased to pass on (still outside) to the left, and take the whole range of its northern side, including the Chapter-House. Look well that your position be far enough _out_--between the house of the residing prebendary and the deanery--and then, giving rein to your fancy, gaze, rejoice, and revel in every expression of admiration and delight!--for it has _no equal_: at least, not in Germany and France, including Normandy. What light and shade!--as I have seen it, both beneath the sun and moon, on my first visit to the house of the prebendal residentiary--and how lofty, massive, and magnificent the Nave! You catch the Chapter-House and the extreme termination of the choir, connecting one end of the Cathedral with the other, at the same moment--comprising an extent of some 550 feet! You are lost in astonishment, almost as much at the conception, as at the completion of such a building.

Still you are disappointed with the central Tower, or Lantern; the work, in great part, of Walter Skirlaw, the celebrated Bishop of Durham,--a name that reflects honour upon everything connected with it. Perhaps the upper part only of this tower was of his planning--towards the end of the Fourteenth Century. It is sadly disproportionate with such a building, and should be lifted up one hundred feet at the least....

After several experiments, I am of the opinion that you should enter the _interior_ at the spot where it is usually entered; and which, from the thousand pilgrim-feet that annually visit the spot, may account for the comparatively worn state of the pavement;--I mean the _South Transept_. Let us enter alone, or with the many. Straight before you, at the extremity of the opposite or northern transept, your eyes sparkle with delight on a view of the stained-glass lancet windows. How delicate--how rich--how chaste--how unrivalled! All the colours seem to be intertwined, in delicate fibres, like Mechlin lace. There is no glare: but the tone of the whole is perfectly bewitching. You move on. A light streams from above. It is from the Lantern, or interior summit of the Great Tower, upon which you are gazing. Your soul is lifted up with your eyes: and if the diapason harmonies of the organ are let loose, and the sweet and soft voices of the choristers unite in the Twelfth Mass of Mozart--you instinctively clasp your hands together and exclaim, “_This must be Heaven!_”

Descend again to earth. Look at those clustered and colossal bases, upon which the stupendous tower is raised. They seem as an Atlas that for some five minutes would sustain the world. Gentle visitor, I see you breathless, and starting back. It is the Nave with its “storied windows richly dight,” that transports you; so lofty, so wide, so simple, so truly grand! The secret of this extraordinary effect appears to be this. The pointed arches that separate the nave from the side aisles, are at once spacious and destitute of all obtruding ornaments; so that you catch very much of the side aisles with the nave; and on the left, or south aisle, you see some of the largest windows in the kingdom, with their _original stained glass_, a rare and fortunate result--from the fanatical destruction of the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries; and for which you must laud the memory of General Lord Fairfax, Cromwell’s son-in-law: who showed an especial tenderness towards this Cathedral.

“Breathe a prayer for his soul and pass on”

to the great window at the extremity of the nave. To my eye the whole of this window wants simplicity and grandeur of effect. Even its outside is too unsubstantial and playful in the tracery, for my notion of congruity with so immense a Cathedral. The stained glass is decidedly second-rate. The colour of the whole interior is admirable and worthy of imitation.

But where is _The Choir_, that wonder of the world?--“Yet more wondrous grown” from its phœnix-like revival from an almost all devouring flame?[2] You must retrace your steps--approach the grand screen--throwing your eye across the continued roof of the nave; and, gently drawing a red curtain aside, immediately under the organ, you cannot fail to be ravished with the most marvellous sight before you. Its vastness, its unspeakable and indescribable breadth, grandeur, minuteness, and variety of detail and finish--the clustering stalls, the stupendous organ, the altar, backed by a stone Gothic screen, with the interstices filled with plate-glass--the huge outspreading eastern window behind, with its bespangled stained-glass, describing two hundred scriptural subjects--all that you gaze upon, and all that you feel is so much out of everyday experience, that you scarcely credit the scene to be of this world. To add to the effect, I once saw the vast area of this choir filled and warmed by the devotion of a sabbath afternoon. Sitting under the precentor’s stall, I looked up its almost interminable pavement where knees were bending, responses articulated, and the organ’s tremendous peal echoing from its utmost extremity. Above the sunbeams were streaming through the chequered stained-glass--and it was altogether a scene of which the recollection is almost naturally borne with one to the grave....

This Cathedral boasts of two transepts, but the second is of very diminutive dimensions: indeed, scarcely amounting to the designation of the term. But these windows are most splendidly adorned with ancient stained-glass. They quickly arrest the attention of the antiquary; whose bosom swells, and whose eyes sparkle with delight, as he surveys their enormous height and richness. That on the southern side has a sort of mosaic work or dove-tailed character, which defies adequate description--and is an admirable _avant-propos_ to the CHAPTER HOUSE:--the Chapter House!--that glory of the Cathedral--that wonder of the world!...

Doubtless this Chapter House is a very repertory of all that is curious and grotesque, and yet tasteful, and of most marvellous achievement. You may carouse within it for a month--but it must be in the hottest month of the year; and when you are tired of the “cool tankard,” you may feast upon the pages of Britton and Halfpenny.... But the “world of wonders” exhibited in the shape of grotesque and capricious ornaments within this “House,” is responded to by ornaments to the full as fanciful and extravagant within the Nave and Choir. What an imagination seems to have been let loose in the designer engaged! Look at what is before you! Those frisky old gentlemen are sculptured at the terminating point, as corbels, of the arches on the _roof of the nave_: and it is curious that, in the bottom corbel, the figure to the left is a sort of lampoon, or libellous representation of the clergy: the bands and curled hair are decisive upon this point.... When I pace and repace the pavement of this stupendous edifice--when I meditate within this almost unearthly HOUSE OF GOD--when I think of much of its departed wealth and splendour,[3] as well as of its present durability and grandeur--a spirit within me seems to say, that _such_ an achievement of human skill and human glory should perish only with the crumbling fragments of a perishing world. Altogether it looks as if it were built for the day of doom.

“_A Bibliographical, Antiquarian, and Picturesque Tour of the Northern Counties of England and in Scotland_” (London, 1838).

THE MOSQUE OF OMAR.

PIERRE LOTI.

I am enchanted to-day by the spell of Islam, by the newly-risen sun, by the Spring which warms the air.

Moreover, we will direct our steps this morning towards the holy spot of the Arabs, towards the Mosque of Omar, accounted marvellous and honoured throughout the world.--Jerusalem, city sacred to Christians and Jews, is also, after Mecca, the most sacred Mohammedan city.--The French consul-general and Father S----, a Dominican, celebrated for his Biblical erudition, gladly accompanied us, and a janizary of the consulate preceded us, without whom even the approaches of the Mosque would have been forbidden.

We walked along the narrow streets, gloomy notwithstanding the sunlight, and between the old windowless walls, made of the _débris_ of all epochs of history and into which Hebraic stones and Roman marbles are fitted here and there. As we advanced towards the sacred quarter everything became more ruined, more devastated, more dead,--infinite desolation, which even surrounded the Mosque, the entrances to which are guarded by Turkish sentinels who prohibit passage to Christians.