The Englishwoman in Russia : $b impressions of the society and manners of the Russians at homeA lady
History
The Englishwoman in Russia : $b impressions of the society and manners of the Russians at home
A lady
Russia -- Social life and customs -- 1533-1917
There are many places well worth visiting in St. Petersburg: such as
Peter’s Museum at the Academy of Sciences, the Palace of the Hermitage,
the Monastery of Alexander Nevsky, &c. &c. The first of these (Peter’s
Museum) contains a great many relics of the Czar after whom it is named;
many of them are the work of his own hands—models of ships, a chandelier,
some iron articles, shoes, and little ivory figures. There are also his
tools and instruments, carefully preserved under a glass case. In another
apartment is the effigy of the great Peter himself, modelled in wax,
habited in one of his own court-dresses, having shoes on that he himself
made, and the head is decorated with his own natural hair made into a
wig. Unlike the Russians generally, he had dark eyes and hair, and his
features had more of the southern cast than of the northern. He must have
been of immense stature, for a rod was shown us which we were assured
was exactly his height, and its length was some inches more than six
feet. Another room contains the horse on which he rode at the battle of
Poltava, when the royal Swede “was taught to fly;” it is a wiry little
animal, of a light brown, much resembling in size and appearance one of
the small species ridden by the Cossacks, but quite out of proportion
to the gigantic Czar, whose feet must have nearly reached the ground. I
believe there is another museum also called after Peter the Great, but we
did not go to see it.
At the very end of the Nevsky Perspective, after passing a vast number
of miserable dwellings, we reach the Nevsky Monastery, from which the
street is named. Alexander Nevsky is an imperial and warrior saint, and
was Czar of Muscovy. After his death he was canonized for some reason or
other; and of course, with all his imperial and religious advantages, his
shrine is greatly visited and much reverenced by the people. It seems
a general rule, not only among the heathen nations of antiquity, but
with the Russians as well, that, when thoroughly tired of the “fantastic
tricks” played by their monarchs “before high Heaven,” they are content
to worship them as gods, though they might themselves have forwarded
them on the road to Paradise. The late Emperor Alexander, though not yet
dignified with the title of _saint_, has obtained the first step towards
it by being surnamed the “_Blessed_,” but why and wherefore no one could
ever tell us.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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