Part 4

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.

[Illustration: INTERIOR OF YORK MINSTER]

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.

Thanks to the janizary, we clear this zone of fanatics, and then, by a series of little dilapidated doors, we pass into a gigantic court, a kind of melancholy desert where the grass pushes up between the stones as it does in a meadow where no human foot ever treads:--this is _Harâm es Sherif_ (The Sacred Enclosure). In the centre, and very far from us, there rises a solitary and surprising edifice, all blue, but of a blue so exquisite and rare that it seems to be some old enchanted palace made of turquoise; this is the Mosque of Omar, the marvel of all Islam.

How wild and magnificent is the solitude that the Arabs have succeeded in preserving around their Mosque of blue!

On each of its sides, which are at least five hundred metres long, this square is hemmed in with sombre buildings, shapeless by reason of decay, incomprehensible by reason of restorations and changes made at various epochs of ancient history: at the base are Cyclopean rocks, remnants of the walls of Solomon; above, the _débris_ of Herod’s citadel, the _débris_ of the _prætorium_ where Pontius Pilate was enthroned and whence Christ departed for Calvary; then the Saracens, and, after them, the Crusaders, left everything in a confused heap, and, finally, the Saracens, again having become the masters of this spot, burned or walled-up the windows, raised their minarets at haphazard, and placed at the top of the buildings the points of their sharp battlements.

Time, the leveller, has thrown over everything a uniform colour of old reddish terra-cotta, and given to all the buildings the same vegetation, the same decay, the same dust. This bewildering chaos of bits and fragments, formidable in its hoary age, speaks the nothingness of man, the decay of civilizations and races, and bestows infinite sadness upon this little desert beyond which rises in its solitude the beautiful blue palace surmounted by its cupola and crescent,--the marvellous and incomparable Mosque of Omar.

As we advance through this desert broken by large white stones and grass, giving it the feeling of a cemetery, the casing of the blue Mosque becomes more defined: we seem to see on its walls jewels of many colours and brilliantly cut, equally divided into pale turquoise and a deep _lapis-lazuli_, with a little yellow, a little white, a little green, and a little black, soberly combined in very delicate arabesques.

Among some cypresses, nearly sapless, several very ancient and dying olives, a series of secondary edicules more numerous towards the centre of the great court, lead to the Mosque, the great wonder of the square. Dotted about are some little marble _mihrabs_, some light arches, some little triumphal arches, and a kiosk with columns, which also seems covered with blue jewels. Yet here in this immense square, which centuries have rendered so desert-like, so melancholy, and so forsaken, Spring has placed amid the stones her garlands of daisies, buttercups, and wild peonies.

[Illustration: MOSQUE OF OMAR, JERUSALEM]

Coming nearer, we perceive that these elegant and frail little Saracen buildings are composed of the _débris_ of Christian churches and antique temples; the columns and the marble friezes have all vanished, torn away from a chapel of the Crusaders, from a basilica of the Greek Emperors, from a temple of Venus, or from a synagogue. If the general arrangement is Arab, calm and stamped with the grace of Aladdin’s palace, the detail is full of instruction regarding the frailty of religions and empires; this detail perpetuates the memory of great exterminating wars, of horrible sacks, of days when blood ran here like water and when the wholesale slaughtering “did not end until the soldiers were weary with killing.”

In all this conglomeration only that blue kiosk, neighbour of the blue Mosque, can tell its companion of Jerusalem’s terrible past. Its double row of marble columns is like a museum of _débris_ from all countries; we see Greek, Roman, Byzantine, or Hebraic capitals, others of an undetermined age, of a wild style almost unknown.

Now the tranquillity of death has settled over all; the remnants of so many various sanctuaries at enmity have been grouped, in honour of the God of Islam, in an unexpected harmony, and this will perhaps continue until they crumble into dust. When one recalls the troublous past it is strange to find this silence, this desolation, and this supreme peace in the centre of a court whose white stones are invaded by the daisies and weeds of the field.