Rocks, columns, obeHsks, statues, triumphal arches, have been brought within her gates, and such magnificent positions and accessories appointed, as have seldom fallen to the lot of monuments. No pains or expense is spared on. the fit arrangement of those memorials, the best artists have been consulted on the plans, drawing, and placing of them. Nevertheless, scarcely one has escaped some arch-blunder, which strikes every spectator at once, and yet escaped the notice of the many founders and rearers who reflected so long and so deeply about tlie matter.
The largest and most interesting monuments of St. Petersburg, are the Alexander Pillar, Peter's Rock, the Rumanzoff Obelisk, the statues of Kutusoff, Barclay de Tolly, and Suvaroff, the equestrian statue of Peter the Great, and the Triumphal Arch.
When we examine the list of Russian monuments, it is not a little striking, that far more have been raised to distinguished subjects than to the emperors themselves. Contrary to the practice of the Roman emperors, and of so many ancient and modem princes, the Russian emperors have shown a great disinclination to the erection of monuments in their own honour during their lifetime, and keeping themselves in the background, they have put their subjects forward. The only monarch who has yet been honoured with statues is Peter the Great. Even the proud and vain Catherine has no memorial to her honour, either in the capital or elsewhere. The greater part of the Russian monuments refer to the three cliief epochs of their history ; to the period of the elevation of the Romanoffs and the shaking off the Polish yoke ; (to them the memorials of Minin, Posharski, and some others, are devoted ;) to the time of Peter the Great, and the reduction of the Swedish power ; and to the time of the struggle with the French Revolution and Napoleon, or rather against the whole of Western Europe, to which belong the Pyramids of Boradino, the Goddess of Victory, at Riga, the Alexander Column, and the statues of a number of generals.
So much has been written in newspapers and books of travels of the Rock of Peter and Alexander's Pillar, that in spite of their size they might be literally buried under the load of praise and blame already bestowed, yet every one finds something new in them to laud or find fault with. Among trifling objections, the first to be made is to the inscription, " Petro Primo, Catherina Secunda," or in Russian, equally short, " Petramu Pervomu, Catherina Vtovaya^ It is chiselled on the two long sides of the rock. To us, it seemed, decidedly, the proper place would have been in front, for every thing should have its inscription conspicuously on its forehead. We do not indicate the intent of a building on the wings, but as a frontispiece over the chief entrance. Enormous is the vanity displayed in this inscription. The allusion contained in the opposition of " the first " and " the second" is easily comprehended, when we bear in mind that Catherine always looked on herself as the finisher of what Peter had begun. By this inscription, she not only places herself on a level yA\. Peter, but above him as a judge, a goddess to acknowledge and reward merit. But this is easier forgotten than the bad treatment which the rock on which the statue stands has experienced. The idea of a rider springing up a rock, on both sides of which steep precipices threaten destruction, and of representing liim at the moment when he has reached
Tlie passion for monuments has gained the complete mastery over the Russians By searching in tlieir history, a number of remarkable men ajul events have been fumid w'lncli arc held worthy of monuments. Witness the Pyramids on the battlefield of Boradino, the Column at I'ultava, the Goddess of Victory, in BigJU for 1813 the statues of Triiu'c Posliarski and the citi/en Minin in Moscow, and several monuments in Zarskoye Sclo, and some other places.
the summit, and victoriously contemplates the land beyond, is as poetical and grand a one as ever was breathed by a sculptor on his work, and it were difficult not to find the parade-steppinghorses in our equestrian statues of princes, feeble and sleepy, after seeing Peter galloping on his rock.