A large party of guests in gala dresses filled the rooms ; some friends and relations of the merchant, bowing and crossing themselves, marched after a party of priests in full pontificalibus. Every tobacco-box and cigar-chest, every divan, table, and chair, every corner, doorway, wall, and window, was visited, blessed and sprinkled, the officiating priests singing and swinging the censers all the time. The whole ended with a feast ; and the merriment was still going on at the back of the house, when the business began in the front, while the blessing was yet warm and fresh.
BRULOFF'S picture of POMPEII,
The most celebrated artists of the St. Petersburg academy are Briiloff, Orlowsky, and Tolstoy. 1 saw several of their works, and can affirm that they deserve their reputation.
Orlowsky has devoted himself to cabinet paintings, the subjects from Russian life, which will long continue to afford abundant materials where the artist knows how to choose them. Orlowsky, the Russian Horace Vernet, is particularly famous for his horses, which he has studied in the Steppes. One of his best, and best-known pictures is his " Courier." A Russian troika is carried on at full speed by three wild horses. The animals themselves are all fire and spirit from nostril to the extremity of every hair ; the carriage rushes on over stock and stone through a whirlwind of dust ; the bearded courier sits upright as a dart upon his seat firmly grasping the reins, and securely guiding the steeds, who fly onwards as if borne on the wings of the wind.
Tolstoy is known as a sculptor ; his subjects modelled in wax are executed with the greatest precision and taste. The campaign of 1812 has been illustrated by him in a series of has reliefs.
Briiloff is the most celebrated of the three, yet he has only produced one absolutely original picture, the " Destruction of Pompeii." This celebrated piece hangs in a room by itself in the Academy of Arts. It is not alone the only important work of the painter, but the only production of the Russian school known in foreign countries. A circumstantial criticism of this picture would lead us too far, even if I were competent to the task ; it will be enough to give a description of the subject, the idea of the artist, and of the grouping of the whole. When the picture was at Rome, these were all well known ; but placed as it is, so far out of the track of ordinary travellers, it may be somewhat forgotten.
The foreground is a street of Pompeii. The two lines of houses are lost in the distance as far as the gates of the city, before which the fiery stream of lava is advancing. Veiled in clouds and smoke the labouring mountain, the cause of the calamity, sends forth its fierce red light through night and vapour. The blackest midnight covers the face of heaven ; only the forked lightning, issuing from its destruction-swollen womb, brightens for a moment the scene in the streets below. In the centre lies a woman struck dead by the lightning and still in the last agony clasping her infant son. The cliild, unconscious of the horrors around, stretches playfully after the glowing ashes on the ground. On the right-hand totters an old grnyheaded man, whom a younger one and a boy are trying to carry away; and further off is seen a bridegroom, surrounded by the fear-stricken bridal guests, and endeavouring to save his flower-crowned bride. The fontl pair believed tliey had attained the sunnnit of their wishes, and death overtakes them on the sweetest festival of their lives I
To the left is the principal group, the imbodiment, probably, of the dominant idea of the picture, — an allusion to Clnistianity triumphant over the gods of the hcatlicn. From the fallen tcm)le rush forth the priests in white garments, laden with the sacred vessels and the powerless gods, whose aid they invoke in vain. Fear and anguish are painted in the strongest coloiu^ on their features, illumined by the lightning. Out of a subter-
BRULOFF'S picture of POMPEII. 203