ranean church or crypt (the Christian faith may well have insinuated itself at that time into Pompeii) a Christian priest comes forth, a disciple of the Apostles. He is contemplating earnestly but without dread, the passing scene in the heavens and on the earth, and appears to console and encourage some poorly-clad persons clinging by his side in fervent prayer. The dress of the priest and his censer point him out as of the Greek confession— a homage to the national church as well as to Christianity. In the distance are seen many objects of terror, families flying from the falling houses, horses wild with terror, &c. An effect particularly striking is produced by the marble statues shaken by the earthquake from their places on the roof, as if, like so many " stone guests," they were descending of their own accord. Glared on by the lightning, and their outlines sharply defined against the blackened skies, they hover obliquely in the air, about to fall, crushing and crushed, upon the bride, the priests, the children, and the old men. Besides the chief figures there are many accessories to the effect ; as, for instance, a young rider upon a frightened and rearing horse. The youth is ghastly pale, held in the saddle by his convulsive grasp of the steed : he is already Hfeless, and the horse is galloping away with a dead rider. A number of rich ornaments and precious stones have fallen from a slave in the street : all this splendour, all this life will soon be covered with night and horror, and centuries must pass away before the ashes of that bride aie brought to the light of day.
Leaving it to better critics to praise or blame the technical details of the picture, I will only remark that it is undoubtedly one of the best productions of a modern pencil, and that it is nmch to be lamented that the artist should so soon have abandoned the creative soil of Italy for voluptuous St. Petersburg, whose muse is idleness, and in the stream of whose pleasure-seeking life all productive genius is so quickly crippled. Briiloff is now putting on canvass the pretty faces of the court ladies and the gay uniforms of the Russian generals ; and thus an original genius is degraded into a mere copyist.
This picture excepted, there is little else worth seeing in the Academy of Arts (Akademia Khudoyestve) for the artist or the connoisseur ; but for the ethnograph and the traveller, who are interested in seeing all things from, their ow-n point of view, and as productions of tlieir poKtical and moral relations, there is enough that is instructive.
The best among the vorks there displayed are the cartoons of Rafael Mengs; an Apollo and Muses; and the Muse of History hstening in a Temj)le of Fame, and recording past events in a book. Among the three hundred pictures purchased in Italy for the Academy there are some good ones, including a few Raffaelles and Peruginos. The statues that Admiral Spiridion collected among the islands of the Archipelago, are mere fragments. Some statues brought from Warsaw are not without value. Here again are to be seen the busts of Peter the Great and Catherine the Second, two earthly sovereigns whose countenances are as often met with in Russia as those of the two spiritual kings, Schiller and Gothe, are among us in Germany. In the midst of the wrecks of the old Greek world, PoHsh trophies, and the portraits of the czars, are also seen the features of the greatest general of our time, Napoleon, of whom a fine marble statue was carried away fioni the good city of Hamburg by Bennigsen and Witgenstein, who transported it to St. Petersburg.
The building itself is one of the finest in the city, and, indeed, one of the
204 BRULOFF'S picture of POMPEII.
finest as well as the largest temples of art in tlie world. It stands ott Vassili Ostroff, on the Neva ; a magnificent quay, whose granite blocks and noble steps form the pedestal and avenue of the temple, supports also the guardians of its gate, two superb Egyptian sphinxes, fitly placed. Indeed all tlie colossal productions of Egyptian architecture would seem fitly placed in colossal St. Petersburg. The building is of the finest proportions, and has an elevation of 70 feet, with a circumference of 250 toises ; the whole length, 400 feet along the Neva facjade, is adorned ^Yth columns and pilasters. On the centre cupola a colossal Minerva is seated, and the portal is borne by a Farnese Hercules and a Flora.
The building is so extensive, that not only the 300 pupils who here receive instruction, but the professors and academicians, and many artists, not less it is said than a thousand persons, live there. It also contains some other collections of antique sculpture, Italian paintings, and some by the pupils ; but compared with the collections of Berlin, Dresden, and Vieima, they are insignificant.