Montferrand has known how to make
the most. I may here, by way of parenthesis, remark that the two
works which do most honour to St. Petersburg, the Cathedral of
St. Isaac and the adjacent equestrian statue of Peter the Great,
are severally due not to Russian but to French artists. This is
one example among many of the foreign origin of the arts in Russia.
But at all events let it be admitted that the materials used, as
well as the ideas often brought to bear, are local or national. For
example, the grandest of all architectural conceptions, the idea
of a dome, is here glorified in true Russian or Oriental manner,
not so much by magnitude of proportion as by decorative splendour,
heightened to the utmost by a surface of burnished gold. Then the
four porticos which terminate each end of the Greek cross with
stately columns and entablatures of granite from Finland, albeit
in design mere commonplace complications, are wholly national in
the material used. I do not now stop to mention the large and bold
reliefs in bronze, which though French in design were, I believe,
cast in St.
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