Bulging from the ceilings are massy
bosses of Siberian porphyry and jasper. To decorate the walls with
unfading pictures, Nicholas founded an establishment for mosaic work,
where sixty pictures were commanded, each demanding, after all artistic
labor, the mechanical labor of two men for four years.
Yet this vast work is not so striking a monument of Nicholas's luxury as
of his timidity.
For this cathedral and some others almost as grand were, in part, at
least, results of the deep wish of Nicholas to wean his people from
their semi-idolatrous love for dark, confined, filthy sanctuaries, like
those of Moscow; but here, again, is a timid purpose and half-result;
Nicholas dared set no adequate enginery working at the popular religious
training or moral training. There had been such an organization,--the
Russian Bible Society,--favored by the first Alexander; but Nicholas
swept it away at one pen-stroke. Evidently, he feared lest Scriptural
denunciations of certain sins in ancient politics might be popularly
interpreted against certain sins in modern politics.
It was this same vague fear at revolutionary remembrance which thwarted
Nicholas in all his battling against official corruption.
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