Russia in 1839 -Empire of the Czar: A Journey Through Eternal Russia

168HUMILITY OF THE PEASANTS.

It takes every kind of form, even the form of humility, — that religious modesty discovered by Christians.

A Russian does not know what it is to say no to this lord, who represents to him his two other greater masters, God and the Emperor; and he places all his talent, all his glory, in eoncµiering those little difficulties of existence that are magnified, and even valued, by the lower orders of other lands, as auxiliaries in their revenge against the rich, whom they consider as enemies, because they are esteemed the happy of the earth.

The Russians are too completely stripped of all the blessings of life to be envious: the men who are most to be pitied are those who no longer complain. The envious among us are those whose ambitious aims have failed: France, that land of easy living and rapid fortune-making, is a nursery of envious people. I cannot feel sympathy with the regrets, full of malice, that prey on these men, whose souls are enervated by the luxuries of life ; but the patience of the peasants here, inspires me with a compassion — I had almost said, with an esteem that is profound. The political self-denial of the Russians is abject and revolting; their domestic resignation is noble and touching. The vice of the nation becomes the virtue of the individual.

The plaintive sadness of the Russian songs strikes every foreigner; but this music is not only melancholy, it is also scientific and complicated : it is composed of inspired melodies; and, at the same time, of harmonious combinations exceedingly abstruse, and that are not elsewhere attained except by study and calculation. Often, in travelling through villages, I