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

The talent of imitation may become useful and even admirable in nations, provided it late developes itself; but it destroys all the other talents when it precedes them. Russia is a community of copyists: now, every man who can do nothing else but copy necessarily falls into caricature.

Hesitating for the space of four centuries between Europe and Asia, Russia has not yet succeeded in distinguishing itself by its works in the field of human intellect, because its national characteristics are lost under its borrowed decorations.

Separated from the West by its adherence to the Greek schism, it returns, after many centuries, with the inconsistency of a blind self-love, to demand from nations formed by Catholicism the civilisation of which a religion entirely political has deprived it. This Byzantine religion, which has issued from a palace to maintain order in a camp, does not respond to the most sublime wants of the human soul; it helps the police to deceive the nation, but that is the extent of its power.

It has, in advance, rendered the people unworthy of the culture to which they aspire.

The independence of the church is necessary to the motion of the religious sap ; for the development of the noblest faculty of a people, the faculty of believing, depends on the dignity of the man charged with communicating to men the divine revelations. The humiliation of the ministers of religion is the first punishment of heresy; and thus it is that in all schismatic countries the priest is despised by the people, in spite of, or rather because of the protection of the prince. People who understand their liberty