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

fear or restriction; for I brave the danger even of wearying.

The country that I have just surveyed is as sombre and monotonous as that which I described formerly is brilliant and varied. To draw its exact picture is to renounce the hope to please. In Russia, life is as gloomy as in Andalusia it is gay ; the Russians are as dull as the Spaniards are full of spirits. In Spain, the absence of political liberty is compensated by a personal independence which perhaps exists nowhere to the same extent, and the effects of which are surprising ; whilst in Russia, the one is as little known as the other. A Spaniard lives on love, a Russian lives on calculation ; a Spaniard relates every thing, and if he has nothing to relate, he invents ; a Russian conceals every thing, or if he has nothing to conceal, he is still silent, that he may appear discreet: Spain is infested with brigands, but they rob only on the road; the Russian roads are safe, but you will be plundered infallibly in the houses : Spain is full of the ruins and the memories of every century; Russia looks back only upon yesterday, her history is rich in nothing but promises: Spain is studded with mountains, whose forms vary at every step taken by the traveller; Russia is but a single unchanging scene, extending from one end of a plain to the other : the sun illumines Seville, and vivifies the whole peninsula ; the mists veil the distances in Petersburg, which remain dim during even the finest summer evenings. In short, the two countries are the very opposite of each other ; they differ as do day and night, fire and ice, north and south.

He must have sojourned in that solitude without