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

CHARACTER OF RUSSIAN CIVILISATION. 167

precious thing at the Court of Russia, even though it be not valued there as it ought to be.

A distant pine forest rears at intervals its thin and spiry foliage above the roofs of some villas, built of planks and painted. These remembrances of solitude pierce through the ephemeral gaiety of the gardens, as though to witness to the rigour of winter, and the neighbourhood of Finland.

The aim of civilisation in the North is serious. There, society is the fruit, not of human pleasures, not of interests and passions easily satisfied, but of a will ever persisting and ever thwarted, which urges the people to incomprehensible efforts. There, if individuals unite together, it is to struggle with a rebellious nature, which unwillingly responds to the demands made upon her.

This duhiess and stubbornness in the external world engender a gloom which accounts to me for the tragedies in the political world so frequent at this court. Here the drama is enacted in actual life, whilst the theatre is occupied with farce. Empty amusements are those alone permitted in Russia. Under such an order of things, real life is too serious an affair to admit a grave and thoughtful literature. Low comedy, the idyll, and the apologue well veiled, can alone flourish in presence of so terrible a reality. If in this inhospitable clime the precautions of despotism shall yet further increase the difficulties of existence, all happiness will be taken from man, — repose will become impossible. Peace, felicity—these words here are as vague as is that of Paradise. Idleness without ease, inertia without quiet—such are the inevitable results of the Boreal Autocracy.