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

308ADDRESS OF THE RUSSIAN PEOPLE.

.Russians wherewith to keep good fires. They might then less covet the southern sun.

The carts used for removing the filth and refuse of the city are small and inconvenient. With such machines a man and horse can do but little work in a day. Generally speaking, the Russians show their skill rather in their manner of using inferior implements than by the pains they take to perfect those which they have. Endowed with little power of invention, they most frequently lack the mechanical appliances suitable to the end they would attain. This people, who possess so much graee and so much facility of character, have no creative genius. Once for all, the Russians are the Romans of the north. Both people have drawn their arts and sciences from strangers. The former have intelligence, but it is an imitative and therefore ironical intelligence ; it counterfeits every thing, and imagines nothing. Ridicule is a prevailing trait in the character of tyrants and slaves. All oppressed people are given to slander, satire, and caricature; they revenge themselves for their inaction and degradation by sarcasm. The nature of the relation which exists between nations and their governments has yet to be elucidated. In my opinion, each nation has for a government the only one which it could have. I do not however pretend either to impose or expound this system. It is a labour which I leave to those who are worthier and wiser than I: my present object is the less ambitious one of describing that which has most struck me in the streets and on the quays of Petersburg.

Several parts of the Neva are entirely covered with boats of hay. These rural objects are larger