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

72UNCIVILISED STATE OF THE PEOPLE.

squeamish sentiments of foreigners; but this would be all.

The manners of a people are gradually formed by the reciprocal action of the laws upon the customs, and of the customs upon the laws ; they do not change as by the stroke of a wand. Those of the Russians, in spite of the pretensions of these half-savages, are, and will yet long remain cruel. It is little more than a century since they were true Tartars : it was Peter the Great who first compelled the men to admit females into their social meetings; and under all their modern elegance, several of these parvenus of civilisation still wear the bear skin.

Seeing that they can now no longer avail themselves of the age of chivalry — that age by whose spirit the nations of western Europe were so much benefited in their youth — all that can remain for the Russians is an independent and influential religion. Russia has a faith, but a political faith does not emancipate the human mind ; it shuts it up in the narrow circle of its natural interests. With the Catholic faith the Russians would soon acquire general ideas, based on a rational course of instruction, and on a liberty proportioned to their state of enlightenment. Could they but obtain this elevation, lam persuaded that they might rule the world. The evil of their system is deeply seated, and the remedies hitherto employed have only acted upon the surface — they have healed the wound over without curing it. A genuine civilisation spreads from the centre to the circumference, that of Russia tends from the circumference tOAvards the centre ; it is a barbarism, plastered over, and nothing more.