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

90DECLINE OF FRENCH LITERATURE.

afforded us the only means of attaining a profound knowledge of our own, which is derived from them. This study led us back to the pure waters of our source, and there strengthened our national genius, independently of its advantages as being the most appropriate to the developeraent of the faculties of childhood, into whose mind, before all else, should be instilled the power of language as the instrument of thought.

Whilst Russia, slowly regenerated by the sovereign who now governs her, from the errors entailed by former monarchs, may hope to attain a language, the poets, the prose writers, the refined and soi-disant enlightened people amongst ourselves, are preparing for France a generation of scribbling imitators, of readers without independence of mind ; people who understand Shakspeare and Goethe so well in the original, that they can neither appreciate the prose of Bossuet and of Chateaubriand, the winged poetry of Hugo, the classic periods of Racine, the originality and boldness of Molicre and of La Fontaine, the refined wit and taste of Madame de Sévigné, nor the sentiment and the divine harmony of La-martine ! Thus it is that they will be rendered incapable of producing anything sufficiently original to perpetuate the glory of their language, and to attract, as formerly, the men of all countries to France, there to study and to appreciate the mysteries of taste.