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

COLONISATION IN SIBERIA.223

stance which, externally, rendered it the more sublime. Hearts beat in her presence,—in short, without even having to speak, she felt herself in society; for let governments do their worst, pity will still spring to life wherever there are men. But what hope can there be of awakening the sympathy of bears, or of melting eternal ices amid impenetrable woods, or marshes that have no bounds? What means can there be found of excluding the mortal cold from a hovel ? — and how is subsistence for five children to be obtained a hundred leagues, perhaps more, from any hiunan abode, unless it be that of the superintendant oí the colonies?—fortius is called colonising in Siberia!

What I admire as much as the resignation of the princess, is the eloquence, the ingenious tenderness she must have possessed, to overcome the resistance of her husband, and to succeed in persuading him that she was less to be pitied in suffering with him than she would be in Petersburg, surrounded with all the comforts and elegances of life. This triumph of devotion recompensed by success, for her husband finally consented, I view as a miracle of delicacy, of energy, and of sensibility. To know how to sacrifice self is as noble as it is rare, — to know how to accept such a sacrifice, is sublime.

At present this father and mother, abandoned in the desert, without physical powers, stript of every aid, lost to their fellow men, punished in their children, whose innocence only serves to aggravate their anguish, know not how to provide food for themselves and their little ones. These young convicts by birth, these pariahs of the imperial realm, if they have no longer a country, no longer a position in tþe commu-L 4