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

AUTHORS PREFACE,

A taste for travelling has never been with ше а fashion ; I brought it with me into the world, and I began to gratify it in early youth. We are all vaguely tormented with a desire to know a world which appears to us a dungeon because wTe have not ourselves chosen it for an abode. I should feel as if I could not depart in peace out of this narrow Avorld if I had not endeavoured to explore my prison. The more I examine it, the more beautiful and extensive it becomes in my eyes. To see in order to know: such is the motto of the traveller; such is also mine : I have not adopted it; nature gave it to me.

To compare the different modes of existence in different nations, to study the manner of thinking and feeling peculiar to each, to perceive the relations which God has established between their history, their manners, and their physiognomy ; in a word, to travel, is to procure for my curiosity an inexhaustible aliment, to supply my thoughts with an eternal impulse of activity : to prevent my surveying the world would be like robbing a literary man of the key of his libraiy.

But if curiosity cause me to wander, an attachment which partakes of the nature of a domestic affection brings me back. I then take a review of my observations, and select from among the spoil, the ideas