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

POLITICAL ASI>ECT.257

themselves, at least for a spectator; the ingenious turn of their minds has found means to triumph over the climate, and every other obstacle that nature has opposed to social existence in a desert without poetic imagery. The contrast of the blind political submission of a people attached to the soil, wTith the energetic and continual struggle of that same people against the tyranny of a climate hostile to life, their conquests over nature showing itself every moment under the yoke of despotism, present an inexhaustible store for lively pictures and serious meditations. To make a journey through Russia with full advantage, it woiúd be necessary to be accompanied by a Montesquieu and a Horace Vernet.

In none of my travels have I so much regretted my little talent for sketching. Russia is less кпол\тп than India : it has been less often described and pic-torially illustrated `, it is nevertheless as curious a country as any in Asia, even as relates to the arts, to poetry, and to history.

Every mind seriously occupied with the ideas which ferment in the political world, cannot but profit by examining, on the spot, a community, governed on the principles which directed the most ancient states named in the annals of the world, and yet, already imbued with the ideas that are common among the most modern and revolutionary nations. The patriarchal tyranny of the Asiatic governments, in contact with the theories of modern philanthropy, the character of the people of the East and West, incompatible by nature, yet united together by coercion in a state of society semi-barbarous, but kept in order by fear, present a spectacle that can be only seen in