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

ACCESSION OF IVAN IV.313

it served to attach them. This circumstance appears to me to throw a new light on the mysteries of the human heart.

Ivan IV. was yet a child when he ascended the throne in 1533 ; he was crowned, at the age of seventeen, the 16th of January, 1546; he died in his bed in the Kremlin, after a reign of fifty-one years, the 18th of January, 1584, at the age of fifty-four; and he was mourned by his whole people, not excepting the children of his victims. Whether the Muscovite mothers wept for him we may still be permitted to doubt, as the annalists are silent on that point. In a depraved state of society, women become less completely vitiated than men ; the latter alone participate in the acts of government; from whence it follows that the social prejudices of each age and nation take stronger hold upon them than upon their helpmates. However this may be, it is certain that the monstrous reign of Ivan so fascinated Russia as to cause it to see in the heaven-daring power of its princes an object of admiration : political obedience has become in the hearts of the Russians a religious sentiment. It is, I believe, only among this people that the spectacle of martyrs bowing in adoration before their executioners has been ever beheld. Did Rome fall at the feet of Tiberius and ]N"ero to supplicate them not to abdicate the absolute power, but to implore that they would continue to burn and pillage her, to wallow in her blood, and to dishonour her children? This was done in the middle of the reign of Ivan IV., at the moment when the exercise of his tyranny was most tremendous.

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