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

spise every thing. Their very praises are insults: they eulogise like people who envy; they prostrate themselves, but always unwillingly, before the objects they believe to be the idols of fashion. But at the first breath of wind the cloud succeeds the picture, and soon the cloud vanishes in turn. Dust, smoke, and chaotic nothingness, are all that can issue from such inconsistent heads.

No plant takes root in a soil thus profoundly agitated. Every thing is swept away; every thing becomes levelled; all is wrapt in vapour. But from this fluid element nothing is finally expelled. Friendship or love that was imagined lost, will often again rise, evoked by a glance or a single word, and at the very moment when least thought of; though, in truth, it is only thus revived to be almost as quickly again dismissed. Under the ever-waving wand of these magicians, life is one continued phantasmagoria— one long fatiguing game, in which, however, the clumsy alone ruin themselves; for when all the world is cheating, nobody is being cheated : in a word, they are false as water, to use the poetical expression of Shaks-peare, the broad strokes of whose pencil are the revelations of nature.

This explains to me why hitherto they have appeared to be doomed by Providence to a despotic government: it is in pity as much as through custom that they are tyrannised over.

If, in addressing myself to the friend to whom I send this chapter, I addressed myself to but one philosopher, here would be the place for inserting details of manners which resemble nothing that he has ever ì·ead of, even in France, where every thing is written and described; but, behind him, I see the public,