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

ous system of centralisation is indispensable to the government of an empire so prodigiously extended as is Russia. This system is perhaps necessary to the principle of blind obedience : but enlightened obedience is opposed to the false idea of simplification, which has for more than a century influenced the successors of the Czar Peter, and their subjects also. Simplification, carried to this excess, is not power, it is death. Absolute authority ceases to be real; it becomes a phantom, when it has only the images of men to exercise itself upon.

Russia will never really become a nation until the day when its prince shall voluntarily repair the evil committed by Peter I. But will there ever be found, in such a country, a sovereign courageous enough to admit that he is only a man ?

It is necessary to see Russia, to appreciate all the difficulty of this political reformation, and to understand the energy of character that is necessary to work it.

I am now writing at a post-house between Vladimir and Moscow.

Among all the chances and accidents by which a traveller is in danger of losing his life on a Russian high road, the imagination of the reader would be at fault to single out the one by which my life has been just menaced. The danger was so great, that without the address, the strength, and the presence of mind of my Italian servant, I should not be the writer of the following account.

It was necessary that the Schah of Persia should