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

ON ESCAPING FROM RUSSIA.297

most handsome men that I have ever beheld; a country in which women are scarcely seen, cannot be gay. Here I am, escaped from it, and without the smallest accident. I have travelled two hundred and fifty leagues in four days, by roads often wretched, often magnificent; for the Russian spirit, friend as it is to uniformity, cannot attain a real state of order: the characteristics of its administration are meddlesomeness, negligence, and corruption. A sincere man in the Empire of the Czar would pass for a fool.

" I have now a journey of two hundred leagues tc perform before I reach Berlin; but I look forward to it as a mere excursion of pleasure."

Good roads throughout the distance, good inns, beds on which one may lie down, the order of houses managed by women — all seemed delightful and novel. I was particularly struck with the varied architecture of the buildings, the air of freedom in the peasants, and the gaiety of the female sex among them. Their good humour inspired me with a kind of fear: it was an independence, the consequences of which I dreaded for them, for I had myself almost lost the memory of it. I saw towns built spontaneously, before any government had imagined a plan of them. Ducal Prussia does not assuredly pass for a land of licence; and yet, in passing through the streets of Tilsit, and afterwards those of Königsberg, I could have fancied myself at a Venetian carnival. My feelings brought to my memory a German of my accpiaint-ance, who, after having been obliged, by business, to pass whole years in Russia, was at last able to leave that country for ever. He was accompanied by a о 5