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

312THE STUDY OF ANCIENT MODELS.

institutions, but from strangers whose riches tliey envy without respecting their character—when their imitation is hostile, and yet falls into puerile precision—when they borrow from a neighbour whom they affect to disdain, even the very modes of dress and of domestic life, they become a mere echo, a reflection ; they exist no longer for themselves.

The society of the middle ages could adore antiquity without being in danger of parodying it; because creative power, when it exists, is never lost, whatever use man may put it to. What a store of imagination is displayed in the erudition of the fifteenth century !

A respect for models is the seal of a creative genius.

Thus it was that the studies of the classics in the West, at the epoch of their revival, scarcely influenced any thing beyond the belles lettres and the fine arts: the development of industry, of commerce, of the natural and the exact sciences, is solely the work of modern Europe, which has drawn nearly all the materials of these things out of her own resources. The superstitious admiration which she long professed for pagan literature has not prevented her politics, her religion, her philosophy, her forms of government, her modes of war, her ideas of honour, her manners, her spirit, her social habits from being her own.

Russia alone, more recently civilised, has been de^ prived by the impatience of her chiefs of an essential fermenting process, and of the benefits of a slow and natural culture.

The internal labour which forms a great people, and renders them fit to rule, has been wanting. The