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

318 THE TASK OF THE AUTHOR.

and avowed arbitrary power, go to Russia; there you will learn to fear above all things the tyranny of hypocrisy. I cannot deny it; I bring back with me from my journey ideas which I did not own when I undertook it. I therefore would not have been spared for any thing in the world the trouble which it has cost me : if I print the relation of it, I do so precisely because it lias modified my opinions upon several points. They are known by all who have read me : my disappointment is not: it is a duty to publish it.

On setting out, I did not intend writing this my last journey : my method is fatiguing, because it consists in reviewing for my friends, during the night, the recollections of the day. Whilst occupied with this labour, which bears the character of confidential communications, the public appeared to my thoughts in only a dim and vapoury distance — so vapoury that I scarcely yet realise its presence ; and this will account for the familiar tone of an intimate correspondence being preserved in my printed letters.

I pleased myself with thinking that I should this time be able to travel for myself alone, which, would have been a means of observing with tranquillity; but the ideas with which I found the Russians prepossessed with regard to me, from the greatest personages down to the smallest private individuals, gave me to see the measure of my importance, at least of that which I could acquire in Petersburg. " What do you think, or rather, what shall you say of us?" This was at the bottom of every conversation held with me. They drew me from my inaction: I was playing a modest part through apathy, or perhaps cowardice; for Paris renders those humble whom it does not render exces-