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

THE TASK OF THE AUTHOR.333

The following is an instance:— "National pride was lost among the Russians: they had recourse to artifices which supply the want of strength among a people condemned to servile obedience : skilful in deceiving the Tartars, they became also proficient in the art of mutually deceiving each other. Buying from barbarians their personal security, they became more greedy of money, and less sensitive to lüí`ongs and to shame, while exposed unceasingfy to the insolence of foreign tyrants." Further on he says, —

" It may be that the present character of the Russians preserves some of the stains with which the barbarity of the Mongols soiled it."

In 2`ivino; a resume of the c`lorious reimi of the «`reat and good prince, Ivan III., he says, " Having at last penetrated the secret of autocracy, he (Ivan) became a terrestrial god in the eyes of the Russians, who thenceforward began to astonish all other people by a blind submission to the will of their sovereign.''''

These admissions appear to me as doubly significant, coming from the mouth of a historian as courtier-like and as timid as Ivaramsin. I might have multiplied the citations, but I believe the above are sufficient to show my right openly to express my views, thus justified by the opinions of an author accused of partiality.

In a country where minds are, from the cradle, fashioned in the dissimulation and finesse of Oriental policy, natural sentiment must be more rare than elsewhere; and, consequently, when it is discovered it has a peculiar charm. I have met in Russia some men who blush to feel themselves oppressed by the