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

XIUSSIA CONTINGENT.345

revolt broods in the army. I say, with the emperor, the Russians have travelled too much; the nation has become greedy of information: the custom-house cannot confiscate ideas, armies cannot exterminate them, ramparts cannot arrest their progress; ideas are in the air, they pervade every region, and they arc сЬашшш the world.*

From all that has gone before, it»follows that the"fu-. ture— that brilliant future dreamt of by the Russians — does not depend upon them; they have,no ideas of their own ; and the fate of this nation of imitators will be decided by people whose ideas are their own. If passions calm in the West, if union be established between the governments and their subjects, the greedy hope of the conquering Slavonians will become a chimera.

Is it proper to repeat, that I write without animosity, that I have described things without traducing persons, and that, in expatiating upon certain facts which have shocked me, I have generally accused less than I have recounted ?

I left Paris with the opinion, that the intimate alliance of France and Russia could alone set to rights the affairs of Europe: but since I have seen the Russian nation, and have recognised the true spirit of its government, I have felt that it is isolated from the rest of the civilised world by a powerful

* Since this has been written, the emperor has permitted a crowd of Russians to make a stay in Paris. He, perhaps, thinks he may cure the innovators of their dreams, by showing them France, which is represented to him as a volcano of revolutions, as a country, the residence in which must for ever disgust them with political reforms: he deceives himself, Q 5