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

350DANGER ОГ SPEAKING OF

Even the faults in the character of the Russian women are by this writer attributed to the Greek religion. He pretends that if they are light and frivolous, and do not know how to preserve the authority in their families which it is the duty of a Christian wife and mother to exercise, it is because they have never received real religious instruction.

This book having escaped, I do not know by what miracle or subterfuge, the vigilance of the censorship, set Russia in a blaze. Petersburg, and Moscow the holy city, uttered cries of rage and alarm; in short, the consciences of the faithful were so disturbed, that, from one end of the empire to the other, was demanded the punishment of this imprudent advocate of the mother of the Christian churches, an advocacy which did not save him from being reviled as an innovator: for — and this is not one of the smallest inconsistencies of the human mind, almost always in contradiction with itself in the comedies which it plays upon this world — the motto of all sectarians and schismatics is, that we should respect the religion under which we are born — a truth too much forgotten by Luther and

Calvin ;in fine, the knout, Siberia, the mines,

the galleys, the fortresses of all the Russias, were not enough to reassure Moscow and her Byzantine orthodoxy against the ambition of Rome, aided by the impious doctrine of a traitor to his God and country.

The sentence which was to decide the fate of so great a criminal was expected with the deepest anxiety; it was long in appearing, and the people began to doubt in supreme justice : at last, the emperor, in his unfeeling mercy, declared that there was no ground for punishment, that there was no criminal to make