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

they should be purifying their creed by adopting the new doctrines which have only served to narrow their minds I Since then, indifference, masked and extolled under the attractive name of toleration, has perpetuated error.

The circumstance which renders Russia the most singular State now to be seen in the world is that extreme barbarism, favoured by the enslavement of the church, and extreme civilisation, imported by an eclectic government from foreign lands, are there to be seen united. To understand how tranquillity, or at least immobility, can spring from the shock of elements so opposed, it will be necessary to follow the traveller into the heart of this singular country.

The mode which I employ of describing places and defining characters, appears to me, if not the most favourable to the author, at least the most likely to inspire confidence in the reader, whom I oblige to follow me, and whom I render the judge himself of the development of those ideas that may be suggested to me.

I arrived in a new country without any other prejudices, than those which no man can guard against; those which a conscientious study of its history impart. I examined objects, I observed facts and individuals, while candidly permitting daily experience to modify my opinions. Very few exclusive political notions incommoded me in this spontaneous labour, in which religion alone was my unchanging rule ; and even that rule may be rejected by the reader without the recital of facts and the moral consequences that flow from them being discarded, or confounded with the reprobation that I shall meet with from those whose creeds do not agree with mine.