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

300POETICAL ASPECT OF THE LAND.

of the stranger. This man, born to live and die in his telega, imparts of himself a melancholy interest to the humblest scene of life. Nothing prosaic can subsist in the mind when in the presence of so much suffering and so much grandeur. It must be owned

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that if despotism renders unhappy the people that it oppresses, it is conducive to the amusement of travellers, whom it fills with an astonishment ever new. Where there is liberty, every thing is published and speedily forgotten, for every thing is seen at a glance , but, under an absolute government, every thing is concealed, and therefore every thing is conjectured : the greater the mystery, the greater the curiosity, which is enhanced even by the necessary absence of apparent interest.

Russia has no past history, say the lovers of antiquity. True, but the immense field she occupies, and the prospect of the future, might serve as a pasture for the most ardent imaginations. The jiliilo-sopher in Russia is to be pitied, the poet there may and ought to be gratified.

The only poets really unhappy, are those condemned to languish under a system of publicity. When all the world may say what they please, the poet must hold his peace. Poetry is a mystery which serves to express more than words; it cannot subsist among a people who have lost the modesty of thought. Vision, allegory, apologue, are the truth of poetry ; and in a country where publicity pervades every thing this truth is destroyed by reality, which is always coarse and repulsive to the eye of fancy.

Nature must have implanted a sentiment profoundly poetical in the souls of this satirical and me-