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

and Russia as they would have her to appear in the eyes of Europe.

The Emperor is less secure than any one against the snares of illusion. The reader will remember the journey of Catherine to Cherson ; she traversed deserts, but they built her lines of villages at every half league of the road by which she passed, and as she did not go behind the scenes of this theatre on which the tyrant played the fool, she believed her southern provinces were well-peopled, though they continued cursed with a sterility which was owing to the oppression of her"government rather than to the rigour of naùire. The finesse of the men charged by the Emperor with the details of Russian administration, still exposes the sovereign to similar deceptions.

The corps diplomatique, and the western people in general, have always been considered by this Byzantine government and by Russia in general, as malignant and jealous spies. There is this similarity between the Russians and the Chinese, that both one and the other always believe that strangers envy them : they judge us by their own sentiments.

The Russian hospitality also, vaunted as it is, has become an art which may be resolved into a refined species of policy. It consists in rendering its guests content at the least possible cost of sincerity. Here, politeness is only the art of reciprocally disguising the double fear that each experiences and inspires. I hear every where spoken the language of philosophy, and every where I see that oppression is the order of the day. They say to me, — "TVe would gladly dispense with being arbitrary, wc should then be more rich and powerful; but we have to do with в 5