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

RUSSIAN DIPLOMACY.95

scrupulous, as the principal incident occurred in the family of the narrator.

If he have allowed himself to ennoble the character and the passion of his hero and heroine, it is because he has a poetical imagination ; but while embellishing the sentiments, he has preserved the picture of national manners: in short, neither in the facts, the sentiments, nor the descriptions, does this little romance appear to me misplaced in the midst of a work, all the merit of which consists in the verisimilitude of its delineations.

I may add that the bloody scenes are yet being daily renewed in various parts of the same country where public order has been disturbed, and reestablished in so terrific a manner. The Russians have no right to reproach France for her political disorders, and to draw from them consequences favourable to despotism. Let but the liberty of the press be accorded to Russia for twenty-four hours, and we should learn things that would make us recoil with horror. Silence is indispensable to oppression. Under an absolute government every indiscretion of speech is equivalent to a crime of high treason.

If there are founcl among the Russians, better diplomatists than among nations the most advanced in civilisation, it is because our journals inform them of every thing which is done or projected among ourselves, and because, instead of prudently disguising our weaknesses, we display them, with passion, every morning; whilst, on the contrary, the Byzantine policy of the Russians, working in the dark, carefully conceals from us everything that is thought, done, or feared among them. We march exposed on all