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

ASPECT OF THE COUNTRY.241

structed of pieces of roughly-hewn wood, presents its gable to the street. All these habitations are of simi-lar construction; but, notwithstanding their wearisome uniformity, an air of comfort, and even prosperity, appears to reign in the villages. They are rural without being picturesque. I breathe in them the calm of pastoral life, which is doubly agreeable after Petersburg. The country people are not gay or smiling, but they have not the miserable appearance of the soldiers and the dependents of the o`overnment. Among all the Russians, these are they who suffer least from the want of liberty. The labours of agriculture tend to reconcile man to social life whatever it may cost; they inspire him with patience, and enable him to support every thing, provided he is allowed to give himself up undisturbed to occupations which are so congenial to his nature.

The country that I have hitherto traversed is a poor, marshy forest, covered, as far as the eye can reach over a sterile plain, with miserable, stunted, and thinly-scattered birch and pine; there are neither cultivated lands nor thick nourishing plantations of wood to be seen. The cattle are of a wretched breed. The climate oppresses the animals as much as despotism does the men. It might be said that nature and society vie with each other in their efforts to render life difficult. When we think of the physical obstacles that had here to be encountered in order to organise a society, we have no longer a right to be surprised at any thing, unless it be that material civilisation is so far advanced as we perceive it to be among a people so little favoured by nature. Can it be true that there are in the unity of ideas,

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