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

76OBSERVATIONS ON

of societyj the taste of the superior classes is corrupted, evil is done. To present to women the language of the pot-houses, to make men of rank in love with coarse vulgarities, is to injure the manners of a nation in a way for which no legal reform can compensate. Literature is lost among us, because our most intellectual writers, forgetting all poetical sentiment, all respect for the beautiful, write for the taste of the town ; and, instead of elevating their new readers to the views of delicate and noble minds, they lower themselves to the point of ministering to their coarsest appetites. They have rendered literature an ardent liquor, because, with sensibility, the faculty of tasting and feeling simple things is lost. This is a more serious evil than all the inconsistencies that have been noted in the laws and manners of the former state of society. It is another consecpienee of the modern materialism, which would reduce every thing to the useful, and which can only discern the useful in immediate and positive results. Woe to the land where the men of genius lower themselves to play the part of commissioners of police! When an author feels himself called upon to describe vice he should at least redouble his respect for good taste ; he should propose to himself the ideal truth for type even of his most vulgar characters. But too often, under the professions of our moralist, or rather moralising romance-writers, we discover less love of virtue than cynic indifference to good taste. There is a want of poetry in their works, because there is a want of faith in their hearts. To ennoble the picture of vice, as Kich-ardson has done in his " Lovelace," is not to corrupt the mind, but to avoid soiling the imagination and