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

78MONGOLIAN KAPACITY.

maintain the good faith of comradeship in crime. The dissolute and abandoned in Russia know nothing that is sacred, not even the religion of debauchery, though it be a guarantee essential to the exercise of their profession, — so true is it that the commerce even of shame cannot be carried on without probity.

Civilisation, which elsewhere elevates the mind, here perverts it. It had been better for the Russians had they remained savages : — to polish slaves is to betray society. It is needful that a man possess a fund of virtue to enable him to bear culture.

Under the influence of their government the Russian people have become taciturn and deceitful, although naturally gentle, lively, docile and pacific. Assuredly these are rare endowments: and yet, where there is a want of sincerity there is nothing. The Mongolian avidity of this race, and its incurable suspicion and distrust, are revealed by the least as well as the most important circumstances of life. Should you owe twenty roubles to a workman, he would return twenty times a day to ask for them, unless, at least, you were a dreaded nobleman. In Latin lands a promise is a sacred thing—a pledge to the giver as well as the receiver. Among the Greeks, and their disciples the Russians, the word of a man is nothing better than the false key of a robber — it serves to break into the interests of others.

To make the sign of the cross in the streets before an image, and on sitting down to table, is all that the Greek religion teaches.

Intemperance is here carried to such excess, that one of the men, the most liked, and whose society is the most courted in Moscow, disappears every year