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

THE SYSTEM OF PETER THE GREAT.95

not sympathise — of interests which do not yet exist for it ?

Simply the caprice of its masters, and the vain glory of a few travelled noblemen. Unlucky vanity of parvenus, which has enticed the government to run blindfold against difficulties that have caused modern communities to recoil backwards, and that have made them regret the time of political wars, the only wars known in former times !

This country is the martyr of an ambition which it scarcely understands; and, all wounded as it is, it strives to maintain a calm and imposing air. What a part has its head to sustain ! To defend by continual artifices a glory built only upon fictions, or at least, on nothing more than hopes !

True power, beneficent power, has no need of artifices; but what stratagems, what falsehoods, what disguises, have not you Russians to avail yourselves of, to conceal a part of your object, and to })rocure toleration for the other! You!—the regulators of the destiny of Europe ! you ! pretend to defend the cause of civilisation among nations super-civilised, when the time is not yet long elapsed since you were yourselves a horde, whose only discipline was terror, and whose commanders were savages! On searching for the cause, we shall find that all these vain aspirations are nothing more than the inevitable consequences of the system of false civilisation adopted by Peter the Great. Russia will feel the effects of that man's pride long after she has ceased to admire his greatness. There are many of her people who already agree with me, without daring to avow it, that he was more extraordinary than heroic.