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

restless self-love urges them to a rivalry with the civilisation of more ancient nations.

There is no kind of artifice or falsehood of which their devouring vanity is not capable, in the hope that we shall be induced to say, on returning to our several countries, " It is a great mistake to call those people the barbarians of the north." This appellation is never out of their heads; they remind strangers of it on every occasion with an ironical humility; and they do not perceive that their very susceptibility on the point furnishes their detractors with arms against them.

I have hired one of the carriages of the country to travel in to Nijni, in order to save my own : but this species of tarandasse on springs* is scarcely more substantial than my calèche. This was the remark of a person who has just been to aid me in expediting my departure. "You alarm me,:'I replied; "fori am tired of breaking down at every stage."

" For a long journey I should advise you to get another, if, at least, one could be found in Moscow at the present season : but the trip is so short that this will serve your purpose."

This short trip, including the return, and the detour that I propose making by Troïtza and Yarowslaw, is one of four hundred leagues, of which I am told 150 are detestable roads, with logs and stumps of trees buried in the mud, deep sands full of loose stones, &c. &c. By the manner in which the Russians

* The real tarandasse is the body of a ealèehe placed, without springs, on two shafts, which join together the axletrees of the front and hind wheels.