I have also been shown the University, the School of Cadets, the Institutions of St. Catherine and of Saint Alexander, the Hospitals for Widows and for Foundlings, all vast and pompous in appearance. The llussians pride themselves in having so great a number of magnificent public establishments to show to strangers: for my part, I should be content with less of this kind of splendour ; for no places are more tedious to wander over than these white and sumptuously-monotonous palaces, where every thing is
THE EMrEROR EVERYWHERE.61
conducted in military order, and where human life seems reduced to the action of the pendulum of a clock.
The reader must learn from others all that is to be seen in these useful and superb nurseries of officers, mothers of families, and governesses : it will suffice for me to say, that the institutions, half political, half charitable, appear models of good order, eare, and cleanliness—a fact which does honour to the heads of the different schools, as well as to the supreme head of the empire.
It is impossible for a single moment to forget that one individual by whom Russia lives, thinks, and acts,— that man, alike the science and the conscience of his people, who commands, measures, and distributes all that is necessary or permitted to other men, none of whom may think, feel, will, or imagine, except within the sphere marked out by the supreme wisdom which foresees, or is supposed to foresee, all the wants of the individual as well as of the State.
Among us there is the fatigue of licence and variety; here we are discouraged by uniformity, frozen over by pedantry, which yet we may not separate from the idea of order; whence it follows, that we hate what we ought to love. Russia, that infant nation, is nothing more than an immense college ; every thing is conducted there as in a military school, the only difference being, that the scholars never leave it until they die.
All that is German in the spirit of the Russian government is antipathetic to the Slavonian character. The latter oriental, nonchalant, capricious, and poetical people, if they said what they thought, woidd
62THE NOBLEMEN'S CLUB.
bitterly complain of the Germanic discipline imposed upon them since the times of Alexis, Peter the Great, and Catherine II., by a race of foreign princes. The imperial family, let it do its best, will be always too Teutonic to govern the Russians without violence, and to feel as one with them.* The peasants alone are deceived.
I have carried the sight-seeing duties of the traveller so far as to allow myself to be taken to a riding-school, the largest, I believe, which exists. The ceiling is supported by light and bold h`on arches. The whole edifice is wonderful in its kind.
The club of the nobles is closed during the present season. I visited it also as a matter of conscience. In the principal hall is a statue of Catherine II. This hall is ornamented with pillars and a semi-rotunda ; it will contain about 3000 persons ; and, during the winter, magnificent balls are given in it. I can well believe this, for the Russian nobles reserve all their luxury for pleasures of parade. To dazzle is, with them, to display civilisation. It is but little more than one hundred years since Peter the Great dictated to them the first laws of politeness, and instituted assemblies similar to those of old Europe; obliging the men to admit the other sex into these circles, and exhorting them to take off' their hats when they entered an apartment. While thus teaching them common civility, he was himself
* The Komanows were originally Prussians ; and, since the election that placed them on the throne, they have usually intermarried with German princesses, contrary to the custom of the ancient Muscovite sovereigns.
POLITE EDUCATION.
63
exercising the vilest of all professions — that of the headsman. He has been seen in a single evening to strike off twenty heads with his own hand, and has been heard to boast of his address. Such was the education, and such the example, given to the Russians by this worthy heir of the Ivans, — this prince whom they have made their God, and whom they view as the eternal model of a Russian sovereign !
The new converts to civilisation have not yet lost their taste, as upstarts, for every thing that dazzles — every thing that attracts the eye. Children and savages always love these things. The Russians are children who have the habit, but not the experience of misfortune; hence the mixture of levity and causticity which characterises them. The enjoyments of a calm and equable life, adapted solely to satisfy the affections of intimacy, to administer to the pleasures of conversation and of mind, would never long suffice them: not that these great lords show themselves altogether insensible to refined pleasures; but, to captivate the haughty frivolity of such disguised satraps, to fix their vagrant imaginations, lively excitements are necessary. The love of play, intemperance, libertinism, and the gratifications of vanity, can scarcely fill the void in their satiated hearts: the creation of God does not furnish wherewith these unhappy victims of wealth and indolence can get through their weary days. In their proud misery they summon to their aid the spirit of destruction. All modern Europe is the prey of ennui. It is this which attests the nature of the life led by the youth of the present day : but Russia suffers, from the evil worse than the other communities ; for here every
64A RUSSIAN COFFEE-HOUSE,
thing is excessive. To describe the ravages of society in a population like that of Moscow would be difficult: nowhere have the mental maladies engendered in the soul by ennui — that passion of men who have no passions — appeared to me so serious or so frequent as among the higher classes in Russia: it may be said that society has here commenced by its abuses. AVhen vice does not suffice to enable the human heart to shake off the ennui that preys upon it, that heart proceeds to crime.
The interior of a Russian coffee-house is very curious. It consists generally of a large, low apartment, badly lighted, and usually occupying the first floor of the house. The waiters are dressed in white shirts, girded round the middle, and falling like a tunic over loose white pantaloons. Their hair is long and smooth, like that of all the lower orders of Russians; and their whole adjustment reminds one of the theophilanthropes of the French republic, or the priests of the Opera when paganism was the fashion at the theatre. They serve you with excellent tea, superior, indeed, to any found in other lands, with coffee and liqueurs; but this is done with a silence and solemnity very different from the noisy gaiety which reigns in the
This reminds me of the times when the Russian serfs believed, in the simplicity of their abjectness, that heaven was only made for their masters: dread-
SOCIETY IN MOSCOW.
ful humility of misfortune ! Such was the manner in which the Greek church taught Christianity to the people.
The society of Moscow is agreeable; the mixture of the patriarchal traditions of the old world with the
