last, tired of the war, we should have concluded by humbly imploring the return of the animals, and by complying with every demand. The same scene would have been renewed at each out-of-the-way post. This is the manner in which inexperienced and unprotected foreigners here travel.
The Russians are always on their guard against truth, which they dread: but I, who belong to a community where every thing is transacted openly, why should I embarrass myself with the scruples of these men, who say nothing, or merely darkly whisper unmeaning phrases, and beg their neighbours to keep them a secret. Every open and elearly-defined statement causes a stir in a country where not only the expression of opinions, but also the recital of the most undoubted facts, is forbidden. A Frenchman cannot imitate this absurdity; but he ought to note it.
Russia is governed; God knows when she will be civilised.
Putting no faith in persuasion, the monarch draws every thing to himself, under pretext that a rigor-
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ous system of centralisation is indispensable to the government of an empire so prodigiously extended as is Russia. This system is perhaps necessary to the principle of blind obedience : but enlightened obedience is opposed to the false idea of simplification, which has for more than a century influenced the successors of the Czar Peter, and their subjects also. Simplification, carried to this excess, is not power, it is death. Absolute authority ceases to be real; it becomes a phantom, when it has only the images of men to exercise itself upon.
Russia will never really become a nation until the day when its prince shall voluntarily repair the evil committed by Peter I. But will there ever be found, in such a country, a sovereign courageous enough to admit that he is only a man ?
It is necessary to see Russia, to appreciate all the difficulty of this political reformation, and to understand the energy of character that is necessary to work it.
I am now writing at a post-house between Vladimir and Moscow.
Among all the chances and accidents by which a traveller is in danger of losing his life on a Russian high road, the imagination of the reader would be at fault to single out the one by which my life has been just menaced. The danger was so great, that without the address, the strength, and the presence of mind of my Italian servant, I should not be the writer of the following account.
It was necessary that the Schah of Persia should
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have an object in conciliating the friendship of the Emperor of Russia, and that with this view, building his expectations upon bulky presents, he should send to the Czar one of the most enormous black elephants of Asia ; it was also needful that this walking tower should be clothed with superb hangings, serving as a caparison for the colossus, and that he should be escorted by a cortege of horsemen, resembling a cloud of grasshoppers; that the whole should be followed by a file of camels, who appeared no larger than donkeys by the side of this elephant, the most enormous that I have ever beheld; it was yet further necessary, that at the summit of the living monument, should be seen a man with olive complexion and oriental costume, carrying a parasol, and sitting crosslegged upon the back of the monster; and finally, it was necessary, that whilst this potentate of the desert was thus forced to journey on foot towards Petersburg, where the climate will soon transfer him to the collection of the mammoths and the mastodons, I should be travelling post by the same route ; and that my departure from Vladimir should so coincide with that of the Persians, that, at a certain point of the deserted road, the gallop of my Russian horses should bring me behind them, and make it necessary to pass by the side of the giant; — it required nothing less, I say, than all these combined circumstances to explain the danger caused by the terror that seized my four horses, on seeing before them an animated pyramid, moving as if by magic in the midst of a crowd of strange-looking men and beasts.
Their astonishment as they approached the colossus
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was at first shown by a general start aside, by extraordinary neighings and snortings, and by refusing to proceed. But the words and the whip of the coachman at length so far mastered them as to compel them to pass the fantastic object of their terror. They submitted trembling, their manes stood erect, and scarcely were they alongside of the monster than, reproaching themselves as it were for a courage, which was nothing more than fear of another object, they yielded to their panic, and the voice and reins of the driver became useless. The man was conquered at the moment when he thought himself the conqueror: scarcely had the horses felt that the elephant was behind them, than they clashed off at full speed, heedless as to where their blind frenzy might carry them. This furious course had very nearly cost us our lives: the coachman, bewildered and powerless, remained immovable on his seat, and slackened the reins; the feldjager, placed beside him, partook of his stupefaction and helplessness. Antonio and I, seated within the caleche, which was closed on account of the weather and my ailment, remained pale and mute: our species of tarandasse has no doors; it is a boat, over the sides of which we have to step to get in or out. On a sudden, the maddened horses swerved from the road, and dashed at an almost perpendicular bank, about ten feet high: one of the small fore-wheels was already buried in the bank-side ; two of the horses had reached the top without breaking their traces; I saw their feet on a level with our heads; one strain more, and the coach would have followed, but certainly not upon its wheels. I thought that it was all over with us. The cossacks who
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escorted the puissant cause of this peril, seeing our critical situation, had the prudence to avoid following us, for fear of further exciting our horses: I, without even thinking of springing from the carriage, had com-mendedmy soul to God, when, suddenly, Antonio disappeared. I thought he was killed: the head and leather curtains of the caloche concealed the scene from me; but at the same moment I felt the horses stop. ' We are saved,' cried Antonio. This
