communities. At that epoch is seen the birth of mixed institutions. But these institutions, founded on a compact between experience and passion, can suit none but already wearied populations, societies the springs of which are weakened by revolutions. From this it may be concluded, lhat if they are not the most powerful of political systems, they are the most gentle : the people who have once obtained them cannot too carefully strive to prolong their duration : it is that of a green old age. The old age of states, like that of men, is the most peaceable period of existence when it crowns a glorious life; but the middle age of a nation is always a time of trial and violence : Russia is passing through it.
In this country, which differs from all others, nature itself has become an accomplice in the caprices of the man who has slain liberty to deify unity; it, too, is everywhere the same : two kind» of scattered and stunted trees, the birch and the pine, spread over plains always either sandy or marshy, arc the only features on the face of nature throughout that immense expanse of country which constitutes Northern Russia.
What refuge is there against the evils of society in a climate under which men cannot enjoy the country, such as it is, for more than three months of the year?
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Add to this, that during the six most inclement of the winter months, they dare not breathe the free air more than two hours in the day. Such is the lot that heaven has assigned to man in these regions.
Let us see what man has done for himself: St. Petersburg is unquestionably one of the wonders of the world; Moscow is also a very picturesque city; but what can be said of the aspect of the provinces ?
The excess of uniformity engendered by the abuse of unity will be seen described in my chapters. The absence of soul betrays itself in every thing: each step that you take proves to you that you are among a people deprived of independence. At every twenty or thirty leagues the same town greets your eyes.
The passion of both princes and people for classic architecture, for straight lines, buildings of low elevation, and wide streets, is a contradiction of the laws of nature and the wants of life in a cold, misty country, frequently exposed to storms of wind which case the visage in ice. Throughout my journey, I was constantly but vainly endeavouring to account for this mania among the inhabitants of a country so different from those lands whence the architecture has been borrowed : the Russians cannot probably explain it any better than I, for they are no more masters of their tastes than of their actions. The fine arts, as they call them, have been imposed on the people, just as is the military exercise. The regiment, and its spirit of minntia, is the mould of Russian society.
Lofty ramparts, high and crowded edifices> the winding streets of the cities of the middle ages, would have suited better than caricatures of the
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antique, the climate, and the customs of Muscovy; but the country the wants and genius of which are least consulted by the Russians, is the country they govern.
When Peter the Great published from Tartary to Lapland his edicts of civilisation, the creations of the middle ages had long been out of date in Europe ; and the Russians, even those that have been called
Such disposition to imitate scarcely accords with the ambition which wc attribute to them ; for man does not rule the things that he copies; but every thing is contradictory in the character of this superficial people: besides, a want of invention is their peculiar characteristic. To invent, there must be independence; with them, mimicry may be seen pervading their very passions : if they wish to take their turn on the scene of the world, it is not to employ faculties which they possess, and the inaction of which torments them ; it is simply to act over the history of illustrious communities: they have no creative power; comparison is their talent, imitation is their genius: naturally given to observation, they are not themselves except when aping the creations of others. Such originality as they have, lies in the gift of counterfeit, which they possess more amply than any other people. Their only primitive faculty is an aptitude to re-produce the inventions of foreigners. They would be in history, what they are in literature, able translators. The task of the Russians is to translate European civilisation to the Asiatics.
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The talent of imitation may become useful and even admirable in nations, provided it late developes itself; but it destroys all the other talents when it precedes them. Russia is a community of copyists: now, every man who can do nothing else but copy necessarily falls into caricature.
Hesitating for the space of four centuries between Europe and Asia, Russia has not yet succeeded in distinguishing itself by its works in the field of human intellect, because its national characteristics are lost under its borrowed decorations.
Separated from the West by its adherence to the Greek schism, it returns, after many centuries, with the inconsistency of a blind self-love, to demand from nations formed by Catholicism the civilisation of which a religion entirely political has deprived it. This Byzantine religion, which has issued from a palace to maintain order in a camp, does not respond to the most sublime wants of the human soul; it helps the police to deceive the nation, but that is the extent of its power.
It has, in advance, rendered the people unworthy of the culture to which they aspire.
The independence of the church is necessary to the motion of the religious sap ; for the development of the noblest faculty of a people, the faculty of believing, depends on the dignity of the man charged with communicating to men the divine revelations. The humiliation of the ministers of religion is the first punishment of heresy; and thus it is that in all schismatic countries the priest is despised by the people, in spite of, or rather because of the protection of the prince. People who understand their liberty
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will never obey, from the bottom of their hearts, a dependent clergy.
The time is not far distant when it will be acknowledged that, in matters of religion, what is more essential even than obtaining the liberty of the flock, is the assuring that of the pastor.
The multitude always obey the men whom they take for guides : be they priests, doctors, poets, sages, or tyrants, the minds of the people are in their hands ; religious liberty for the mass is therefore a chimera; but it is on this account the more important that the man charged with performing the office of priest for them should be free : now, there is not in the world an independent priest except the Catholic.
Slavish pastors can only guide barren minds: a Greek pope will never do more than instruct a people to prostrate themselves before violent power. Let me not be asked, then, whence it comes that the Russians have no imagination, and how it is that they only copy imperfectly.
When, in the West, the descendants of the barbarians studied the ancients with a veneration that partook of idolatry, they modified them in order to appropriate them. Who can recognise Virgil in Dante, or Homer in Tasso, or Justinian and the Roman laws in the codes of feudalism ? The passionate respect then professed for the past, far from stifling genius, aroused it: but it is not thus that the Russians have availed themselves of us.
