will become of all these fears.
* Written of the late King of Prussia, in 1839. Q 4
344
THE PROSPECTS OF
And am I not to speak of so much falsehood, so many perils, so great an evil ? . . . . No, no; I would rather have been deceived and speak, than have rightly discerned and remain silent. If there is temerity in recounting my observations there would be criminality in concealing them.
The Russians will not answer me; they will say, ' A journey of four months ! — he cannot have fully seen things.'
It is true I have not fully seen, but I have fully devined.
Or, if they do me the honour of refuting me, they will deny facts,— facts which they are accustomed to reckon as nothing in Petersburg, where the past, like the present and the future, is at the mercy of the monarch : for, once again, the Russians have nothing of their own but obedience and imitation; the direction of their mind, their judgment, and their free-will belongs to their master. In Russia, history forms a part of the crown domain : it is the moral estate of the prince, as men and lands are the material ; it is placed in cabinets with the other imperial treasures, and only such of it is shown as it is wished should be seen. The emperor modifies at his pleasure the annals of the country, and daily dispenses to his people the historic truths that accord with the fiction of the moment. Thus it was that Minine and Pojarski — heroes forgotten for two centuries — were suddenly exhumed, and became the fashion, during the invasion of Napoleon. At that moment, the government permitted patriotio enthu` siasrn.
Nevertheless, this exorbitant power injures itself; Russia will not submit to it eternally. A spirit of
XIUSSIA CONTINGENT.345
revolt broods in the army. I say, with the emperor, the Russians have travelled too much; the nation has become greedy of information: the custom-house cannot confiscate ideas, armies cannot exterminate them, ramparts cannot arrest their progress; ideas are in the air, they pervade every region, and they arc сЬашшш the world.*
From all that has gone before, it»follows that the'fu-. ture— that brilliant future dreamt of by the Russians — does not depend upon them; they have,no ideas of their own ; and the fate of this nation of imitators will be decided by people whose ideas are their own. If passions calm in the West, if union be established between the governments and their subjects, the greedy hope of the conquering Slavonians will become a chimera.
Is it proper to repeat, that I write without animosity, that I have described things without traducing persons, and that, in expatiating upon certain facts which have shocked me, I have generally accused less than I have recounted ?
I left Paris with the opinion, that the intimate alliance of France and Russia could alone set to rights the affairs of Europe: but since I have seen the Russian nation, and have recognised the true spirit of its government, I have felt that it is isolated from the rest of the civilised world by a powerful
* Since this has been written, the emperor has permitted a crowd of Russians to make a stay in Paris. He, perhaps, thinks he may cure the innovators of their dreams, by showing them France, which is represented to him as a volcano of revolutions, as a country, the residence in which must for ever disgust them with political reforms: he deceives himself, Q 5
346 ALLIANCE OF FRANCE AND GERMANY.
political interest, supported by religious fanaticism; and I am of opinion, that France should seek for allies among nations whose interests accord with her own. Alliances are not to be formed on opinions in opposition to wants. 'Where, in Europe, are wants which accord ? I answer, among the French and the Germans, and the people naturally destined to serve as satellites to those two great nations. The destinies of a progressive civilisation, a civilisation sincere and national, will be decided in the heart of Europe : every thing which tends to hasten the perfect agreement of French and German policy is beneficent ; every thing which retards that union, however specious be the motive for delay, is pernicious.
War is going to break out between philosophy and faith, between politics and religion, between Protestantism and Catholicism; and the banner raised by France in this gigantic struggle will decide the fate of the world, of the Church, and above all, of France herself.
The proof that the kind of alliance to which I aspire is good, is that a time will come when we shall not have it in our power to choose any other.
As a foreigner, especially as a foreigner who writes, I was overwhelmed with protestations of politeness by the Russians: but their obliging civilities were limited to promises; no one gave me facilities for seeing into the depths of things. A crowd of mysteries have remained impenetrable to my intellect. A year spent in the journey would have but little aided me; the inconveniences of winter seemed to me the more formidable, because the inhabitants assured me that they were of little consequence. They think nothing of paralysed limbs and frozen faces;
THE GREEK RELIGION IN RUSSIA.347
though I could cite more than one instance of accidents of this kind happening even to ladies in the highest circles of society, both foreign and Russian ; and once attaeked, the individual feels the effects all his life. I had no wish uselessly to brave together these evils, with the tedious precautions that would be necessary to avoid them. Besides, in this empire of profound silence, of vast empty spaces, of naked country, of solitary towns, of prudent physiognomies, whose expression, by no-means sincere, made society itself appear empty, melancholy was gaining hold upon me ; I fled before the spleen as much as the cold. Whoever would pass a winter at Petersburg must resign himself for six months to forget nature, in order to live imprisoned among men who have nothing in their characters that is natural.* I admit, ingenuously, I have passed a wretched summer in Russia, because I have not been able well to understand beyond a small portion of what I have seen. I hoped to arrive at solutions; I bring back only problems.
There is one mystery which I more especially regret my inability to penetrate : I allude to the little influence of religion. Notwithstanding the political servitude of the Greek Church, might it not at least preserve some moral authority over the people ? It does not possess any. What is the cause of the nothingness of a church whose labours every thing seems to
* I have found, in the newly-published Letters of Lady Montague, a maxim of the Turkish courtiers, applicable to all courtiers, but more especially to the Russian ; it will serve to mark the relations, of which more than one sort exist, between Turkey and Muscovy : — ' Caress the favoured, shun the unfortunate, and trust nobody.'
348
INTOLERANCE OF
