CHARACTER OF RUSSIAN CIVILISATION. 167
precious thing at the Court of Russia, even though it be not valued there as it ought to be.
A distant pine forest rears at intervals its thin and spiry foliage above the roofs of some
The aim of civilisation in the North is serious. There, society is the fruit, not of human pleasures, not of interests and passions easily satisfied, but of a will ever persisting and ever thwarted, which urges the people to incomprehensible efforts. There, if individuals unite together, it is to struggle with a rebellious nature, which unwillingly responds to the demands made upon her.
This duhiess and stubbornness in the external world engender a gloom which accounts to me for the tragedies in the political world so frequent at this court. Here the drama is enacted in actual life, whilst the theatre is occupied with farce. Empty amusements are those alone permitted in Russia. Under such an order of things, real life is too serious an affair to admit a grave and thoughtful literature. Low comedy, the idyll, and the apologue well veiled, can alone flourish in presence of so terrible a reality. If in this inhospitable clime the precautions of despotism shall yet further increase the difficulties of existence, all happiness will be taken from man, — repose will become impossible. Peace, felicity—these words here are as vague as is that of Paradise. Idleness without ease, inertia without quiet—such are the inevitable results of the Boreal Autocracy.
168 FASHIONABLE LIFE IN ST. PETERSBURG.
The Eussians enjoy but very little of the country which they have created at the gate of their city. The women pass the summer at the Islands, and the winter at Petersburg. They rise late, spend the day at their toilets, the evening in visits, and the night at play. To forget themselves, to lose themselves in a round of excitement, such is the apparent end of their existence.
The summer of the Islands commences in the middle of June and lasts till the end of August. During these two months there is not generally (though with the exception of the present year) more than a week of hot weather. The evenings are damp, the night atmosphere clear, but cloudy above, the days grey and misty. Life would here become insnpportably dull and melancholy to the individual who should allow himself to reflect. In Russia, to converse is to conspire, to think is to revolt: thought is not merely a crime, it is a misfortune also.
Man thinks only with a view of ameliorating his lot and that of his fellows, but when he can do nothing and change nothing, thought does but prey upon and envenom the mind, for lack of other employment. This is the reason why, in the Eussian world of fashion, people of all ages join in the dance.
As soon as the summer is over, a rain, fine as the points of needles, falls for weeks without any cessation. In two days the birch trees of the isles may be seen 6tript of their leaves, the houses of their flowers and their inhabitants, and the roads and bridges crowded with carriages, drowskas, and carts engaged in the removal of furniture, all the different kinds of which
REMARKS ON PETERSBURG.169
are heaped together with a slovenliness and disorder natural to the Slavonian race. It is thus that the rich man of the North, awaking from the too fleeting illusions of Iris summer, flies before the north-east wind, leaving the bears and wolves to re-enter into possession of their legitimate domain. Silence resumes its ancient rights over these icy swamps, and for nine months, the frivolous society of the city of wood take refuge in the city of stone. From this chauge of season they experience little inconvenience; for in Petersburg the snows of the winter nights reflect almost as much light as is shed by the summer sun, and the Russian stoves give more heat than its oblicµxcly falling rays.
That which yearly occurs in the islands will be the fate one day of the entire city. Should this capital, without roots in history, be forgotten for even a brief space by the sovereign, should a new policy direct his attention elsewhere, the granite hid under the water would crumble away, the inundated low lands would return to their natural state, and the guests of solitude would again take possession of their lair.
These ideas occupy the mind of every foreigner who traverses the streets of Petersburg; no one believes in the duration of the marvellous city. But little meditation (and what traveller worthy of his occupation does not meditate ?) enables the mind to prefigure such a war, such a change in the course of policy, as would cause this creation of Peter I. to disappear like a soap bubble in the air.
In no other place have I been so impressed with the instability of human things. Often in Paris and in London have I said to myself, a time will come when
VOL. I.I
170REMARKS ON PETERSBURG.
this noisy abode will be more silent than Athens or Home, Syracuse or Carthage ; but to no man is it o·iven to foresee the hour nor the immediate cause of the destruction; whereas, the disappearing of St. Petersburg may be foreseen, it may take place tomorrow, in the midst of the triumphant songs of its victorious people. The decline of other capitals follows the destruction of their inhabitants, but this will peri§h at the moment even when the Russians will see their power extending. I believe in the duration of Petersburg, just as I believe in that of a political system, or in the constancy of man. This is what cannot be said of any other city in the world.
What a tremendous power is that which can thus cause a metropolis to spring up in the wilderness, and which, with one word, can restore to solitude all that it has taken ! Here real existence seems to belong only to the sovereign: the fate, the power, the will of an entire people are all centred in one single head. The Emperor is the personification of social power; beneath him reigns the equality that forms the dream of the modern Gallo-American democrats, the Fourriorists, &c. But the Russians acknowledge a cause of storm that is unknown to others, the wrath of this emperor. Republican or monarchical tyranny is preferable to atitocratic equality. I fear nothing so much as a strict logic applied to politics. If France has been practically prosperous during the last ten years, it is, perhaps, because the apparent absurdity which presides over her affairs is a high practical wisdom ; action, instead of speculation, полу governs us. In Russia the spirit of despotism always exerts itself
VIEW OF SOCIETY IN KTTSSIA.171
with a mathematical rigour, and the result of such extreme proceeding is an extreme oppression. In beholding this effect of an inflexible policy we feel shocked, and ask ourselves, with a kind of terror, how comes it that there is so little humanity in the actions of man ? But to tremble is not to disdain; we never despise that which excites our fear.
In contemplating Petersburg, and in reflecting on the dreadful existence of the inhabitants of this camp of granite, one might be led to doubt the compassion of Deity. There is presented here a mystery that is incomprehensible, and at the same time a greatness which is prodigious. Despotism thus organised becomes an inexhaustible subject for observation and meditation. This colossal empire, which rises before me all at once in the east of Europe — of that Europe, where society is suffering from the decay of all recognised authority—appears to me like a resurrection. I feel as though in the presence of some nation of the Old Testament, and I stop with fear mingled with curiosity before the feet of the ante-diluvian giant.
The first view of society in Russia shows that its arrangements, as contrived by the Russians themselves, are only adapted to their own social system : he must be a Russian who would live in Russia, even though outwardly every thing may appear to pass as in other places. The difference lies in the foundations of things.
It was a review of the fashionable world which I took this evening at the islands. The fashionable world, they
