character. This presents to the traveller a field of interesting, if not consolatory, speculation.
The ball was a rout: it professed to be a masquerade, for the men wore a small piece of silk called a Venetian mantle, which floated in a ridiculous manner above their uniforms. The saloons of the old palace, filled with people, resembled an ocean of heads of greasy hair, over all of which rose proudly the noble head of the Emperor, whose stature, voice, and will, alike soar above his people. This prince seems worthy and capable of subjugating the minds of men, even as he surpasses their persons. A sort of mysterious influence attaches to his presence ; at Peterhoff,' on the parade, in war, and in every moment of his life, may be seen in him the power that reigns.
This perpetual reigning, and its perpetual worship, would be a real comedy, if upon such permanent dramatic representation there did not depend the existence of sixty millions of men, who live only because the man whom you see before you playing the part of the emperor, gives them permission to в 3
6IMMENSE POWER ОГ THE EMPEROR.
breathe, and dictates to them the mode of using this permission. It is the divine right, applied to the mechanism of social life. Such is the serious side of the representation, wherein are involved incidents of so grave a nature, that fear soon extinguishes the inclination to laughter.
There does not exist on the earth at the present time, not in Turkey, not even in China, a single man who enjoys and exercises such power as the emperor. Let the reader figure to himself all the skilfulness of our governments, perfected as they are by centuries of practice, put into exercise in a still young and uncivilised society; the rubrics of the administrations of the West, aiding by modern experience the despotism of the East; European discipline supporting the tyranny of Asia; the police employed in concealing barbarism, in order, not to destroy, but to perpetuate it; disciplined brute force and the tactics of European armies, serving to strengthen an Eastern policy;—let him conceive the idea of a half-savage people who have been enrolled and drilled, without having been civilised, and he will be able to understand the social and moral state of the Russian nation. To profit by the progressive discoveries in the art of governing made by the European nations, in order to rule sixty millions of Orientals, has been from the time of Peter the First the problem to be studied by those who govern Russia.
The reigns of Catharine the Great and of Alexander did but prolong the systematic infancy* of this nation, which still exists only in name.
* L'enfance systepiatiqu<j,
THE EMPRESS CATHERINE.
7
Catharine had instituted schools to please the French philosophers, whose praises her vanity desired to obtain. The governor of Moscow, one of her old favourites, who was rewarded by a pompous exile in the ancient capital of the empire, wrote to her one day that no one would send their children to the school. The Empress replied pretty nearly in these words: —
' My dear Prince, do not distress yourself because the Russians have no desire for knowledge: if I institute schools it is not for ourselves, but for Europe, in whose estimation we must maintain our standing; but if our peasants should really wish to become enlightened, neither you nor I could continue in our places.'
This letter has been read by a person in whose statements I have every confidence. Undoubtedly, in writing it, the Empress forgot herself; and it is precisely because she was subject to such absence of mind that she was considered so amiable, and that she exercised so much power over the minds of men of imagination.
The Russians will, according to their usual tactics, deny the authenticity of the anecdote ; but if I cannot be certain of the strict accuracy of the words, I can affirm that they truly express the sentiments of the sovereign. In this trait may be discovered the spirit of vanity which rules over and torments the Russians, and which perverts, even in its source, the power established over them.
Their unfortunate desire for the good opinion of Europe is a phantom which pursues them in the secrecy of thought, and reduces conversation among в 4
8VIEWS OF THE PRESENT EMPEROR.
them to a trick of jugglery, executed more or less adroitly.
The present emperor has, with his sound judgment and his clear apprehension, perceived the shoal, but will he be able to avoid it ? More than the strength of Peter the Great is necessary to remedy the evil caused by that first corrupter of the Russians.
At the present time, the difficulty is of a double character; the mind of the peasant remains rude and barbarous, while his habits and his disposition cause him to submit to restraint. At the same time the false refinement of the nobles contravenes the national character, upon which all attempt to ennoble the people can alone be built. What a complication ! Who will unloose this modern gordian knot ?
I admire the Emperor Nicholas. A man of genius can alone accomplish the task he has imposed upon himself; he has seen the evil, he has formed an idea of the remedy, and he is endeavouring to apply it.
But can one reign suffice to eradicate evils which were implanted a century and a half ago ? The mischief is so deeply rooted, that it strikes even the eye of strangers the least attentive, and that too in a country where every one conspires to deceive the traveller.
In travelling in Russia, a light and superficial mind may feed itself with illusions ; but whoever has his eyes open, and adds to some little power of observation an independent humour, will be presented with a continued and painful labour, which consists in discovering and discerning, at every point, the struggle between two nations carried on in one community. These two nations arc — Russia as she is,
RUSSIAN HOSPITALITY.
9
and Russia as they would have her to appear in the eyes of Europe.
The Emperor is less secure than any one against the snares of illusion. The reader will remember the journey of Catherine to Cherson ; she traversed deserts, but they built her lines of villages at every half league of the road by which she passed, and as she did not go behind the scenes of this theatre on which the tyrant played the fool, she believed her southern provinces were well-peopled, though they continued cursed with a sterility which was owing to the oppression of her'government rather than to the rigour of nauire. The finesse of the men charged by the Emperor with the details of Russian administration, still exposes the sovereign to similar deceptions.
The corps diplomatique, and the western people in general, have always been considered by this Byzantine government and by Russia in general, as malignant and jealous spies. There is this similarity between the Russians and the Chinese, that both one and the other always believe that strangers envy them : they judge us by their own sentiments.
The Russian hospitality also, vaunted as it is, has become an art which may be resolved into a refined species of policy. It consists in rendering its guests content at the least possible cost of sincerity. Here, politeness is only the art of reciprocally disguising the double fear that each experiences and inspires. I hear every where spoken the language of philosophy, and every where I see that oppression is the order of the day. They say to me, — 'TVe would gladly dispense with being arbitrary, wc should then be more rich and powerful; but we have to do
