The Russians have, in my opinion, much greater resemblance to the people of the South, or rather of the East, than to those of the North. What is European in them belongs merely to the manners of the court, which are nearly the same in all countries; but their nature is eastern. General Miloradowitsch related to me that a regiment of Kalmucks had been put into garrison at Kiow, and that the prince of these Kalmucks came to him one day, to confess that he suffered very much from pa.s.sing the winter cooped up in a town, and wished to obtain permission to encamp in the neighbouring forest. Such a cheap pleasure it was impossible to refuse him; he and all his regiment went in consequence, in the middle of the snow, to take up their abode in their chariots, which at the same time serve them for huts.
The Russian soldiers bear nearly in the same degree the fatigues and privations of climate or of war, and the people of all cla.s.ses exhibit a contempt of obstacles and of physical suffering, which will carry them successfully through the greatest undertakings. This Kalmuck prince, to whom wooden houses appeared a residence too delicate in the middle of winter, gave diamonds to the ladies who pleased him at a ball; and as he could not make himself understood by them, he subst.i.tuted presents for compliments, in the manner practised in India and other silent countries of the East, where speech has less influence than with us. General Miloradowitsch invited me the very evening of my departure, to a ball at the house of a Moldavian princess, to which I regretted very much being unable to go. All these names of foreign countries and of nations which are scarcely any longer European, singularly awaken the imagination. You feel yourself in Russia at the gate of another earth, near to that East from which have proceeded so many religious creeds, and which still contains in its bosom incredible treasures of perseverance and reflection.
CHAPTER 12.
Road from Kiow to Moscow.
About nine hundred versts still separated Kiow from Moscow. My Russian coachmen drove me along like lightning, singing airs, the words of which I was told were compliments and encouragements to their horses, "Go along," they said, "my friends: we know one another: go quick." I have as yet seen nothing at all barbarous in this people; on the contrary their forms have an elegance and softness about them which you find no where else. Never does a Russian coachman pa.s.s a female, of whatever age or rank she may be, without saluting her, and the female returns it by an inclination of the head which is always n.o.ble and graceful. An old man who could not make himself understood by me, pointed to the earth, and then to the heaven, to signify to me, that the one would shortly be to him the road to the other. I know very well that the shocking barbarities which disfigure the history of Russia may be urged, reasonably, as evidence of a contrary character; but these I should rather lay to the charge of the boyars, the cla.s.s which was depraved by the despotism which it exercised or submitted to, than to the nation itself. Besides, political dissentions, everywhere and at all times, distort national character, and there is nothing more deplorable than that succession of masters, whom crimes have elevated or overturned; but such is the fatal condition of absolute power on this earth. The civil servants of the government, of an inferior cla.s.s, all those who look to make their fortune by their suppleness or intrigues, in no degree resemble the inhabitants of the country, and I can readily believe all the ill that has been and may be said of them; but to appreciate properly the character of a warlike nation, we must look to its soldiers, and the cla.s.s from which its soldiers are taken, the peasantry.
Although I was driven along with great rapidity, it seemed to me that I did not advance a step, the country was so extremely monotonous. Plains of sand, forests of birch tree, and villages at a great distance from each other, composed of wooden houses all built upon the same plan: these were the only objects that my eyes encountered. I felt that sort of nightmare which sometimes seizes one during the night, when you think you are always marching and never advancing. The country appeared to me like the image of infinite s.p.a.ce, and to require eternity to traverse it. Every instant you met couriers pa.s.sing, who went along with incredible swiftness; they were seated on a wooden bench placed across a little cart drawn by two horses, and nothing stopped them for a moment. The jolting of their carriage sometimes made them spring two feet above it, but they fell with astonishing address, and made haste to call out in Russian, forward, with an energy similar to that of the French on a day of battle. The Sclavonian language is singularly echoing; I should almost say there is something metallic about it; you would think you heard a bell striking, when the Russians p.r.o.nounce certain letters of their alphabet, quite different from those which compose the dialects of the West.
We saw pa.s.sing some corps de reserve approaching by forced marches to the theatre of war; the Cossacks were repairing, one by one, to the army, without order or uniform, with a long lance in their hand, and a kind of grey dress, whose ample hood they put over their head.
I had formed quite another idea of these people; they live behind the Dnieper; there their way of living is independent, in the manner of savages; but during war they allow themselves to be governed despotically. One is accustomed to see, in fine uniforms of brilliant colors, the most formidable armies. The dull colors of the Cossack dress excite another sort of fear; one might say that they are ghosts who pounce upon you.
Half way between Kiow and Moscow, as we were already in the vicinity of the armies, horses became more scarce. I began to be afraid of being detained in my journey, at the very moment when the necessity of speed became most urgent; and when I had to wait for five or six hours in front of a post-house, (as there was seldom an apartment into which I could enter) I thought with trembling of that army which might overtake me at the extremity of Europe, and render my situation at once tragical and ridiculous; for it is thus with the failure of an undertaking of this kind. The circ.u.mstances which compelled me to it not being generally known, I might have been asked why I quitted my own house, even although it had been made a prison to me, and there are good enough people who would not have failed to say, with an air of compunction, that it was very unlucky, but I should have done better to stay where I was. If tyranny had only its direct partisans on its side, it could never maintain itself; the astonishing thing, and which proves human misery more than all, is, that the greater part of mediocre people enlist themselves in the service of events: they have not the strength to think deeper than a fact, and when an oppressor has triumphed, and a victim has been destroyed, they hasten to justify, not exactly the tyrant, but the destiny whose instrument he is. Weakness of mind and character is no doubt the cause of this servility: but there is also in man a certain desire of finding destiny, whatever it may be, in the right, as if it was a way of living in peace with it.
I reached at last that part of my road which removed me from the theatre of war, and arrived in the governments of Orel and Toula, which have been so much talked of since, in the bulletins of the two armies. I was received in these solitary abodes, for so the provincial towns in Russia appear, with the most perfect hospitality. Several gentlemen of the neighbourhood came to my inn, to compliment me on my writings, and I confess having been flattered to find that my literary reputation had extended to this distance from my native country. The lady of the governor received me in the Asiatic style, with sherbet and roses; her apartment was elegantly furnished with musical instruments and pictures. In Europe you see every where the contrast of wealth and poverty; but in Russia it may be said that neither one nor the other makes itself remarked.
The people are not poor; the great know how to lead, when it is necessary, the same life as the people: it is the mixture of the hardest privations and of the most refined enjoyments which characterizes the country. These same n.o.blemen, whose residence unites all that the luxury of different parts of the world has most attractive, live, while they are travelling, on much worse food than our French peasantry, and know how to bear, not only during war, but in various circ.u.mstances of life, a physical existence of the most disagreeable kind. The severity of the climate, the marshes, the forests, the deserts, of which a great part of the country is composed, place man in a continual struggle with nature. Fruits, and even flowers, only grow in hot-houses; vegetables are not generally cultivated; and there are no vines any where. The habitual mode of life of the French peasants could not be obtained in Russia but at a very great expense. There they have only necessaries by luxury: whence it happens that when luxury is unattainable, even necessaries are renounced. What the English call comforts are hardly to be met with in Russia. You will never find any thing sufficiently perfect to satisfy in all ways the imagination of the great Russian n.o.blemen; but when this poetry of wealth fails them, they drink hydromel, sleep upon a board, and travel day and night in an open carriage, without regretting the luxury to which one would think they had been habituated. It is rather as magnificence that they love fortune, than from the pleasures they derive from it: resembling still in that point the Easterns, who exercise hospitality to strangers, load them with presents, and yet frequently neglect the every day comforts of their own life. This is one of the reasons which explains that n.o.ble courage with which the Russians have supported the ruin which has been occasioned them by the burning of Moscow. More accustomed to external pomp than to the care of themselves, they are not mollified by luxury, and the sacrifice of money satisfies their pride as much or more than the magnificence of their expenditure. What characterizes this people, is something gigantic of all kinds: ordinary dimensions are not at all applicable to it. I do not by that mean to say that neither real grandeur nor stability are to be met with in it: but the boldness and the imagination of the Russians know no bounds: with them every thing is colossal rather than well proportioned, audacious rather than reflective, and if they do not hit the mark, it is because they overshoot it.
CHAPTER 13.
Appearance of the Country.--Character of the Russians.
I was always advancing nearer to Moscow, but nothing yet indicated the approach to a capital. The wooden villages were equally distant from each other, we saw no greater movement upon the immense plains which are called high roads; you heard no more noise; the country houses were not more numerous: there is so much s.p.a.ce in Russia that every thing is lost in it, even the chateaux, even the population.
You might suppose you were travelling through a country from which the people had just taken their departure. The absence of birds adds to this silence; cattle also are rare, or at least they are placed at a great distance from the road. Extent makes every thing disappear, except extent itself, like certain ideas in metaphysics, of which the mind can never get rid, when it has once seized them.
On the eve of my arrival at Moscow, I stopped in the evening of a very hot day, in a pleasant meadow: the female peasants, in picturesque dresses, according to the custom of the country, were returning from their labour, singing those airs of the Ukraine, the words of which, in praise of love and liberty, breathe a sort of melancholy approaching to regret. I requested them to dance, and they consented. I know nothing more graceful than these dances of the country, which have all the originality which nature gives to the fine arts; a certain modest voluptuousness was remarkable in them; the Indian bayaderes should have something a.n.a.logous to that mixture of indolence and vivacity which forms the charm of the Russian dance. This indolence and vivacity are indicative of reverie and pa.s.sion, two elements of character which civilization has yet neither formed nor subdued. I was struck with the mild gaiety of these female peasants, as I had been, in different degrees, with that of the greater part of the common people with whom I had come in contact in Russia. I can readily believe that they are terrible when their pa.s.sions are provoked; and as they have no; education, they know not how to curb their violence. As another result of this ignorance, they have few principles of morality, and theft is very frequent in Russia as well as hospitality; they give as they take, according as their imagination is acted upon by cunning or generosity, both of which excite the admiration of this people. In this mode of life there is a little resemblance to savages; but it strikes me that at present there are no European nations who have much vigor but those who are what is called barbarous, in other words, unenlightened, or those who are free: but the nations which have only acquired from civilization an indifference for this or that yoke, provided their own fire-side is not disturbed: those nations, which have only learned from civilization the art of explaining power and of reasoning servitude, are made to be vanquished. I frequently imagine to myself what may now be the situation of the places which I have seen so tranquil, of those amiable young girls, of those long bearded peasants, who followed so peaceably the lot which providence had traced for them; they have perished or fled, for not one of them entered into the service of the victor.
A thing worthy of remark, is the extent to which public spirit is displayed in Russia. The reputation of invincible which their multiplied successes have given to this nation, the natural pride of the n.o.bility, the devotedness inherent in the character of the people, the profound influence of religion, the hatred of foreigners, which Peter I. endeavoured to destroy in order to enlighten and civilize his country, but which is not less settled in the blood of the Russians, and is occasionally roused, all these causes combined make them a most energetic people. Some bad anecdotes of the preceding reigns, some Russians who have contracted debts with the Parisian shopkeepers, and some bon-mots of Diderot, have put it into the heads of the French, that Russia consisted only of a corrupt court, military chamberlains, and a people of slaves.
This is a great mistake. This nation it is true requires a long examination to know it thoroughly, but in the circ.u.mstances in which I observed it, every thing was salient, and a country can never be seen to greater advantage than at a period of misfortune and courage. It cannot be too often repeated, this nation is composed of the most striking contrasts. Perhaps the mixture of European civilization and of Asiatic character is the cause.
The manner of the Russians is so obliging that you might imagine yourself, the very first day, intimate with them, and probably at the end of ten years you would not be so!
The silence of a Russian is altogether extraordinary; this silence is solely occasioned by what he takes a deep interest in. In other respects, they talk as much as you will; but their conversation teaches you nothing but their politeness; it betrays neither their feelings nor opinions. They have been frequently compared to the French, in my opinion with the least justice in the world. The flexibility of their organs makes imitation in all things a matter of ease to them; they are English, French, or German in their manners, according to circ.u.mstances; but they never cease to be Russians, that is to say uniting impetuosity and reserve, more capable of pa.s.sion than friendship, more bold than delicate, more devout than virtuous, more brave than chivalrous, and so violent in their desires that nothing can stop them, when their gratification is in question. They are much more hospitable than the French; but society does not with them, as with us, consist of a circle of clever people of both s.e.xes, who take pleasure in talking together.
They meet, as we go to a fete, to see a great deal of company, to have fruits and rare productions from Asia or Europe; to hear music, to play; in short to receive vivid emotions from external objects, rather than from the heart or understanding, both of which they reserve for actions and not for company. Besides, as they are in general very ignorant, they find very little pleasure in serious conversation, and do not at all pique themselves on shining by the wit they can exhibit in it. Poetry, eloquence and literature are not yet to be found in Russia; luxury, power, and courage are the princ.i.p.al objects of pride and ambition; all other methods of acquiring distinction appear as yet effeminate and vain to this nation.
But the people are slaves, it will be said: what character therefore can they be supposed to have? It is not certainly necessary for me to say that all enlightened people wish to see the Russian people freed from this state, and probably no one wishes it more strongly than the Emperor Alexander: but the Russian slavery has no resemblance in its effects to that of which we form the idea in the West; it is not as under the feudal system, victors who have imposed severe laws on the vanquished; the ties which connect the grandees with the people resemble rather what was called a family of slaves among the ancients, than the state of serfs among the moderns. There is no middling cla.s.s in Russia, which is a great drawback on the progress of literature and the arts; for it is generally in that cla.s.s that knowledge is developed: but the want of any intermedium between the n.o.bility and the people creates a greater affection between them both. The distance between the two cla.s.ses appears greater, because there are no steps between these two extremities, which in fact border very nearly on each other, not being separated by a middling cla.s.s. This is a state of social organization quite unfavorable to the knowledge of the higher cla.s.ses, but not so to the happiness of the lower. Besides, where there is no representative government, that is to say, in countries where the sovereign still promulgates the law which he is to execute, men are frequently more degraded by the very sacrifice of their reason and character, than they are in this vast empire, in which a few simple ideas of religion and country serve to lead the great ma.s.s under the guidance of a few heads. The immense extent of the Russian empire also prevents the despotism of the great from pressing heavily in detail upon the people; and finally, above all, the religious and military spirit is so predominant in the nation, that allowance may be made for a great many errors, in favor of those two great sources of n.o.ble actions. A person of fine intellect said, that Russia resembled the plays of Shakspeare, in which all that is not faulty is sublime, and all that is not sublime is faulty; an observation of remarkable justice. But in the great crisis in which Russia was placed when I pa.s.sed through it, it was impossible not to admire the energetic resistance, and resignation to sacrifices exhibited by that nation; and one could not almost dare, at the contemplation of such virtues, to allow one"s self even to notice what at other times one would have censured.
CHAPTER 14.
Moscow.
Gilded cupolas announced Moscow from afar; however, as the surrounding country is only a plain, as well as the whole of Russia, you may arrive in that great city without being struck with its extent. It has been well said by some one, that Moscow was rather a province than a city. In fact, you there see huts, houses, palaces, a bazaar as in the East, churches, public buildings, pieces of water, woods and parks. The variety of manners, and of the nations of which Russia is composed, are all exhibited in this immense residence. Will you, I was asked, buy some Cashmere shawls in the Tartar quarter? Have you seen the Chinese town? Asia and Europe are found united in this immense city. There is more liberty enjoyed in it than at Petersburg, where the court necessarily exercises great influence. The great n.o.bility settled at Moscow were not ambitious of places; but they proved their patriotism by munificent gifts to the state, either for public establishments during peace, or as aids during the war. The colossal fortunes of the great Russian n.o.bility are employed in making collections of all kinds, and in enterprises of which the Arabian Nights have given the models; these fortunes are also frequently lost by the unbridled pa.s.sions of their possessors. When I arrived at Moscow, nothing was talked of but the sacrifices that were made on account of the war. A young Count de Momonoff raised a regiment for the state, and would only serve in it as a sublieutenant; a Countess Orloff, amiable and wealthy in the Asiatic style, gave the fourth of her income. As I was pa.s.sing before these palaces surrounded by gardens, where s.p.a.ce was thrown away in a city as elsewhere in the middle of the country, I was told that the possessor of this superb residence had given a thousand peasants to the state: and another, two hundred. I had some difficulty in accommodating myself to the expression, giving men, but the peasants themselves offered their services with ardor, and their lords were in this war only their interpreters.
As soon as a Russian becomes a soldier, his beard is cut off, and from that moment he is free. A desire was felt that all those who might have served in the militia should also be considered as free: but in that case the nation would have been entirely so, for it rose almost en ma.s.se. Let us hope that this so much desired emanc.i.p.ation may be effected without violence: but in the mean time one would wish to have the beards preserved, so much strength and dignity do they add to the physiognomy. The Russians with long beards never pa.s.s a church without making the sign of the cross, and their confidence in the visible images of religion is very affecting.
Their churches bear the mark of that taste for luxury which they have from Asia: you see in them only ornaments of gold, and silver, and rubies. I was told that a Russian had proposed to form an alphabet with precious stones, and to write a Bible in that manner.
He knew the best manner of interesting the imaginations of the Russians in what they read. This imagination however has not as yet manifested itself either in the fine arts or in poetry. They reach a certain point in all things very quickly, and do not go beyond that.
Impulse makes them take the first steps: but the second belong to reflection, and these Russians, who have nothing in common with the people of the North, are as yet very little capable of meditation.
Several of the palaces of Moscow are of wood, in order that they may be built quicker, and that the natural inconstancy of the nation, in every thing unconnected with country or religion, may be satisfied by an easy change of residence. Several of these fine edifices have been constructed for an entertainment; they were destined to add to the eclat of a day, and the rich manner in which they were decorated has made them last up to this period of universal destruction. A great number of houses are painted green, yellow, or rose color, and are sculptured in detail like dessert ornaments. The citadel of the Kremlin, in which the emperors of Russia defended themselves against the Tartars, is surrounded by a high wall, embattled and flanked with turrets, which, by their odd shapes, remind one of a Turkish minaret rather than a fortress like those of the West of Europe. But although the external character of the buildings of the city be oriental, the impression of Christianity was found in that, mult.i.tude of churches so much venerated, and which attracted your notice at every step. One was reminded of Rome in seeing Moscow; certainly not from the monuments being of the same style, but because the mixture of solitary country and magnificent palaces, the grandeur of the city and the infinite number of its churches give the Asiatic Rome some points of resemblance to the European Rome.
It was about the beginning of August, that I was allowed to see the interior of the Kremlin; I got there by the same staircase which the emperor Alexander had ascended a few days preceding, surrounded by an immense people, who loaded him with their blessings, and promised him to defend his empire at all hazards. This people has kept its word. The halls were first thrown open to me in which the arms of the ancient warriors of Russia are contained; the a.r.s.enals of this kind, in other parts of Europe, are much more interesting. The Russians have taken no part in the times of chivalry; they never mingled in the Crusades. Constantly at war with the Tartars, Poles, and Turks, the military spirit has been formed among them in the midst of the atrocities of all kinds brought in the train of Asiatic nations, and of the tyrants who governed Russia. It is not therefore the generous bravery of the Bayards or the Percys, but the intrepidity of a fanatical courage which has been exhibited in this country for several centuries. The Russians, in the relations of society, which are so new to them, are not distinguished by the spirit of chivalry, such as the people of the West conceive it; but they have always shown themselves terrible to their enemies. So many ma.s.sacres have taken place in the interior of Russia, up to the reign of Peter the Great, and even later, that the morality of the nation, and particularly that of the great n.o.bility, must have suffered severely from them. These despotic governments, whose sole restraint is the a.s.sa.s.sination of the despot, overthrow all principles of honor and duty in the minds of men: but the love of their country and an attachment to their religious creed have been maintained in their full strength, amidst the wrecks of this b.l.o.o.d.y history, and the nation which preserves such virtues may yet astonish the world.
From the ancient a.r.s.enal I was conducted into the apartments formerly occupied by the czars, and in which the robes are preserved which they wore on the day of their coronation. These apartments have no sort of beauty, but they agreed very well with the hard life which the czars led and still lead. The greatest magnificence reigns in the palace of Alexander; but he himself sleeps upon the floor, and travels like a Cossack officer.
They exhibited in the Kremlin a divided throne, which was filled at first by Peter I. and Ivan his brother. The princess Sophia, their sister, placed herself behind the seat of Ivan, and dictated to him what to say; but this borrowed strength was not able to cope long with the native strength of Peter I. and he soon reigned alone. It is from the period of his reign that the czars have ceased to wear the Asiatic costume. The great wig of the age of Louis XIV. came in with Peter I. and without touching upon the admiration inspired by this great man, one cannot help feeling the disagreeable contrast between the ferocity of his genius and the ceremonious regularity of his dress. Was he in the right in doing away as much as he could, oriental manners from the bosom of his people? was it right to fix his capital in the north, and at the extremity of his empire? These are great questions which are not yet answered: centuries only can afford the proper commentaries upon such lofty ideas.
I ascended to the top of the cathedral steeple, called Ivan Veliki, which commands a view of the whole city; from thence I saw the palace of the czars, who conquered by their arms the crowns of Casan, Astracan, and Siberia. I heard the church music, in which the catholikos, prince of Georgia, officiated in the midst of the inhabitants of Moscow, and formed a Christian meeting between Asia and Europe. Fifteen hundred Churches attested the devotion of the Muscovite people.
The commercial establishments at Moscow had quite an Asiatic character; men in turbans, and others dressed in the different costumes of all the people of the East, exhibited the rarest merchandize: the furs of Siberia and the muslins of India there offered all the enjoyments of luxury to those great n.o.blemen, whose imagination is equally pleased with the sables of the Samoiedes and with the rubies of the Persians. Here, the gardens and the palace Razoumowski contained the most beautiful collection of plants and minerals; there, was the fine library of the Count de Bouterlin, which he had spent thirty years of his life in collecting: among the books he possessed, there were several which contained ma.n.u.script notes in the hand-writing of Peter I. This great man never imagined that the same European civilization, of which he was so jealous, would come to destroy the establishments for public instruction which he had founded in the middle of his empire, with a view to form by study the impatient spirit of the Russians. Farther on, was the Foundling House, one of the most affecting inst.i.tutions of Europe; hospitals for all cla.s.ses of society might be remarked in the different quarters of the city: finally, the eye in its wanderings could rest upon nothing but wealth or benevolence, upon edifices of luxury or of charity; upon churches or on palaces, which diffused happiness or distinction upon a large portion of the human race. You saw the windings of the Moskwa, of that river, which, since the last invasion by the Tartars, had never rolled with blood in its waves: the day was delightful; the sun seemed to take a pleasure in shedding his rays upon these glittering cupolas. I was reminded of the old archbishop Plato, who had just written a pastoral letter to the emperor Alexander, the oriental style of which had extremely affected me: he sent the image of the Virgin from the borders of Europe, to drive far from Asia the man who wished to bear down upon the Russians with the whole weight of the nations chained to his steps. For a moment the thought struck me that Napoleon might yet set his foot upon this same tower from which I was admiring the city, which his presence was about to extinguish; for a moment I dreamed that he would glory in replacing, in the palace of the czars, the chief of the great horde, which had also once had possession of it: but the sky was so beautiful, that I repelled the apprehension. A month afterwards, this beautiful city was in ashes, in order that it should be said, that every country which had been in alliance with this man, should be destroyed by the fires which are at his disposal. But how gloriously have the Russians and their monarch redeemed this error! The misery of Moscow may be even said to have regenerated the empire, and this religious city has perished like a martyr, the shedding of whose blood gives new strength to the brethren who survive him.
The famous Count Rostopchin, with whose name the emperor"s bulletins have been filled, came to see me, and invited me to dine with him.
He had been minister for foreign affairs to Paul I., his conversation had something original about it, and you could easily perceive that his character would show itself in a very strong manner, if circ.u.mstances required it. The Countess Rostopchin was good enough to give me a book which she had written on the triumphs of religion, the style and morality of which were very pure. I went to visit her at her country-house, in the interior of Moscow. I was obliged to cross a lake and a wood in* order to reach it: it was to this house, one of the most agreeable residences in Russia, that Count Rostopchin himself set-fire, on the approach of the French army. Certainly an action of this kind was likely to excite a certain kind of admiration, even in enemies. The emperor Napoleon has, notwithstanding, compared Count Rostopchin to Marat, forgetting that the governor of Moscow sacrificed his own interests, while Marat set fire to the houses of others, which certainly makes a considerable difference. The only thing which Count Rostopchin could properly be reproached with, was his concealing too long the bad news from the armies, either from flattering himself, or believing it to be necessary to flatter others. The English, with that admirable rect.i.tude which distinguishes all their actions, publish as faithful an account of their reverses as they do of their victories, and enthusiasm is with them sustained by the truth, whatever that may be. The Russians cannot yet reach that moral perfection, which is the result of a free const.i.tution.
No civilized nation has so much in common with savages as the Russian people, and when their n.o.bility possess energy, they partic.i.p.ate also in the defects and good qualities of that unshackled nature. The expression of Diderot has been greatly vaunted: The Russians are rotten before they are ripe. I know nothing more false; their very vices, with some exceptions, are not those of corruption, but of violence. The desires of a Russian, said a very superior man, would blow up a city: fury and artifice take possession of them by turns, when they wish to accomplish any resolution, good or bad. Their nature is not at all changed by the rapid civilization which was given them by Peter I.; it has as yet only formed their manners: happily for them, they are always what we call barbarians, in other words, led by an instinct frequently generous, but always involuntary, which only admits of reflection in the choice of the means, and not in the examination of the end; I say happily for them, not that I wish to extol barbarism, but I designate by this name a certain primitive energy which can alone replace in nations the concentrated strength of liberty.
I saw at Moscow the most enlightened men in the career of science and literature; but there, as well as at Petersburg, the professors"
chairs are almost entirely filled with Germans. There is in Russia a great scarcity of well-informed men in any branch; young people in general only go to the University to be enabled sooner to enter into the military profession. Civil employments in Russia confer a rank corresponding to a grade in the army; the spirit of the nation is turned entirely towards war: in every thing else, in administration, in political economy, in public instruction, &c. the other nations of Europe have hitherto borne away the palm from the Russians. They are making attempts, however, in literature; the softness and brilliancy of the sounds of their language are remarked even by those who do not understand it; and it should be very well adapted for poetry and music. But the Russians have, like so many other continental nations, the fault of imitating the French literature, which, even with all its beauties, is only fit for the French themselves. I think that the Russians ought rather to make their literary studies derive from the Greeks than from the Latins. The characters of the Russian alphabet, so similar to those of the Greeks, the ancient communication of the Russians with the Byzantine empire, their future destinies, which will probably lead them to the ill.u.s.trious monuments of Athens and Sparta, all this ought to turn the Russians to the study of Greek: but it is above all necessary that their writers should draw their poetry from the deepest inspiration of their own soul. Their works, up to this time, have been composed, as one may say, by the lips, and never can a nation so vehement be stirred up by such shrill notes.
CHAPTER 15
Road from Moscow to Petersburg.
I quitted Moscow with regret: I stopped a short time in a wood near the city, where on holidays the inhabitants go to dance, and celebrate the sun, whose splendor is of such short duration, even at Moscow. What is it then I see, in advancing towards the North? Even these eternal birch trees, which weary you with their monotony, become very rare, it is said, as you approach Archangel; they are preserved there, like orange trees in France. The country from Moscow to Petersburg is at first sandy, and afterwards all marsh: when it rains, the ground becomes black, and the high road becomes undistinguishable. The houses of the peasants, however, every where indicate a state of comfort; they are decorated with columns, and the windows are surrounded with arabesques carved in wood. Although it was summer when I pa.s.sed through this country, I already felt the threatening winter which seemed to conceal itself behind the clouds: of the fruits which were offered to me, the flavor was bitter, because their ripening had been too much hastened; a rose excited emotion in me as a recollection of our fine countries, and the flowers themselves appeared to carry their heads with less pride, as if the icy hand of the North had been already prepared to pluck them.
I pa.s.sed through Novogorod, which was, six centuries ago, a republic a.s.sociated with the Hanse towns, and which has preserved for a long period a spirit of republican independence. Persons have been pleased to say that freedom was not reclaimed in Europe before the last century; on the contrary, it is rather despotism, which is a modern invention. Even in Russia the slavery of the peasants was only introduced in the sixteenth century. Up to the reign of Peter I. the form of all the ukases was: The boyars have advised, the czar will decree. Peter I. although in many ways he has done infinite good to Russia, humbled the grandees, and united in himself the temporal and spiritual power, in order to remove all obstacles to his designs. Richelieu acted in the same manner in France; Peter I.
was therefore a great admirer of his. It will be recollected that on being shown his tomb at Paris, he exclaimed, "Great man! I would give one half of my empire to learn from thee how to govern the other." The czar on this occasion was a great deal too modest, for he had the advantage over Richelieu of being a great warrior, and what is more, the founder of the navy and commerce of his country; while Richelieu has done nothing but govern tyrannically at home, and craftily abroad. But to return to Novogorod. Ivan Vasilewitch possessed himself of it in 1470, and destroyed its liberties; he removed from it to the Kremlin at Moscow, the great bell called in Russian, Wetchevoy kolokol, at the sound of which the citizens had been accustomed to a.s.semble at the market place, to deliberate on public matters. With the loss of liberty, Novogorod had the mortification to see the gradual disappearance of its population, its commerce, and its wealth: so withering and destructive is the breath of arbitrary power, says the best historian of Russia. Even at the present day the city of Novogorod presents an aspect of singular melancholy; avast inclosure indicates that it was formerly large and populous, and you see nothing in it but scattered houses, the inhabitants of which seem to be placed there like figures weeping over the tombs. The same spectacle is now probably offered by the beautiful city of Moscow; but the public spirit will rebuild it, as it has reconquered it.
CHAPTER 16.