A more powerful motive might have checked my candour — the fear of being accused of apostasy. ¢¢ He has long protested," it will be said, " against liberal declamations ; here behold him ceding to the torrent, and seeking false popularity after having disdained it."
Perhaps I deceive myself; but the more I reflect, the less I believe that this reproach can reach me, or even that it will be addressed to me.
It is not only in the present day that a fear of being blamed by foreigners has occupied the minds of the Russians. That strange people unite an extremely boasting spirit with an excessive distrust of self; self-sufficiency without, uncomfortable humility within, are traits which I have observed in the greater number of Russians. Their vanity, which never rests, is, like English pride, always suffering. They also lack simplicity. Naïveté, that French word of which no other language can render the exact sense, because the thing it describes is peculiar to ourselves, naïveté, that simplicity which can become pointedly witty, that gift of disposition which can produce laughter without ever wounding the heart, that for-
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getfulness of oratorical precautions which goes so far as to lend arms against itself to those with whom the individual converses, that fairness of judgment, that altogether involuntary truthfulness of expression, in one word, that Gallic simplicity, is unknown to the Russians. A race of imitators will never be naif; calculation will, with them, always destroy sincerity.
I have found in the will of Monomaehus, prudent and curious counsels addressed to his children : the following is a passage which has particularly struck me, and I have therefore taken it as a motto for my book, for it contains an important avowaclass="underline" " Above all, respect foreigners, of whatever quality, of whatever rank they may be, and if you cannot load them with presents, at least lavish upon them tokens of good will, for, on the manner in which they are treated in a country depends the good and the evil which they will say of it when they return to their own." . (From the advice of Vladimir Monomaehus to his children, in 1126.)
Such a refinement of self-love, it must be owned, takes from hospitality much of its worth. It is a charity founded on calculation, of which I have, in spite of myself, been more than once reminded during my journey. Men ought not to be deprived of the recompense of their good actions, but it is immoral to make this recompense the primum mobile of virtue.
Karamsin himself, from whom the above is cited, speaks of the unfortunate results of the Mongol invasion, in its effect upon the character of the Russian people : if I am found severe in my judgments, it may be seen that they are justified by a grave historian who yet was disposed to be indulgent.
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The following is an instance:— "National pride was lost among the Russians: they had recourse to artifices which supply the want of strength among a people condemned to servile obedience : skilful in deceiving the Tartars, they became also proficient in the art of mutually deceiving each other. Buying from barbarians their personal security, they became more greedy of money, and less sensitive to lüí`ongs and to shame, while exposed unceasingfy to the insolence of foreign tyrants." Further on he says, —
" It may be that the present character of the Russians preserves some of the stains with which the barbarity of the Mongols soiled it."
In 2`ivino; a resume of the c`lorious reimi of the «`reat and good prince, Ivan III., he says, " Having at last penetrated the secret of autocracy, he (Ivan) became a terrestrial god in the eyes of the Russians, who thenceforward began to astonish all other people by a blind submission to the will of their sovereign.''''
These admissions appear to me as doubly significant, coming from the mouth of a historian as courtier-like and as timid as Ivaramsin. I might have multiplied the citations, but I believe the above are sufficient to show my right openly to express my views, thus justified by the opinions of an author accused of partiality.
In a country where minds are, from the cradle, fashioned in the dissimulation and finesse of Oriental policy, natural sentiment must be more rare than elsewhere; and, consequently, when it is discovered it has a peculiar charm. I have met in Russia some men who blush to feel themselves oppressed by the
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stern system under which they are obliged to live without daring to complain: these men are only free in the face of the enemy; they go to make war in the Caucasus, that they may get rid of the yoke imposed upon them at home. The sorrows of such a life imprint prematurely on their faces a seal of melancholy, which strikingly contrasts with their military habits and the heedlessness of their age: the wrinkles of youth reveal profound griefs, and inspire deep pity. These young men have borrowed from the East their gravity, and from the North their vague imaginative reverie : they are very unhappy and very amiable: no inhabitants of any other land resemble them.
Since the Russians possess grace, they must necessarily have some kind of natural sentiment in their character, though I have not been able to discern it. It is, perhaps, impossible for a stranger travelling through Russia as rapidly as I have done to grasp it. No character is so difficult to define as that of this people.
Without a middle age—without ancient associations—without Catholicism—without chivalry to look back upon—without respect for their word *—always Greeks of the Lower Empire — polished, like the Chinese, by set forms — coarse, or at least indelicate, like the Calimics—dirty like the Laplanders — beautiful as the angels — ignorant as savages (I except the women and a few diplomatists) — cunning as the Jews — intriguing as freedmen —gentle and grave in their manners as the Orientals — cruel in their sentiments as
* Notwithstanding all that has been already said, it may be proper here to repeat, that this applies only to the mass, who, in Russia, are led solely by fear and force.
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barbarians—mockers both by nature and by the feeling of their inferiority—light-minded in appearance only;
the Russians are essentially fit for serious affairs. ЛИ have the requisite disposition for acquiring an extraordinarily acute tact, but none are magnanimous enough to rise above finesse; and they have therefore disgusted me with that faculty, so indispensable to those who would live among them. With their continual surveillance of self, they seem to me the men the most to be pitied on earth. This police of the imagination is incessantly leading them to sacrifice their sentiments to those of others: it is a negative quality which excludes positive ones of a far superior character; it is the livelihood of ambitious eourtiers, whose business is to obey the will and to guess the impulses of another, but who would be scouted should they ever pretend to have an impulse of their own. To give an impulse requires genius; genius is the tact of energy; tact is only the genius of weakness. The Russians are all tact. Genius acts, tact observes; and the abuse of observation leads to mistrust, that is, to inaction; genius may ally itself with a great deal of art, but never with a very refined tact, because tact
that supreme virtue of subalterns who respect the enemy, that is, the master, so long as they dare not strike — is always united with a degree of artifice. Under the influence of this talent of the seraglio, the Russians are impenetrable: it is true that we always see they are concealing something, but we cannot tell what they conceal, and this is sufficient for them. They wñll be truly formidable and deeply skilful men when they succeed in masking even their finesse.