cultivated, and whom business brings into intercourse with western Europe, take the utmost pains to conceal the predominant national sentiment, which is the triumph of the Greek orthodoxy — with them synonymous with the policy of Russia.
" Without keeping this in view nothing can be explained either in our manners or our politics. You must not believe, for example, that the persecutions in Poland were the effect of the personal resentment of the Emperor: they were the result of a profound and deliberate calculation. These acts of cruelty are meritorious in the eyes of true believers; it is the Holy Spirit who so enlightens the sovereign as to elevate him above all human feelings ; and it is God who blesses him as the exeeutor of his high designs. By this manner of viewing things, judges and executioners become so much the greater saints as they are greater barbarians. Your legitimist journals little know what they are doing when they seek for allies. among schismatics. We shall see an European revolution before we shall see the Emperor of Russia acting in good faith with a Catholic power; the Protestants are at least open adversaries; besides, they will more readily reunite with the pope than the chief of the Russian autocracy; for the Protestants, having beheld all their creeds degenerate into systems, and their religions faith transformed into philosophic doubt, have nothing left but their sectarian pride to sacrifice to Rome ; whereas the Emperor possesses a real and positive spiritual power, which he will never voluntarily relinquish. Rome, and all that can be connected with the Romish church, has no more dangerous enemy than the autocrat of Moscow—visible
MILITARY SPIRIT IN RUSSIA.81
head of his own church; and I am astonished that Italian penetration has not discovered the danger that threatens you from that quarter. After this veracious picture, judge of the illusion with which the Legitimists of Paris niu`se their hopes."
This conversation will give an idea of all the others. Whenever the subject became unpleasant to Muscovite
self-love, the prince Кbroke off, at least until
he was fully sure that no one overheard us.
The subjects of our discourse have made me reflect, and my reflections make me fear.
There is perhaps more to look forward to in this country, long depreciated by our modern thinkers, because appearing so far behind all others, than in those English colonies implanted on the American soil, and which are too higlily vaunted by the philosophers whose systems have developed the real democracy, with all its abuses, which now subsists.
If the military spirit which prevails in Russia has failed to produce anything analogous to our creed oí honour, or to invest its soldiers with the brilliant reputation which distinguishes ours, it should not therefore be said that the nation is less powerful. Honour is a human divinity, but in practical life duty outvalues even honour; though not so dazzling it is more sustained, and more capable of sustaining.
In my opinion the empire of the world is henceforth no longer to be committed to the turbulent, but to people of a patient spirit.* Europe, enlightened
* I must again request the reader, who would follow me throughout this work, to wait before forming an opinion of 3ßussia, until he shall have compared my different views made E 5
82FUTURE INFLUENCE OF RUSSIA.
as she now is, will no longer submit, except to real strength: now the real strength of nations is obedience to the power which rules them, just as discipline is the strength of armies. Henceforth falsehood will react so as to produce most injury to those who would make it their instrument; truth will give birth to a new influence, so greatly will neglect and disuse have renewed its youth and vigour.
When our cosmopolitan democracies, bearing their last fruits, shall have made war a detested thing to all people,—when nations once the most civilised of the earth shall by their political debaucheries have brought themselves to a state of enervation, and from one fall to another sunk into internal lethargy and external contempt, then—all alliance being admitted impossible with societies steeped in helpless egotism, the flood gates of the north will again open upon us, and we shall have to endure a last great invasion, an invasion of no longer ignorant barbarians, but of a people more enlightened and instructed than ourselves, for they will have been taught, by our excesses, the means and the mode of ruling over us.
It is not without design that Providence is accumulating so many inactive instruments of power in Eastern Europe. A day will come when the sleeping giant will rise up, and when force will put an end to the reign of speech. Vainly, at that time, will dismayed equality call upon the old aristocracy to rise in rescue of liberty. Arms in the hands
before and after my journey. The candour and good faith with which I profess to write forbid me to retrench anything that I have already written.
FUTURE INFLUENCE OF RUSSIA.83
of those too long unaccustomed to their use will be weak and powerless. Society will perish for having put its trust in empty words, and then those lying echoes of opinion, the journals, will revel in the overthrow, were it only to have something to relate for one month longer. They will kill society in order to live upon its carcase.
Germany, with its enlightened governments, its good and sensible people, might again lay in Europe the foundations of a defensive aristocracy *, but its governments are not one with its people. The king of Prussia, beeome the mere advanee guard of Russia †, has converted his soldiers into silent and patient revolutionists, instead of having availed himself of their good dispositions to render them the natural defenders of ancient Europe,—that only portion of the earth where rational liberty has hitherto discovered an asylum. In Germany it might yet be possible to allay the storm; in France, England and Spain, we can now do no more than await the thunder-bolt. A return to religious unity would save Europe. But this unity, by what means ean it be restored, by what new miracles will it enforce its elaims on an indifferent and thankless world ; by what authority will it be supported ? This is a seeret with God. The human mind proposes problems, it is the Divine action, that is to say, it is time, whieh must resolve them.
These considerations fill me with painful apprehensions for my own country. When the world, wearied
* Une aristocratie tutélaire. † TL·is was written in June 1839. E 6
84FATE OF PAKIS.
with half measures shall have taken one step towards the truth, — when religion shall be recognised as the only important principle of society, actuated no longer by perishable, but by real, that is, eternal interests, — Paris, frivolous Paris, exalted so proudly under the reign of a sceptical philosophy, Paris, the wanton capital of indifference and of cynicism, will it preserve its supremacy amid generations taught by fear, sanctified by chastisements, undeceived by experience, and perfected by meditation ?
The reaction would have to proceed from Paris itself. Dare we hope for such a prodigy ? Who will assure us that at the termination of the epoch of destruction, and when the new light of faith shall illume the heart of all Europe, the centre of civilisation shall not be removed ? Who, in short, shall say, whether France, east off for her impiety, will not then become to the regenerated Catholics what Greece was to the early Christians, the ruined temple of pride and eloquence ? What right has she to hope for immunity ? Nations die like individuals, and volcanic nations die quickly.
Our past was so brilliant, our present is so tarnished, that instead of boldly invoking the future, we ought. to look forward to it with fear. I avow it, from henceforth, that my fears for my country exceed my hopes; and the impetuosity of that young France, which, under the bloody reign of the Convention, promised such glorious triumphs, now appears to me as the symptom of dotage and decay. Yet the present state of things, with all its evils, is better for us than the era which it presages, and from which I essay in vain to turn away my thoughts.