A lady

“ We continued to follow the course of the Dwina for more than fifty miles. I do not know anything that gives a more dreary idea of a country than the sight of a broad and silent river, whose unbroken surface reflects no human habitation as far as the eye can reach, not a single bark to ruffle the mysterious stillness of the waters, nor any living thing to awaken the echoes of those dismal forests of pine which stretch far away to the verge of the horizon, and seem an impenetrable bar to the advance of civilization. ”

“ Poushkin, the national poet, speaks of its gardens and its palaces, its crosses, and its cupolas that “form a crescent,” and appeals to the hearts of his countrymen in some beautiful stanzas that find their echo in every Russian breast, for there is no place in the empire for which they have so great an affection. “Mother” Moscow is the endearing epithet they bestow on their ancient capital; and they would rather see St. Petersburg buried in the morasses on which it is built than that any evil should befal Moscow. Patriotism in every people is to be admired ”

“ I was informed that many of the lower classes in the capital had the idea that, if the English conquered them, they should be no longer slaves, and not have a poll-tax to pay. If this be true, and I was assured it was so, who can calculate what the consequences of such a belief spread among the populace might be, or how soon the hollow fabric of the Russian government would fall into ruins? If this conviction once enter into the national mind, the nobility may soon find that they have a greater enemy in their oppressed peasantry than in a foreign army. ”

“ Remember the taking of Moscow by the Poles, and see for how many centuries they were lying in wait for Warsaw, and how patiently generation after generation they set traps and pitfalls to catch the Polish people tripping, although their enemies were at that time one of the most civilized and powerful states of Europe, whilst they themselves were scarcely recognised as a nation, and were almost unknown to the west. Like drops of water undermining a bank, they venture little by little, and work in silence until their object is gained—then [322] woe and desolation to those that fall! ”

“ There is something quite classic in the Russian dress, and we frequently stood to admire the people at their employment. The straight, half-moon shaped head-dress of the girls is almost a copy of that on Diana’s brow; the narrow band confining the hair of the men could find its counterpart on many antique heads; the closely-setting folds of the women’s sarafane are very like those in Greek paintings and on Etruscan vases; the loose shirts tied round the waist worn by the men, their moustached and bearded faces, look very like the figures on the friezes of the Athenian temples. ”

“ When a carriage arrived, they would suddenly start into life and draw lots amongst themselves as to who should take the turn: he on whom the lot fell immediately fetched the horses and mounted; the rest threw themselves again on the ground and instantly returned to their slumber, so exactly like a number of animals that it was painful to see them. In the winter-time they sleep in cribs something like a horse’s manger, with a little hay or straw. “Our peasants,” said a Russian to me, “are nothing but brutes; the only argument with them is blows, for that is all they can understand.” ”

“ Petersburg will not long exist, and that evil will befal it. Perhaps they feel that the myriads whose clay has long ere this mingled with the morasses into which they were thrown, still cry for vengeance unto Heaven, and that they will be heard at last.
When I was on the road to Warsaw, I saw the large army that Russia was sending through Poland to the south and the Principalities; as nearly as I could calculate there were about sixty thousand men, chiefly infantry of the line, in three divisions, perhaps at the distance of fifty versts apart. ”

“ A solitary wolf or fox may occasionally be descried, either skulking among the bushes or sitting watchfully by the wayside, in faint hopes, perhaps, of some weary horse being left on the road to die and to become the victim of the hungry droves now lying perdus in the forest depths, and only scared from the traveller’s path by the tinkling of the bell attached to the sledge. ”

“ I know not what the feelings in that man’s breast can be as he deliberately scans the downcast countenances of so many miserable wretches, and then sends them down to the seat of war, really and truly for nothing else than to become food for cannon, and the prey of vultures and jackals. Does he ever reflect that for each life he thus sacrifices for his ambition he will be called to account and stand arraigned as a murderer before the judgment-seat of God, who has committed them into his hands that he may be the protector and not the slayer of his people? ”

“ Sometimes some huge bark would float by, like a wreck vainly struggling with its fate amid the sea of ice, and carried along with irresistible force; sometimes an uprooted pine or sombre fir might be seen dashing against everything in its way.
Many fatal accidents occur at these times. I remember a sad day we once passed at Jaroslaf when the Volga was breaking up. The ice is a long time floating past, from the immense length of the river and the numerous tributaries that empty themselves into it. We used, when the weather was fine, to go in a party to the shore to enjoy the sight. ”

“ The four besetting sins of the Russian serfs are their propensity for lying, their deceitful cunning, their want of honesty, and their frequent intoxication. But undoubtedly their state of slavery, their half-civilized condition, and the demoralizing effects of their government have mainly contributed to these grave defects.
Lying is but the handmaid of cunning and deceit; and the two latter being in every known land of despotism and slavery a distinctive mark of the people, it would be absurd to expect that the Russians would be exceptions. ”

“ The Russians of the lower class are just like overgrown children: they are as much pleased with a ride on a wooden horse, or in one of the boats of a whirligig, in a swing, or down an ice-hill, as a party of school-children would be. In the grand theatre this last Carnival they have been intensely gratified with the “glorious battle of Sinope,” fought over for their amusement about twelve times every day, in which not a single Russian got wounded, although the heads of the poor Turks were rolling by scores in all directions. ”

“ Moscow has all the prestige of a holy city, and is still regarded by the nation as the capital. The Moscowites themselves look down on the inhabitants of St. Petersburg as a kind of parvenus and mushrooms,—people of no caste, and a race of mixed blood, descended from foreigners and adventurers,—whilst they hold themselves up as the true sons of Old Russia, and are in every respect much more truly Russian than the St. Petersburg people. The feeling against foreigners, although their society is much courted by the upper classes, is, as a national sentiment, very strong. ”

“ The most distressing scenes may be seen in the streets among the bands of recruits—they, their mothers and sisters, or wives, all weeping together as they walk along; for the women, with innate tenderness, accompany them for many miles out of the town, unwilling, until the very last moment, to bid the objects of their affection adieu for ever, whilst the latter, in entering the Russian army, like the condemned in Dante’s ‘Inferno,’ leave all hope behind. ”

“ Is this, then, the land in which civilization has made her abode, and whose wonderful advance in the path of wisdom is to form an era in the records of the human race? Surely those who are under this delusion can have but very little idea how small an amount of civilization exists beyond Moscow and St. Petersburg, or they must have been too ready to believe the boastings of the Russians and the flourishing accounts of superficial travellers.
A Russian village is generally composed of a long row of wooden houses on each side of the post-road, with usually a line of birch-trees in front. ”

“ The Vistula is so extremely shallow that the sand is everywhere visible through the water. As to the general aspect of the country, it much reminded me of some parts of England; even the whitewashed cottages with thatched roofs looked very like those we see at home, but the peasants bore no resemblance to our sturdy, independent-looking countrymen. They, poor people! with their sullen, downcast faces, too plainly showed, even more so than the Russian serfs, how hardly they fared, and how they were ground down by the oppression of their conquerors. ”

“ It is at such times that the Russian character shows to the greatest disadvantage: respect sinks into slavishness, politeness into fawning, civility into adulation, and the conversation throughout is a mass of hypocrisy and deceit. Heaven only knows how many centuries it will take to teach the Russians to speak the truth. The wives and grown-up daughters of the employés congratulate the governor’s lady just as the husbands do his excellency, when it is customary to invite them to a ball and supper in the evening. ”

“ Perhaps in no country in the world does one meet so great a variety of foreigners: almost every nation has its representative in Russia; from the Norwegian and Swede to the Albanian and Turk, from the Spanish adventurer to the Moldavian and Wallachian, they are all to be encountered in society. At an evening party natives of perhaps ten or a dozen countries may be met, and that not by any remarkable accident, but merely in an invitation to one’s general acquaintances. ”

“ It was with a feeling almost of sorrow that I gazed on that brilliant group as they swept proudly along the serried lines of the living mass, and thought that, long ere another century had fled, not one of all that mighty multitude would exist to speak of that splendid sight, and that the magnificent pageant of that day was doomed, like thousands of others that had passed before, to fade away like a shadow, and be remembered no more.
It was only when the masses began to move that I could form any idea of the myriads assembled ”

“ French is the medium by which all these people hold communication with each other, and interchange ideas; but it is necessary to understand German and Russian to enjoy a conversation, as it very often lapses into one or the other, according to the majority of people of either nation in the company. It is exceedingly disagreeable for those who speak only the French language, as very frequently, when some interesting anecdote is being recounted, a chance remark made by some one in German will cause the conversation to be continued in that tongue, to the great disappointment of the listener. ”

“ The life the poor yemstchicks lead must be miserable in the extreme: any complaint lodged against them is pretty sure of procuring them a good beating; and I have seen the conductors or guards of the mail-coach thrash them most unmercifully with the sword, or give them such blows on the ears with their post-horn as to make one feel sick at heart to think that any human being was obliged to endure so great an indignity, and that without the hope of redress. The mode in which they live I can compare to nothing but to that of dogs. ”

“ Towards the evening, if it be the eve of some saint’s day, or great national holiday, we shall see them lively and merry enough, all dressed in clean shirts of the brightest hues, and gay sarafanes, dancing in the space before their houses, singing their native airs to the tinkling of their triangular guitars, as if slavery were but a name and its burthens feathers. ”

“ I often thought of his words when I saw the peasantry with their axes stuck into their girdle, a national custom, and shuddered to imagine the horrid deeds they will commit with these weapons when their vengeance shall have been aroused for the many years of injustice and cruelty to which they have been subjected.
Under the large landowners the lot of the peasantry is often tolerably happy; and as they do not know what freedom means, slavery is not greatly felt; but it is under the petty proprietors that they suffer the most ”

“ Paganism indeed seems not yet to have entirely disappeared from the land, and it is curious to remark how easy it is to trace some of the acts and ceremonies of the Russian Church to their heathen origin. Almost every god and goddess of antiquity has a corresponding saint in the calendar, and many of their high festivals are apparently merely those of their Pagan creed under another name; so difficult is it to eradicate the idolatrous superstitions of a nation, or to instil into the hearts of a people the sentiments of a pure religion. ”

“ Gentlemen bet wagers on it, ladies chatter about it, peasants quarrel over it; every person is interested concerning it, and, when it is first seen to move, pleasure is expressed on every face.
The breaking up of the ice of the Neva is by no means so magnificent a spectacle as that of the Volga or the Northern Dwina, although the whole of the frozen masses from the lake of Ladoga descend by its stream. ”

“ During the summer the inhabitants of a Russian château live almost entirely out of doors; they pass their time in sitting under the trees, reading or smoking (for many of the ladies smoke) , embroidering, and chatting, or they stroll into the woods in parties to look for mushrooms, which form a favourite dish at their tables. Nothing indeed can be more pleasant than the life at a country-house; everything is easy and without restraint. ”

“ Petersburg are for the most part only of brick and stucco. That this assemblage of all that is splendid in the city gives it at first sight a magnificent ensemble, I do not deny; but, like everything Russian, the showy [52] façade only hides what is mean behind. In the same tableau we see the Admiralty, on a line with which is the Winter Palace itself, facing the War-office; in the intermediate space stands the Alexander Column, with the bronze angel on the top, whose head is bowed in adoration, and who bears a golden cross in his arms. ”