In perfect harmony with this melancholy is the Russian national music.  The expressive sweetness of the Russian melodies has long been the admiration of those foreign composers, to whom circumstances had made them known.  The history of these melodies is just as uncertain as that of the verses; they seem always to have been united; no one knows where they came from.  In respect to popular tunes and songs, the answer which the Ashantees gave to Mr. Bowditch has often occurred to us:  “They were made when the country was made.”  The Russian tunes are richer and more varied than are popular airs in general.  Of most of the songs only the first two verses are set to the melody; all the following being repeated in the same tune.  But there are some which extend further.  Some of these airs include more than a whole octave in their notes; while the national melodies of most other nations move in general among a few notes.

To account for the melancholy character of the Russian music and poetry, and to reconcile it with the well-known cheerful disposition of the nation, has been attempted by several Russian critics.  “The peculiarities of a nation,” Karamzin remarks, “may always be explained by the circumstances which have operated on it; although the grandchildren may have some of the virtues and some of the vices of their ancestry, even if they are differently situated.  Perhaps the present character of the Russians may exhibit faults, which it contracted during the barbarism of the Mongolian subjugation.”  The pensiveness which pervades the Russian songs has also been considered as a remnant of that gloom, necessarily impressed on the Russian character during two centuries of the most cruel oppression.  There is no doubt that the Russians before, during, and after their subjugation by the Mongols, had a thousand causes of discouragement and disasters; bloody civil wars, the most barbarian despotism, the plague, slavery,[23] and the like.  But it is just as certain, that notwithstanding all the causes of sorrow, the Russians are still the most cheerful and light-hearted people on earth; with all their hearts and senses enjoying the scanty pleasures of life; though deprived of all civil privileges, and even of many social rights.  The truth is, that it is with nations as with individuals.  Neither in the one case nor in the other must we expect always to see them deposit their habitual feelings in their poetry.  It is a well-known fact that Moliere was a man of a most serious disposition.  Cowper, immediately before writing his “John Gilpin,” was in a mood bordering on despair.  Young, while composing his melancholy Night Thoughts, enjoyed his life as well as any man.  The Russians do not sing their every-day sentiments, but their holiday feelings.  That sweet pensiveness, which thrills so affectingly through their music and poetry, is to them a species of luxury.  A soft, melancholy emotion, not deep enough indeed to cause suffering, and slumbering in every-day life in the recesses of the poet’s soul, awakes in the hour of inspiration and spreads a gentle shadow over his habitual sunshine.  The peculiar melancholy resignation of Slavic lovers we have already attempted to explain.  Indeed, it is to their love songs, principally, that the general remark on the pensiveness of Russian songs and airs is applicable.