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 space 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 analogous to that mixture of indolence and vivacity which forms the charm of the Russian dance.  This indolence and vivacity are indicative of reverie and passion, 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 passions 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.