But the people are slaves, it will be said:  what character therefore can they be supposed to have?  It is not certainly necessary for me to say that all enlightened people wish to see the Russian people freed from this state, and probably no one wishes it more strongly than the Emperor Alexander:  but the Russian slavery has no resemblance in its effects to that of which we form the idea in the West; it is not as under the feudal system, victors who have imposed severe laws on the vanquished; the ties which connect the grandees with the people resemble rather what was called a family of slaves among the ancients, than the state of serfs among the moderns.  There is no middling class in Russia, which is a great drawback on the progress of literature and the arts; for it is generally in that class that knowledge is developed:  but the want of any intermedium between the nobility and the people creates a greater affection between them both.  The distance between the two classes appears greater, because there are no steps between these two extremities, which in fact border very nearly on each other, not being separated by a middling class.  This is a state of social organization quite unfavorable to the knowledge of the higher classes, but not so to the happiness of the lower.  Besides, where there is no representative government, that is to say, in countries where the sovereign still promulgates the law which he is to execute, men are frequently more degraded by the very sacrifice of their reason and character, than they are in this vast empire, in which a few simple ideas of religion and country serve to lead the great mass under the guidance of a few heads.  The immense extent of the Russian empire also prevents the despotism of the great from pressing heavily in detail upon the people; and finally, above all, the religious and military spirit is so predominant in the nation, that allowance may be made for a great many errors, in favor of those two great sources of noble actions.  A person of fine intellect said, that Russia resembled the plays of Shakspeare, in which all that is not faulty is sublime, and all that is not sublime is faulty; an observation of remarkable justice.  But in the great crisis in which Russia was placed when I passed through it, it was impossible not to admire the energetic resistance, and resignation to sacrifices exhibited by that nation; and one could not almost dare, at the contemplation of such virtues, to allow one’s self even to notice what at other times one would have censured.

CHAPTER 14.

Moscow.