again succeed.  I did not perceive the public spirit; the apparent inconstancy of the impressions of the Russians prevented me from observing it.  Despondency had frozen all minds, and I was ignorant, that with these men of vehement impressions, this despondency is the forerunner of a dreadful awakening.  In the same way, you remark in the common people, an inconceivable idleness up to the very moment when their activity is roused; then it knows no obstacle, dreads no danger, and seems to triumph equally over the elements and men.

I had understood that the internal administration, that of war as well as of justice, frequently fell into the most venal hands, and that by the dilapidations which the subaltern agents allowed themselves, it was impossible to form any just idea either of the number of troops, or of the measures taken to provision them; for lying and theft are inseparable, and in a country of such recent civilization the intermediate class have neither the simplicity of the peasantry, nor the grandeur of the boyars; and no public opinion yet exists to keep in check this third class, whose existence is so recent, and which has lost the naivete of popular faith without having acquired the point of honor.  A display of jealous feeling was also remarked between the military commanders.  It is in the very nature of a despotic government to create, even in spite of itself, jealousy in those who surround it:  the will of one man being able to change entirely the fortune of every individual, fear and hope have too much scope not to be constantly agitating this jealousy, which is also very much excited by another feeling, the hatred of foreigners.  The general who commanded the Russian army, General Barclay de Tolly, although born on the territories of the empire, was not of the pure Sclavonian race, and that was enough to make him be considered incapable of leading the Russians to victory:  he had, besides, turned his distinguished talents towards systems of encampment, positions, and manoeuvres, while the military art, which best suits the Russians, is attack.  To make them fall back, even from a wise and well reasoned calculation, is to cool in them that impetuosity from which they derive all their strength.  The prospects of the campaign were therefore the most inauspicious possible, and the silence which was maintained on that account was still more alarming.  The English give in their public papers the most exact account, man by man, of the wounded, prisoners and killed in each action; noble candour of a government which is equally sincere towards the nation and its monarch, recognizing in both the same right to have a knowledge of what concerns the nation.  I walked about with deep melancholy in that beautiful city of Petersburg which might become the prey of the conqueror.  When I returned in the evening from the islands, and saw the gilded point of the citadel which seemed to spout out in the air like a ray of fire, while the