ere 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