with the improvement of his country!
and in attempting to establish laws which would guarantee to it that
happiness, of which the duration is as yet only secured for the life
of its present ruler.

* (Note by the Editor)
* This expression has been already quoted in the third volume of the
Considerations on the French Revolution; but it deserves to be
repeated. All this, however, it must be remembered, was written at
the end of 1812.
(End of Note by the Editor.)

From the emperor's I went to his respectable mother's, that princess
to whom calumny has never been able to impute a sentiment
unconnected with the happiness of her husband, her children, or the
family of unfortunate persons of whom she is the protectress. I
shall relate, farther on, in what manner she governs that empire of
charity, which she exercises in the midst of the omnipotent empire
of her son. She lives in the palace of the Taurida, and to get to
her apartments you have to cross a hall, built by prince Potemkin,
of incomparable grandeur; a winter garden occupies a part of it, and
you see the trees and plants through the pillars which surround the
middle inclosure. Every thing in this residence is colossal; the
conceptions of the prince who built it were fantastically gigantic.
He had towns built in the Crimea, solely that the empress might see
them on her passage; he ordered the assault of a fortress, to please
a beautiful woman, the princess Dolgorouki, who had disdained his
suit, The favor of his Sovereign mistress created him such as he
showed himself; but there is remarkable, notwithstanding, in the
characters of most of the great men of Russia, such as Menzikoff,
Suwarow, Peter I. himself, and in yet older times Ivan Vasilievitch,
something fantastical, violent, and ironical combined. Wit was with
them rather an arm than an enjoyment, and it was by the imagination
that they were led. Generosity, barbarity, unbridled passions, and
religious superstition, all met in the same character. Even now
civilization in Russia has not penetrated beyond the surface, even
among the great nobility; externally they imitate other nations, but
all are Russians at heart, and in that consists their strength and
originality, the love of country being next to that of God, the
noblest sentiment which men can feel. That country must certainly be
exceedingly different from those which surround it to inspire a
decided attachment; nations which are confounded with one an