s separated at very
great distances: even the chateaux of the nobility are at such
distances from each other, that it is with difficulty the
proprietors can communicate with each other. Finally, the
inhabitants are so dispersed in this empire, that the knowledge of
some can hardly be of use to others. The peasants can only reckon by
means of a calculating machine, and the clerks of the post
themselves follow the same method. The Greek popes have much less
knowledge than the Catholic curates, or the Protestant ministers; so
that the clergy in Russia are really not fit to instruct the people,
as in the other countries of Europe. The great bond of the nation is
in religion and patriotism; but there is in it no focus of
knowledge, the rays of which might spread over all parts of the
empire, and the two capitals have not yet learned to communicate to
the provinces what they have collected in literature and the fine
arts. If this country could have remained at peace, it would have
experienced all sorts of improvement under the beneficent reign of
Alexander. But who knows if the virtues which this war has
developed, may not be exactly those which are likely to regenerate
nations?

The Russians have not yet had, up to the present time, men of genius
but for the military career; in all other arts they are only
imitators; printing, however, has not been introduced among them
more than one hundred and twenty years. The other nations of Europe
have become civilized almost simultaneously, and have been able to
mingle their natural genius with acquired knowledge; with the
Russians this mixture has not yet operated. In the same manner as we
see two rivers after their junction, flow in the same channel
without confounding their waters, in the same manner nature and
civilization are united among the Russians without identifying the
one with the other: and according to circumstances the same man at
one time presents himself to you as a European who seems only to
exist in social forms, and at another time as a Sclavonian who only
listens to the most furious passions. Genius will come to them in
the fine arts, and particularly in literature, when they shall have
found out the means of infusing their real disposition into
language, as they show it in action.

I witnessed the performance of a Russian tragedy, the subject of
which was the deliverance of the Muscovites, when they drove back
the Tartars beyond Casan. The prince of Smolensko