1815. 53. pulse to industry in free trade. CHAP. Islands. As this change has arisen from the necessary VIII. effect of the wealth, civilisation, and advanced years of the British empire, so there is no chance of its underGreat im going any alteration, and it must come every day to evince agricultural a more powerful influence on the relative strength and Russia from fortunes of the two empires. Even before the free-trade system had been two years established in Great Britain, it had, despite the rude system of agriculture there prevalent, nearly doubled the exportation of grain from the harbours of Russia,* and tripled its value, while it has caused the production of cereal crops in the British Islands to decline 4,000,000 of quarters. The effect of such a continued and increasing augmentation on the one side, and decline on the other, cannot fail ere long to exercise a powerful influence on the fortunes and relative strength of the two empires; and when it is recollected that the increase is given to a young and rising, and the drain taken from an old and stationary state, it may easily be foreseen how important in a short time the difference must become. 54. destiny of Russia? What, then, is the destiny of Russia ?-for a destiny, What is the and that a great one, she evidently has. Her rapid growth and ceaseless progress through all the mutations of fortune in the adjoining states clearly bespeak not only consummate wisdom of general internal direction, but the * EXPORTATION ON AN AVERAGE OF THREE YEARS OF WHEAT, Barley, and OATS FROM RUSSIA. Captain Larcom has reported that the wheat produce of Ireland has declined 1,500,000 quarters since 1845; and the return of sales in the market-towns of England indicates a diminished production of wheat alone in Great Britain of at least 2,500,000 quarters more. † Free trade in England. * VIII. 1815. evolutions of a mighty design. She is probably not in- CHAP. tended to shine in the career of civilisation. Her sons will not, at least for long, rival the arts of Italy or the chivalry of France, the intellect of England or the imagination of Germany. There will be no Shakespeares or Miltons, no Racines or Corneilles, no Tassos or Raphaels, no Schillers or Goethes, amidst the countless millions of her boundless territory; but there may be there will be— an Alexander, an Attila, a Timour. Literature, science, the arts, are the efflorescence of civilisation; but in the moral, not less than the physical world, efflorescence is succeeded by decline, the riches of the harvest border on the decay of autumn. There is a winter in nations as well as in seasons; the vulture and the eagle are required to cleanse the moral not less than the physical world. If the glories of civilisation are denied to Russia, she is saved from its corruption; if she does not exhibit the beauties of summer, she is not stained by its consequent decay. Hardened by suffering, inured to privation, compelled to struggle eternally with the severities of climate, the difficulties of space, the energy of the human character is preserved entire amidst her ice and snows. From thence, as from the glaciers of the Alps, the destroying but purifying streams descend upon the plenty of the vales beneath. Russia will evidently conquer Turkey, and plant her eagles * TABLE SHOWing the incrEASE OF RUSSIA SINCE 1462. CHAP. VIII. 1815. 55. ent people on the dome of St Sophia; she will do what the Crusaders failed in doing-she will rescue the Holy Shrines from the hands of the Infidels. But that, though an important part, is not the whole of her destiny. Still, when the Cross is seen triumphant over the wide expanse of the Lower Empire, will her millions remain in their snowy deserts, invigorated by necessity, hardened by suffering, panting for conquest. She is never destined to be civilised, save for the purposes of war; but she is destined to do what intellect and peace can never do. Scythia will for ever remain what it has been from the earliest times-THE STOREHOUSE OF NATIONS, THE SCOURGE OF VICIOUS CIVILISATION. It has been well observed, that the great difficulty in Two differ- Russia is, that it contains, in a manner, two different in Russia. people; the one on a level with the most highly civilised. states of Europe, the other, at the utmost, only fashioned to civilisation by the police. The Marquis Custine says, "it contains a society half barbarous, but restrained in order by fear;" and though that is by no means true of the first people, it is strictly so of the last. The interests, feelings, and desires of these two different people are irreconcilable; an impassable abyss separates them. That which the first desires with the most passionate ardour, is a matter of indifference or unintelligible to the other. The highly-educated classes, acquainted with the society, familiar with the literature, impregnated with the ideas of western Europe, often sigh for its institutions, its excitements, its freedom. The immense mass of the peasantry, the great majority of the trading classes, repel such ideas as repugnant to their feelings, at variance with their habits, subversive of their faith. The first long for parliaments, elections, constitutional government, a national literature, a free press; the latter are satisfied to go on as their fathers did before them, with their Czar, their bishops, their popes-obeying every mandate of government as a decree of the Most High; desiring, VIII. 1815. knowing nothing beyond their village, their fields, their CHAP. steppe. For which of these different people is the Emperor to legislate? for the enlightened few or the ignorant many; for the three hundred thousand travelled and highly-polished nobles, or the seventy millions of simple and unlettered peasants? Yet must institutions of some kind be established, legislation of some sort go on; and the great difficulty in Russia is, that the one class in Schnitzsecret desires what the other in sincerity abominates, and 45; Cuswhat would be beneficial to the former would prove utter 95. ruin to the latter.1 1 ler, ii. 44, tine, iii. ideas with turned from troops re France and This great difficulty, by far the most serious which 56. exists in Russian society, was much aggravated after the Liberal termination of the war by the feelings with which the which the officers of the army returned from the fields of their conquest and their fame. In the hard-fought campaigns of Germany and France they had stood side by side with the ardent youth of the Teutonic universities, whose feelings had been warmed by the fervour of the Tugendbund, whose imaginations had been kindled by the poetry of Körner; at the capture of Paris they had seen the world in transports at the magnanimous words of the Czar in praise of Liberal institutions; many of them had shared in his reception in London, and witnessed the marvellous spectacle of a free people emerging unscathed from a contest, from which they themselves had been extricated only by committing their capital to the flames. Immense was the influence which these circumstances came ere long to exercise on the highly-educated youth of Russia, speaking French and English as well as natives, associating with the very highest society of these nations, and contrasting the varied excitements and intellectual pleasures at their command, with the stillness and monotony, save from physical sensations, of their own fettered land. They saw civilisation on its bright side only: they had basked in its sunshine, they had not felt its shade. They returned home, as so many travellers do, to VIII. 1814. CHAP. the cold regions of the north, discontented with their own country, and passionately desirous of a change. These sentiments were dangerous; their expression might consign the utterer at once to Siberia: they were shrouded in silence, like a secret passion in the female heart from a jealous husband; but like all other emotions, they only 1 Schnitz became the more violent from the necessity of being concealed, and came in many noble breasts entirely to absorb the mind, to the exclusion of all objects of pacific interest or ambition.1 ler, ii. 45, 49; Custine, iii. 95, 99. Ignorant of the spread of passions which were destined ere long to cause the earth to quake beneath his feet, and carried away by the intoxicating incense which the loudly expressed admiration of the world had lavished upon him at Paris, the Emperor Alexander returned to St Petersburg in 1814, after his magnificent reception in London, with a mind set rather on vast projects for the pacification of the world, the extirpation of war, and the spread of the sway of the Gospel in every land, than the establishment of any safe or practicable reforms in his own. His benevolence was great, his heart large, his imagination warm; but his practical acquaintance with men was small, and he aimed rather at reforming mankind at once by the ukases of despotism, than putting matters in a train for the slow and almost imperceptible growth of real improvement, working through the changed habits and desires of the people. He re-entered his capital after his long absence on the 24th July, and his arrival, after such marvellous events as had signalised his absence, was prepared to be celebrated by extraordinary demonstrations of joy. By an order from the Emperor they were all stopped. "The events," said he to the governor of St Petersburg, "which have terminated the bloody wars of Europe, are the work of the Most High; it is before Him alone that it behoves us to prostrate ourselves." 2 He refused the title of "the Blessed" which the |