savagery of their nature. A statesman or a philosopher, with
independence enough to think and speak the truth if his views differed
from those of the constituted authorities, would be a very dangerous
character, and be very apt to pursue his career, in company with all
who have hitherto aspired to distinction in that way, beyond the
confines of Siberia. Russia may produce many Karasmins to write
glowing histories of her wars and conquests, but her Burkes, her
Pitts, and her Foxes will be few, and her Shakspeares and her Bacons
fewer still. Her Pascal's Reflections will be tinged with Siberian
horrors; her Young's Night Thoughts will be of the dancing damsels of
St. Petersburg; her Vicars of Wakefield will abound in the genial
humor of devils and dragons, saints and tortures; and the wit of her
Sidney Smiths will have a crack of the knout about it, skinning men's
back's rather than their backslidings; effective only when it draws
human blood, and best approved by the censors when it strikes at human
freedom.

We find the results of such a system strongly marked upon the general
character. While equals are jealous of each other, inferiors are
slavish and superiors tyrannical. It is often the case that
overbearing manners and abject humility are centred in the same class
or person. Thus the Camarilla are overbearing to the bureaucracy, the
bureaucracy to the provincial nobility, and the provincial nobility to
the inferior classes. As I said before, it is a sliding-scale of
despotism. The worst feature of it is seen in the treatment of women.
Among the better classes conventionality has, doubtless, somewhat
meliorated their condition. Absolute physical cruelty would be,
perhaps, a violation of etiquette and good breeding; but neglect,
selfishness, innate coarseness of thought, and a general want of
chivalrous appreciation, are too common in the treatment of Russian
women not to strike the most casual observer. Certainly the
impressions of one who has been taught from infancy to regard the
gentler sex as entitled to the most profound respect and chivalrous
devotion--to look upon them as beings of a more delicate essence than
man, yet infinitely superior in those moral attributes which rise so
high above intellect or physical power--are not favorable to the
assumptions of Russian civilization. Yet, since the condition of woman
is but little better in any part of Europe, it may be that this is one
of the fashions imported fro