ctised in India and other silent countries of the East, where
speech has less influence than with us. General Miloradowitsch
invited me the very evening of my departure, to a ball at the house
of a Moldavian princess, to which I regretted very much being unable
to go. All these names of foreign countries and of nations which are
scarcely any longer European, singularly awaken the imagination. You
feel yourself in Russia at the gate of another earth, near to that
East from which have proceeded so many religious creeds, and which
still contains in its bosom incredible treasures of perseverance and
reflection.

CHAPTER 12.

Road from Kiow to Moscow.

About nine hundred versts still separated Kiow from Moscow. My
Russian coachmen drove me along like lightning, singing airs, the
words of which I was told were compliments and encouragements to
their horses, "Go along," they said, "my friends: we know one
another: go quick." I have as yet seen nothing at all barbarous in
this people; on the contrary their forms have an elegance and
softness about them which you find no where else. Never does a
Russian coachman pass a female, of whatever age or rank she may be,
without saluting her, and the female returns it by an inclination of
the head which is always noble and graceful. An old man who could
not make himself understood by me, pointed to the earth, and then to
the heaven, to signify to me, that the one would shortly be to him
the road to the other. I know very well that the shocking
barbarities which disfigure the history of Russia may be urged,
reasonably, as evidence of a contrary character; but these I should
rather lay to the charge of the boyars, the class which was depraved
by the despotism which it exercised or submitted to, than to the
nation itself. Besides, political dissentions, everywhere and at all
times, distort national character, and there is nothing more
deplorable than that succession of masters, whom crimes have
elevated or overturned; but such is the fatal condition of absolute
power on this earth. The civil servants of the government, of an
inferior class, all those who look to make their fortune by their
suppleness or intrigues, in no degree resemble the inhabitants of
the country, and I can readily believe all the ill that has been and
may be said of them; but to appreciate properly the character of a
warlike nation, we must look to its soldiers, and the class from
which its soldiers are tak