rcumstances of life, a physical existence of the most
disagreeable kind. The severity of the climate, the marshes, the
forests, the deserts, of which a great part of the country is
composed, place man in a continual struggle with nature. Fruits, and
even flowers, only grow in hot-houses; vegetables are not generally
cultivated; and there are no vines any where. The habitual mode of
life of the French peasants could not be obtained in Russia but at a
very great expense. There they have only necessaries by luxury:
whence it happens that when luxury is unattainable, even necessaries
are renounced. What the English call comforts are hardly to be met
with in Russia. You will never find any thing sufficiently perfect
to satisfy in all ways the imagination of the great Russian
noblemen; but when this poetry of wealth fails them, they drink
hydromel, sleep upon a board, and travel day and night in an open
carriage, without regretting the luxury to which one would think
they had been habituated. It is rather as magnificence that they
love fortune, than from the pleasures they derive from it:
resembling still in that point the Easterns, who exercise
hospitality to strangers, load them with presents, and yet
frequently neglect the every day comforts of their own life. This is
one of the reasons which explains that noble courage with which
the Russians have supported the ruin which has been occasioned them
by the burning of Moscow. More accustomed to external pomp than to
the care of themselves, they are not mollified by luxury, and the
sacrifice of money satisfies their pride as much or more than the
magnificence of their expenditure. What characterizes this people,
is something gigantic of all kinds: ordinary dimensions are not at
all applicable to it. I do not by that mean to say that neither real
grandeur nor stability are to be met with in it: but the boldness
and the imagination of the Russians know no bounds: with them every
thing is colossal rather than well proportioned, audacious rather
than reflective, and if they do not hit the mark, it is because they
overshoot it.

CHAPTER 13.

Appearance of the Country.--Character of the Russians.

I was always advancing nearer to Moscow, but nothing yet indicated
the approach to a capital. The wooden villages were equally distant
from each other, we saw no greater movement upon the immense plains
which are called high roads; you heard no more noise; the country
houses w