defences on the Isle of Grain; of course it will add the support of those fortifications to its natural duty of standing sentry over the acres of marsh and mud.
MY ADVENTURES WITH A PASSPORT IN RUSSIA.
PART. I. SHOWING HOW I GOT IT.
It is one of the hardest things in the world to form a just estimate of a foreign country. We seldom see other nations fully, and still more rarely judge impartially of what we do see: such is the temptation to under-rate and over-rate, according to our own special tendency. When we remember the contradictory representations we daily hear and read of the countries in our own immediate neighbourhood, modesty may well restrain us from pronouncing any dogmatic opinion on those which are physically, intellectually, and morally, more remote. In the case of such a country as Russia, the difficulty amounts almost to an impossibility. Hence we have had two diametrically opposite representations of that empire; both false, because both one-sided and exaggerated. According to one set of writers, Russia is a paradise; according to another set, it is a sort of pandemonium. If you believe the one, the late Emperor Nicholas was an angel; if you believe the other, he was little better than a devil. He was neither: he certainly had not an angelic appearance; but, often as I have seen him, I never could detect any signs of the opposite physiognomy in his countenance.
I confess I am not surprised at these contradictory accounts. Russia is, in itself, a land of contradictions. The proverb, that extremes meet, might have originated there. The Russian empire is too large and diversified to be characterised by a single epithet. It includes a larger number of distinct races blended together than any other country in the world: it is the home of almost unnumbered tribes, bound together by the tie of a common government, but separated from each other in every other respect. There you may see, in one nation, all the grades of civilisation, from the most primitive barbarism to the highest refinement.
Even the climate ranges from the most oppressive heat to the most insufferable cold, because its territory extends from the Frozen Ocean almost to the Torrid Zone. Nay, on the same spot, I have seen the thermometer rising to a hundred degrees in the shade, in summer, and becoming useless—through the freezing of the quicksilver—in winter. But even this is not all: I have experienced the extremes of heat and cold on the same day. Travelling once in an open carriage from Siberia to St. Petersburgh, one evening in June, after a hot summer day, I was soaked through with the rain; during the succeeding night, my wet clothes froze on my body, and were gently thawed by the next morning’s sun; and, by the time 4 p.m. came round again, I was so boiled as to envy a duckling in a pond. The same contradictory elements exist in the manners, habits, and institutions of Russia. I once saw a clever Russian thief pick a pocket with one hand, and cross himself in prayer with the other.
In attempting to account for these incongruities, we must not lose sight of the fact that Russia is a hybrid: a cross-breed between the east and the west; related to both, yet distinguished from each. This has been its traditional character for ages; but, in modern times, influences have been brought to bear upon it, which have still further complicated its original contrariety. The old Slavonic stock was already the most oriental of all the European races, in habits and tendencies, as well as in geographical position. But the eruption of the Mongol and Tartar hordes, in the thirteenth century, tended to a further isolation of Russia from the rest of Europe: and, though the successors of Tchinggis Khan did not long retain their conquest, they left their footprints upon the nation; and, to this day, you may read upon every page of the national character of Russia, “Tchinggis Khan, his mark.”
To make the national discrepancies still more glaring, Peter the Great violently forced back the current of the national life into the westward channel; and his policy has been carried out by his successors, who have artificially imposed an occidental civilisation upon a people whose oriental tendencies are constantly at work. We have too much lost sight of this consideration in our estimate of Russia. We have judged a semi-Asiatic people by a European standard. We expected to see a horse: and, lo! we find it is but a mule; and we express our disappointment in looks of contempt and words of scorn. The fault is our own; we disqualify ourselves from admiring what is really good, by comparing it with what is good in a different order of things. We might have known that the animal was a mule; and, when we have once cheerfully recognised that fact, we may see that even the mule has beauties and good qualities of its own.
This oriental tendency may be detected in every department of Russian thought and life. One of its most striking developments is to be seen in the jealousy with which all foreigners are regarded. The Russians cannot get rid of the impression that you must have some sinister end in view in visiting their country.
An Englishman can scarcely form an idea of the petty annoyances to which a foreigner is subjected on his arrival at St. Petersburg. He is first required to give, in writing, a long and circumstantial declaration on a variety of subjects: he has then to undergo a personal examination at the bureau of the secret police; and woe be to him if he falter, or make a single false step, or say anything that seems inconsistent with his written, and perhaps forgotten, declaration. If his examination prove satisfactory to the police, he will receive a passport at the foreign-office. This precious passport system, now happily abolished by the other northern powers, is carried to absurd lengths in Russia; indeed, if you wished to invent a practical burlesque on the principle of passports, you could not do better than adopt the Russian plan of surveillance. You cannot legally enter a town, or sleep at an inn, or even spend a night at a friend’s house, without a passport. You cannot change your residence, even if you were going to live next door, without first sending your passport to the police-office.
