St. Petersburg: Panorama, Streets, Architecture and Public Life

Melancholy as the fact is of this enormous abuse of spirituous hquors in Russia, yet, as before observed, it is certain that the evil consequences are not so glaringly offensive as they would be among any other people. It is perhaps a general law of Nature that all abuses, where they are generally prevalent, shall not be injurious in a Hke proportion with their strength, because all poisons carry a certain antidote with them, and human nature in its most desperate condition is yet to be saved from utter destruction. Thus despotism depraves men less in Russia than it would do in a free country, because a multitude of devices have been formed for avoiding the evil. Serfdom in Russia is not half so oppressive as it would be to men who passed from a state of freedom to one of slavery ; for the people develop a great elasticity of spirit, freedom from care, and cheerfulness in the midst of their humiliation, and have found out a multitude of alleviations which a people unaccustomed to slavery would not turn to account. Any other nation in the bonds of Russian despotism and serfdom, among whom such roguery and cheating were in practice, who were fettered in such a darkness of ignorance and superstition, and so plunged in sensual excess, would be the most detestable and unbearable people on the face of the earth. The Russians, on the contrary, with all their faults and sufferings, are very tolerably agreeable, gay, and contented . Their roguery scarcely shows amiss in them, their slavery they bear with as much ease as Atlas bore the weight of the globe, and out of their brandy-casks they swallow the deepest potations even with a grace. A disease in an otherwise healthy body manifests itself by the most decisive symptoms, while in a thoroughly corrupted system the evil will glide through all parts of 'the body without coming to an explosion, because one evil struggles with and counteracts the other ; so in Russia those manifold evils are not seen in the full light of day as in other lands. The whole is veiled by a murky atmosphere, through which the right and the wrong cannot be clearly discerned. Every thing is compromised, smoothed OA^er ; no sickness is brought into a strong hght, or compelled to a palpable revelation. With us the boys in the street shout after a drunken man, and pelt him with dirt and hard names, which raises a disturbance immediately. This is never the case in Russia, and a stranger might, from the absence of drunken squabbles and noise, be led to conclude that they were a sober people, till he observed that the absence of all attention to the fact is the cause of his mistake. To his no small astonishment he will see two, three, or four people, apparently in full possession of their reason, walking together ; suddenly the whole party will reel and stagger, and one or the other measure his length in the mire, where he lies unnoticed, unless by his brother or a police-officer.