Moral and intellectual instruction have hitherto made very little way among the slave population. Attempts indeed have been made to found schools in some of the crown villages, but these attempts have been always ill-directed, and necessarily unsuccessful. Religion which everywhere else constitutes the most potent instrument of civilisation, can have in Russia no favourable effect on the improvement of the people. Consisting solely in fasts, crossings, and outward ceremonies, it leaves the mind totally uninfluenced, and in no respect acts as a bar to the demoralisation which is gradually pervading the immense class of the serfs. The peculiar circumstances of the Russian towns and villages are also perhaps among the greatest obstacles to intellectual progress. The advance of civilisation depends in a great measure on facility of intercourse. When a population is compact, and its several members are continually in presence of each other, each man's knowledge is propagated among his compatriots, facts and opinions are discussed, and men become mutually enlightened as to what is thought and done around them. From this continual interchange of mental wealth, there naturally arises an amount of enlightenment and capacity that tends greatly to extend the domain of thought. But let any one cast his eyes on Russia, and he will be struck by the unfavourable manner in which its population is distributed. Not only are the great centres of population very thinly scattered over the surface, but the several dwellings too in the towns are placed very wide apart, and those of the villages still more so. Every man is isolated, every man lives by and for himself, or at least within a very contracted sphere. Social meetings are rare, and in winter almost impossible; in a word, it is not at all unusual for people not to know their neighbours on the opposite side of the street; hence the invariable nesnai (I do not know) with which the Russian replies to every question the traveller puts to him, ought not to astonish or incense the latter. At first I was disposed to think this ignorance was pretended, and to attribute it to sulkiness and indolence; but I afterwards perceived that it was occasioned in much greater measure by the absurd style of building adopted in the country.
Another thing that tends to enervate the Russians and keep them in their brutified condition, is the immoderate use of brandy, to which both men and women are addicted. It is truly deplorable that the government feels constrained to favour the sale of that pernicious liquor which forms its most important source of revenue. How often have I seen the dram-shops full of women dead drunk, who had left their poultry yards tenantless, and sold their household furniture to gratify their fatal passion.