58

GERMAN STATESMAN.

there is between a grande route* and a chaussée. Once leave the chaussée, and you go back three centuries.

This road had, however, been recommended to me by the minister De at Berlin, and in a manner

that was rather amusing:

"What road would you

advise me to take in going to Lubeck?" I asked him. "They are all bad,” replied the diplomatist; “but I advise you to take that of Schwerin."

66

My carriage," I replied, "is light, and if it should break down I shall miss the packet. If you know a better route I will take it, even if it be longer."

"All I can say," replied he in an official tone, "is, that I have recommended the same to Monseigneur-(the nephew of his sovereign); you cannot do better than follow him."

"The carriages of princes," I replied, "are perhaps as privileged as their persons. Princes have iron frames, and I would not wish to live for one day as they live the whole year."

No reply was deigned to these words, which I should have thought very innocent if they had not appeared seditious to the German man of office.

This grave and prudent person, distressed at the excess of my audacity, left me the moment he could without too palpable abruptness. There are certain Germans who are born subjects; they are courtiers before they become men. I cannot help laughing at their obsequious politeness, though preferring it

*The " grandes routes may be considered as meaning the old, wide, and unimproved roads of the country; the chaussées are the more recently cut roads, which are generally raised, drained, and kept in good repair. - Trans.

BATH-WOMAN OF TRAVEMUNDE.

59

to the contrary disposition, which I blame in the French. But a sense of the ridiculous will always have a strong sway over me, and I still laugh in spite of age and reflection. I should here add, that a road, a real grande route, will be before long opened between Lubeck and Schwerin.

The lovely bathing woman of Travemunde, whom we call La Monna Lise, is married: she has three children. I have been to see her in her family, and it was not without a mixture of sadness and timidity that I passed the modest threshold of her new building. She expected me, and with that natural coquetry proper to the people of the north, who, though unimpassioned, are affectionate and sentimental, she had put on her neck a little present which I had given her just ten years before. This charming creature, only thirty-four years of age, has already the gout! One can see that she has been beautiful; and that is all. Beauty not appreciated passes quickly away; it is useless. Lise has a husband, horribly ugly, and three children, one of whom, a boy, almost lives in the sea. In contemplating this family, and calling to mind the memory of Lise ten years before, it appeared to me as though the enigma of human life was for the first time suggested to my mind. I could not breathe in her little cabin, clean and neat as it was. I went out to respire the fresh air, and repeated to myself, "Where there are only the necessaries of life there is nothing. Happy the soul which seeks for a rest in religion." But the religion of Protestants yields only the necessary, and nothing beyond.

Since this lovely creature has been tied down to a common lot she lives without trouble, but without

pleasure, which appears to me the greatest trouble of all. I shall never see more, at least I hope not, La Monna Lise of Travemunde.*

How is it that real life resembles so little the life of the imagination? For what end then is this useless, nay mischievous, imagination given? Impenetrable mystery, which unveils itself only by fugitive glimpses to the eye of hope. Man is a galley slave, punished but not amended: in chains for a crime of which he is unconscious, doomed to the punishment of life-that is, to death-he lives and dies without being able to obtain a trial, or even to know of what he is accused. Ah! when one sees nature so arbitrary, how can one wonder at the injustice of society! To discern the existence of equity here below, there needs that eye of faith that pierces beyond the present scene of life.

Justice resides not visibly in this empire of time. Dig into nature, and you soon arrive at fate. A power which would revenge itself on its creation must be limited; but the limits, who has fixed them? The greater the incomprehensibility of the mystery, the greater the necessity, and the greater the triumph of faith.

*The reader is here reminded that this work was addressed originally, in the shape of letters, to a private friend. —. Trans.

POLAR NIGHTS.

THE NORTH.

POLE.

MONTESQUIEU AND HIS SYSTEM. SCENERY OF
FLATNESS OF THE EARTH'S SURFACE NEAR THE

SHORES OF FINLAND.

PEOPLE.
ENGLISH NOBILITY.
POLEON.

MELANCHOLY OF NORTHERN

PRINCE K——.— DEFINITIONS OF NOBILITY. -THE FREEDOM OF SPEECH. CANNING. — NACONFIDENTIAL CONVERSATION. GLANCE AT RUSSIAN HISTORY. INSTITUTIONS AND SPIRIT OF CHIVALRY UNKNOWN IN RUSSIA. THE NATURE OF AN AUTOCRACY. - POLITICS AND RELIGION ARE IDENTICAL IN RUSSIA. FUTURE INFLUENCE OF RUSSIA.-FATE OF PARIS.-PRINCE AND PRINCESS D-. — THE COLD-WATER CURE. -GOOD MANNERS OF THE HIGHER ORDERS IN RUSSIA. SOCIETY IN FRANCE BEFORE THE REVOLUTION.

A MODERN FRENCHMAN OF THE MIDDLE CLASSES. HIS MAUVAIS TON.- AGREEABLE SOCIETY ON THE STEAM-BOAT.-RUSSIAN NATIONAL DANCES.- -TWO AMERICANS.- -STEAM-BOAT ACCIDENT. ISLE OF DAGO.

I AM writing at midnight, without any lights, on board the steam-boat Nicholas the First, in the gulf of Finland. It is now the close of a day which has nearly the length of a month in these latitudes, beginning about the 8th of June, and ending towards the 4th of July. By degrees the nights will reappear; they are very short at first, but insensibly lengthen as they approach the autumnal equinox. They then increase with the same rapidity as do the days in spring, and soon involve in darkness the north of Russia and Sweden, and all within the vicinity of the arctic circle. To the countries actually within this circle, the year is divided into a day and a night, each of six months'

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MONTESQUIEU AND HIS SYSTEM.

duration. The tempered darkness of winter continues as long as the dubious and melancholy summer light.

I cannot yet cease from admiring the phenomenon of a polar night, whose clear beam almost equals that of the day. Nothing more interests me than the different degrees in which light is distributed to the various portions of the globe. At the end of the year, all the opposite parts of the earth have beheld the same sun during an equal number of hours; but what a difference between the days! what a diversity also of temperature and of hues! The sun, whose rays strike vertically upon the earth, and the sun whose beams fall obliquely, does not appear the same luminary, at least if we judge by effects.

As for myself, whose existence bears a sympathetic analogy to that of plants, I acknowledge a kind of fatality in climates, and, impelled by the influence the heavens have over my mind, willingly pay respect to the theory of Montesquieu. To such a degree are my temper and faculties subject to the action of the atmosphere, that I cannot doubt of its effects upon politics. But the genius of Montesquieu has exaggerated and carried too far the consequences of this belief. Obstinacy of opinion is the rock on which genius has too often made shipwreck. Powerful minds will only see what they wish to see the world is within themselves; they understand every thing but that which is told to them.

About an hour ago I beheld the sun sinking in the ocean between the N.N.W. and N. He has left behind a long bright track which continues to light me at this midnight hour, and enables me to write upon