THE EMPIRE OF THE CZAR; OR, OBSERVATIONS ON THE SOCIAL, POLITICAL, AND RELIGIOUS STATE AND PROSPECTS OF RUSSIA, MADE DURING A JOURNEY THROUGH THAT EMPIRE. BY THE MARQUIS DE CUSTINE." TRANSLATED FROM THE FRENCH. "Respectez surtout les étrangers, de quelque qualité, de quelque rang qu'ils Extrait des Conseils de Vladimir Monomaque à ses Enfants en 1126 IN THREE VOLUMES. VOL. I. LONDON: PRINTED FOR LONGMAN, BROWN, GREEN, AND LONGMANS, PATERNOSTER-ROW. TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE. THE work recently published in Paris, of which these volumes are a translation, has appeared in the form of letters addressed to anonymous friends. This form has not been preserved in the translation, which is divided into chapters; an arrangement better adapted to the taste of the English reader, and unobjectionable in other respects, as the division of the chapters still corresponds with that of the original epistles. In making the alteration, a few very trivial modifications in the phraseology of the text were necessary. The translator has likewise ventured on some occasions slightly to curtail the French paragraphs. It will, however, be sufficient to add, that no details have been abbreviated, nor one single observation omitted, that appeared likely to interest the general reader. NOTICE ΤΟ BOOKSELLERS, PROPRIETORS OF CIRCULATING LIBRARIES, AND THE PUBLIC. THE Publishers of this work give notice that it is Copyright, and that in case of infringement they will avail themselves of the Protection now granted by Parliament to English Literature. Any person having in his possession for sale or for hire a Foreign edition of an English Copyright is liable to a penalty, which the Publishers of this work intend to enforce. It is necessary also to inform the Public generally, that single Copies of such works imported by travellers for their own reading are now prohibited, and the Custom-house officers in all our ports have strict orders to this effect. The above regulations are equally in force in our Dependencies and Colonial Possessions. London, July, 1843. AUTHOR'S PREFACE. A TASTE for travelling has never been with me a fashion; I brought it with me into the world, and I began to gratify it in early youth. We are all vaguely tormented with a desire to know a world which appears to us a dungeon because we have not ourselves chosen it for an abode. I should feel as if I could not depart in peace out of this narrow world if I had not endeavoured to explore my prison. The more I examine it, the more beautiful and extensive it becomes in my eyes. To see in order to know: such is the motto of the traveller; such is also mine: I have not adopted it; nature gave it to me. " To compare the different modes of existence in different nations, to study the manner of thinking and feeling peculiar to each, to perceive the relations which God has established between their history, their manners, and their physiognomy; in a word, to travel, is to procure for my curiosity an inexhaustible aliment, to supply my thoughts with an eternal impulse of activity: to prevent my surveying the world would be like robbing a literary man of the key of his library. But if curiosity cause me to wander, an attachment which partakes of the nature of a domestic affection brings me back. I then take a review of my observations, and select from among the spoil, the ideas |