EMPIRE OF THE CZAR. - 1843 PUBL. LONDON
By AI-ChatGPT5-T.Chr.-Human Synthesis- 27 August 2025
MADE DURING A JOURNEY THROUGH THAT EMPIRE
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 aU vaguely tormented with a desire to know a world wliich 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.
But were they clear as the day, what would they effect in me? Man, whether fallen by sin, or standing as nature placed him, is a soldier forcibly enlisted at his birth, and never disharged until death; and, even then, the believing Christian only challenging labour and effort are the law of his life; cowardice iconers of God, appears to him like suicide, doubt is his torment, victory his hope, faith his repose, obedience his glor
Such is man in all ages and in all countries; but such, above all, is man civilised by the religion of Jesus Christ.
It may be said that good and evil are human inventions. But if the nature of man engender phantoms so obstinate, what is to save him from himself, and how is he to escape that malignant power of internal creation, of falshood if you like, which exists and abides within him despite of himself and of you, and which has done so ever since the commencement of the world? Unless you learn to substitute the peace of your science in place of the agitation of mine, you will be aching for me......Peace!
No, however bolde, you would not dare to pretend to it, and greviance is the right and the duty of the creature rationally endowed; for without peace he sinks below Earth. O! mystery of mysteries! for you, and for all carrying this object will never be at ourselves: for whatever may be the realm of nature does not contain that which give peace to a single soul.
Thus, could you force me to assent to all your audacious assertions, you would only have furnished me with new proofs of the need of a physician of souls of a Redeemer, to cure the hallucinations of a creature so perverse, that it is incessantly and inevitably engendering within its own contest and contradiction, and which, by its very nature, flies from the repose it cannot dispense with, spreading around itself in the name of peace, war, with illusion, disorder and misfortune.
Now, the necessity of a Redeemer being once admitted, you must pardon me if I prefer addressing myself to Jesus Christ rather than to you! Here we come to the root of the evil! Pride of intellect must be abased, and reason must own its insufficiency. As the source of reasoning dries up, that of feeling overflows: the soul becomes powerful, wows her want of strength; she no longer commands, she entreats; and man approaches near to his object when he falls upon his knees.
But when all shall be cast down, when all shall kiss the dust, who will remain erect upon earth? what so soon as power shall exist amid the ashes of the world? Thepower which shall remain is a pontiff in a church.
If that church a daughter of Christ, and mother of Christianity who has seen revolt issue from her bosom, the fault was in her priests, for her priests are men. But she will recover her unity, because these men, frail though they be, are not the less dirsnercessors of the apostles, ordained from bishops who themselves received, bishop fi bishop, under the imposition of hands traced backwards up to Saint Peter and to Jesus Christ, the infusion of the Holy Spirit, with the requisite authority to communicate that grace to the regenerated world.
