§13
When Humboldt[[48]] was on his way back from the Ural Mountains, he was welcomed to Moscow at a formal meeting of the Society for the Pursuit of Natural Science, most of whose members were state functionaries of some kind, not at all interested in science, either natural or unnatural. But the glory of Humboldt—a Privy Councillor of the Prussian King, a man on whom the Tsar had graciously conferred the Order of St. Anne, with instructions that the recipient was to be put to no expense in the matter—was a fact of which even they were not ignorant; and they were determined to show themselves to advantage before a man who had climbed Chimborazo and who lived at Sans-Souci.[[49]]
[48]. Alexander Humboldt (1769-1859), born at Berlin, a famous writer on natural science.
[49]. The Prussian palace, near Potsdam.
§14
Our attitude towards Europe and Europeans is still that of provincials towards the dwellers in a capital: we are servile and apologetic, take every difference for a defect, blush for our peculiarities and try to hide them, and confess our inferiority by imitation. The fact is that we are intimidated: we have never got over the sneers of Peter the Great and his coadjutors, or the superior airs of French tutors and Germans in our Civil Service. Western nations talk of our duplicity and cunning; they believe we want to deceive them, when we are only trying to make a creditable appearance and pass muster. A Russian will express quite different political views in talking to different persons, without any ulterior object, and merely from a wish to please: the bump of complaisance is highly developed in our skulls.
“Prince Dmitri Golitsyn,” said Lord Durham on one occasion, “is a true Whig, a Whig at heart.” Prince Golitsyn was a worthy Russian gentleman, but I do not understand in what sense he was a Whig. It is clear enough that the Prince in his old age wished to be polite to Lord Durham and put on the Whig for that purpose.
§15
Humboldt’s reception in Moscow and at the University was a tremendous affair. Everyone came to meet him—the Governor of the city, functionaries military and civil, and the judges of the Supreme Court; and the professors were there wearing full uniform and their Orders, looking most martial with swords and three-cornered hats tucked under their arms. Unaware of all this, Humboldt arrived in a blue coat with gilt buttons and was naturally taken aback. His way was barricaded at every point between the entrance and the great hall: first the Rector stopped him, then the Dean, now a budding professor, and now a veteran who was just ending his career and therefore spoke very slowly; each of them delivered a speech of welcome in Latin or German or French, and all this went on in those terrible stone funnels miscalled passages, where you stopped for a minute at the risk of catching cold for a month. Humboldt listened bare-headed to them all and replied to them all. I feel convinced that none of the savages, either red-skinned or copper-coloured, whom he had met in his travels, made him so uncomfortable as his reception at Moscow.
When he reached the hall at last and could sit down, he had to get up again. Our Visitor, Pisarev, thought it necessary to set forth in a few powerful Russian sentences the merits of His Excellency, the famous traveller; and then a poet, Glinka, in a deep hoarse voice recited a poem of his own which began—