This is by no means an isolated instance of the duality of purposes in the Divine judgments. The crimes of a nation have ofttimes been made the punishment of itself and another; so likewise, among individuals, the visitation of one man’s sins frequently extends to punish the faults, or try the virtue, of his friends and relations.
The ambitious pride of Babylon punished the idolatry of the Israelites, but at the same time brought down ruin on itself. The conquest of America punished the gross vices and savage idolatries of the natives, and at the same time retributed the cruelties and crimes of their punishers by inundating Spain with the gold and silver which has wrought her present degradation. May we not add that England’s punishment of the revolutionary crimes of France, is now retributing her own commercial jealousy, and wild interference in Continental politics, by clogging her with debt, and raising a host of European rivals to her claim for universal commerce.
The lowest organized race of any consequence in Europe is the Sclavonic.
The Sclavones came into contact with Roman civilization earlier than the Goths; but, unlike the latter, they retired to their settlements without carrying away any portion of the manners and habits of the people whom they invaded. Even yet they are but little advanced, since that early epoch. At least till within the present century, the Russian noble, as well as his serf, led the life of a pig, eating, and drinking, and sleeping. Wallowing in filth, insensate with brandy, and degraded by lust, the Russians of various ranks differ only in the size and splendour of their respective styes. To enter with minuteness into the daily habits of all classes of both sexes would be to present a picture which we should revolt from drawing, and the reader from beholding.
The Snubbo-Celestial form of the Sclavonic Nose stamps its character irretrievably, and accords remarkably with the description of the Sclavonic mind given by Kohl and other recent writers:—“Inconsistent and unstable—wanting in the creative faculty; but we cannot deny them a marvellous aptitude for all kinds of work, and an extreme facility of imitation.”[[47]] This is just the description a farmer might give of his horse, or a fine lady of her monkey. “The hope of Europe,” says the same author, “from Russian power consists in its total want of vigorous characters, mighty minds, and moral energy.” The pictures which the lively writer Kohl gives of the Russians—their ‘small shrewdness and fox-like common sense,’ their impudent acknowledgment of their shameless cheating and pedlaring dishonesty—accord literally with the indications which we have ascribed to the Celestial Nose; but we must refer the reader to his work on Russia for endless confirmations of our assertion.
Russia may rise above its present animal degradation, but it will never take a high place in the history of civilization. It may be doubted whether it will ever take any station there at all, except when in some future and long distant age, it is recorded, that, like Asia and Africa, Europe fell from its palmy state, and became a heap of ruins before the furious desolation of barbarous swarms from the north.
Napoleon said, with the prophetic vision of old experience, for
“Old experience doth attain
To somewhat of prophetic strain,”
that in fifty years Europe would be Republican or Cossack. He only erred in using the disjunctive; for it does not require much penetration to foresee that, at no very distant period, Europe will be both—first Republican, and then, when thus prostrated at the foot of the first powerful despot—Cossack.