Part 25 (1/2)

CHAPTER XX.

SWITZERLAND.

Superior Morality of the Swiss.--Customs of Neufchatel.-- ”Bundling.”--Influence of Climate.

This country, from her republican form of government, and her comparative isolation from the rest of the world, presents matter of peculiar interest to the inquirer into the nature and working of social inst.i.tutions.

Protected, as are the Swiss, from violent contrasts of excessive wealth and extreme indigence, the moral condition of their people will compare favorably with that of most nations. The simplicity of patriarchal relations is maintained both in their national and munic.i.p.al governments; and although many customs are retained which smack strongly of the despotism of the Middle Ages, they can not be said to materially check the welfare of the people. In the absence of the emulation encouraged by the constant contemplation of luxury and wealth, the wants of the population are few and easily satisfied. Their virtues, however, partake of the bold and rugged nature of their country; and while there may be little of that practical vice and immorality which are the usual accompaniments of society in most kingdoms and states, we are not prepared to a.s.sert their superiority over the rest of mankind in innate virtue. Hardness of heart and selfishness of disposition will be found as rife in Switzerland as elsewhere; it is the manifestation only that differs.

Authors are so universally deficient of remark on the subject of prost.i.tution, or even of immorality in Switzerland, that, if we may judge from their silence, nothing of the kind exists there. ”The Swiss population is generally moral and well-behaved. A drunkard is seldom seen, and illegitimate children are rare,” says Bowring.[269]

In Neufchatel, which, except politically, can hardly be considered part of Switzerland, a custom exists strongly similar to one in Norway, and a general usage among Lutherans, namely, that of a.s.sociating before marriage. This, as Was.h.i.+ngton Irving says of the ”delightful practice of bundling,” is sometimes productive of unfortunate results. A lady writer says that public opinion upholds the respectability of the females if they are married time enough to legitimatize their offspring. Instances have occurred of two couples quarreling, and a mutual interchange of lovers and sweethearts taking place, the nominal fathers adopting the early-born children.[270]

The frugal thrift of the great bulk of the Swiss population, their distribution over the country in small numbers, the absence of large ma.s.ses of human beings pent up in the reeking atmosphere of cities, their constant and intimate a.s.sociation with their pastors, and the hope which every individual cherishes of purchasing with his savings a small patch of his beloved native soil as a patrimony, seem to discourage prost.i.tution as a trade. The influence of climate, also, must not be forgotten; and Mr.

Chambers, in accounting for the general good conduct of the Swiss peasantry, lays much stress on their temperate habits, the use of intoxicating liquor among them being very rare indeed.

CHAPTER XXI.

RUSSIA.

Ancient Manners.--Peter the Great.--Eudoxia.--Empress Catharine, her dissolute Conduct and Death.--Peter's Libertinism.--Anne.-- Elizabeth.--Catharine II., infamous Career and Death.--Paul.-- Alexander I.--Countess Narishkin.--Nicholas.--Court Morality.-- Serf.a.ge.--Prost.i.tution in St. Petersburg.--Excess of Males over Females.--Marriage Customs.--Brides' Fair.--Conjugal Relations among the Russian n.o.bility.--Foundling Hospital of St. Petersburg.-- Illegitimacy.

The brutality, drunkenness, and debauchery which accompany semi-barbarism, and of which the old Russian manners had more than a due proportion, continued to be characteristic of the people of that country until a very recent period; while their amiability, their plastic disposition, their highly imitative faculty in the arts, and their capabilities of improvement, are noted by many writers. Just emerged from savage life as a nation, they have been moulded and welded as one ma.s.s by the steady and undeviating policy of their sovereigns, among whom we have examples of vast mental powers and towering ambition, combined with the lowest depravity and the most shameless profligacy, exemplifying in the same individual the extremes of human nature.

Previous to Peter the Great, Russia was comparatively unknown, and in the Elizabethan age of England the Czar of Muscovy was considered only as a barbarian, whose subjects were far inferior in civilization to the Tartars of the Crimea. Indeed, it was not till the eighteenth century that the Russians were admitted within the pale of European politics, or their power reckoned as an element in the calculations of statesmen.

The most important, we might almost say the only lawgiver previous to Peter the Great, was Ivan III., who reigned in the early part of the sixteenth century. Among the laws of that period, which were all sanguinary, was one fixing the value of a female life, in case of death by misadventure, at half the life of a man. Slavery was the inst.i.tution of the state, each child being the absolute property of its parent. The women were more enslaved than among the Asiatics, no law protecting them against their husband's violence. A wife who killed her husband was to be buried alive up to the neck, and a guard was set around her to see that no one supplied her with food or the means of ending her sufferings.[271] Females lived in the strictest seclusion, and had no weight nor authority in the household. Their duties were to spin, to sew, and to do menial work.

Peter I. came to the throne, as most Russian sovereigns have done, either through intrigue or usurpation. Both before and after Peter, the will and caprice of the ruling power was paramount. He might appoint his successor, either during life or by will, and such appointment was often set aside by a more powerful compet.i.tor. In Peter's public life, in his aspirations for the general welfare, in his self-devotion, in his conceptions of all that was wanting to his country's elevation and greatness, and in his iron will and supernatural energy, he was a hero; in his private life, in his pa.s.sions, his tastes and habits, he was on a level with the lowest of mankind.

Our object is the delineation of national characteristics, and individual propensities or delinquencies are unimportant except so far as they ill.u.s.trate national character. It has been well observed that a people's virtue or vice does not consist in the arithmetical increase or decrease of immoral actions, but in the prevailing sentiment of an age or people, which condemns or approves them. It is in this respect that the conduct of monarchs and courtiers becomes of importance in the estimate of national manners, especially in a despotism. The Czar of Russia is at once the religious and political leader of his people, and his personal conduct becomes the standard of their moral relations, offering encouragement and support to the good, or sanction and justification to the depraved.

Peter's first wife, Eudoxia, was a woman of virtue and merit. Neither her youth nor beauty secured the affections of her husband. She did not escape the voice of slander. Gleboff, her alleged lover, was impaled by Peter, who went to see him writhing in his death agonies, when the wretched man avenged himself in the only way left him: he spat in the Czar's face.

Eudoxia was subsequently sent to a nunnery at Moscow by Peter's orders, and at last took the veil under the name of Helena.

Scarcely had Peter attained the crown when he formed a connection with Catharine. The romantic history of her origin and elevation is too well known to repeat here. Her husband, a Swedish dragoon, was living; and she was the mistress first of Marshal Sheremeloff, then of Mentchikoff, in whose house Peter saw her, and whence he took her. She acquired great influence over the Czar's untamed ferocity, and, to her infinite credit, this influence was always used to mitigate the fearful rigor of his punishments, and to soothe his otherwise implacably revengeful spirit.

During the lifetime of her husband and of his first wife, Peter married her.

The pleasing traits of Catharine's character were obscured by the irregularity of her life. Raised, by the affection of Peter, to the imperial throne, she set an example of dissoluteness to her subjects.

There is ample reason for believing that she had several intrigues during Peter's lifetime, but the case of Moens de la Croix is beyond question, and the discovery of her infidelity in this instance led to her separation from Peter and the death of her lover.

In 1724, after the campaign against the Turks, in which Catharine had accompanied the Czar, and had, by her spirit and example, kept up the courage of the army amid great difficulties and reverses, Peter determined on publicly crowning her; a ceremony very unusual in Russia, and almost tantamount to declaring her his successor.

Moens de la Croix was the young brother of Anne de la Croix, one of Peter's early mistresses. He was Catharine's chamberlain. His office brought him in close attendance on the empress, and an intimacy was established. This was for a time notorious to every one except Peter himself. At length, however, his suspicions were aroused, and, by setting spies on Catharine, he became a personal witness to her infidelity. The first explosion of his resentment was terrific, and he was on the point of executing both the empress and her paramour, but by the temperate advice of some of his friends, who counseled him to avoid a scandal, it was determined to arrest Moens on a false charge of conspiracy.

Moens and his sister were accordingly seized and confined in an apartment in the winter palace. Peter permitted n.o.body to approach them, and took them their food with his own hands. When they were examined as to the conspiracy, Moens, to save the empress with the public, confessed to every thing. He was accordingly condemned and beheaded. His sister was knouted and sent to Siberia.

Catharine had presented her lover with her miniature on a bracelet, which he always wore. As he walked to his death, he managed to deliver it, unperceived, to the Lutheran minister who accompanied him, with instructions to convey it back to the empress privately, which was accomplished. The Czar was a spectator of the execution, after which the head of the culprit was fixed on a stake, according to custom. To terrify Catharine the more effectually, Peter drove her round the head of her lover. Happily for her, she managed to preserve self-control during the torture of this horrid spectacle. After this the Czar only spoke to her in public.

At Peter's death, Catharine ascended the throne of Russia by virtue of a pretended dying declaration of her husband. She went through a pantomime of sorrows and tears over his body, but, as soon as she was firmly seated, she abandoned herself to pleasure and voluptuousness, and had two lovers, Prince Sapicha and Loewenwolden, at the same time. ”These two rivals equally strove to please her, and alternately received proofs of her tenderness, without suffering their happiness to be marred by jealousy.”