From Our Lady of Casan I went to the convent of St. Alexander Newski, a place consecrated to one of the sovereign heroes of Russia, who extended his conquests to the borders of the Neva.  The empress Elizabeth, daughter of Peter I. had a silver coffin made for him, upon which it is customary to put a piece of money, as a pledge of the vow which is recommended to the Saint.  The tomb of Suwarow is in this convent of Alexander Newski, but his name is its only decoration; it is enough for him, but not for the Russians, to whom he rendered such important services.  This nation, however, is so thoroughly military, that lofty achievements of that description excite less astonishment in it than other nations.

The greatest families of Russia have erected tombs to their relatives in the cemetery which belongs to the church of Newski, but none of these monuments are worthy of remark; they are not beautiful, regarded as objects of art, and no grand idea there strikes the imagination.  It is certain that the idea of death produces little effect on the Russians; whether it is from courage, or from the inconstancy of their impressions, long regrets are hardly in their character; they are more susceptible of superstition than emotion:  superstition attaches to this life, and religion to another; superstition is allied to fatality, and religion to virtue; it is from the vivacity of earthly desires that we become superstitious, and it is on the contrary by the sacrifice of these same desires, that we are religious.

M. de Romanzow, the minister of foreign affairs in Russia, loaded me with the most amiable attentions, and it was with regret that I considered him as so implicated in the system of the emperor Napoleon, that he must necessarily retire, like the English ministers, when that system was abandoned.  Doubtless, in an absolute monarchy, the will of the master explains every thing; but the dignity of a prime minister perhaps requires that words of an opposite tendency should not proceed from the same mouth.  The sovereign represents the state, and the state may change its system of politics whenever circumstances require it; but the minister is only a man, and a man, on questions of this nature, ought to have but one opinion in the course of his life.  It is impossible to have better manners than Count Romanzow, or to receive strangers more nobly.  I was at his house when the English envoy, Lord Tyrconnel, and Admiral Bentinck were announced, both of them men of remarkably fine appearance:  they were the first English who had re-appeared on that continent, from which the tyranny of one man had banished them.  After ten years of such fearful struggle, after ten years during which victories and disasters had always found the English true to the compass of their politics’ conscience, they returned at last into the country which first emancipated itself from the universal monarchy.  Their accent, their simplicity, their fierte, all awakened