For five centuries we were in slavery. They bore a heavy burden.

There still remained an enemy not only of the Serbian people, but of the entire Slavs. If this enemy dies, if he is pacified by the peoples of Europe, then the Slavs will breathe a sigh of relief and freedom. On the name day of the Serbian King, I felt that the Western Slavs were still alive and firmly holding on to their national independence.

Seventh Letter. On the Rhine

The Rhine, my dear Friend, is the German Volga. The name fits the Rhine - German, as the name of the "Russian river" is for the Volga. It is not in vain that the Germans want the Rhine to belong to them all the way to the mouth. Germans like to sing "Wacht am Rhein"; the Russians sing "Down Mother Volga" everywhere. And yet I think that the Volga is a less historical river than the Rhine. We rather have a historical river - the Dnieper. Indeed, is much in our Russian history connected with the Volga? The upper part of the Volga still sounds like the historical names of Yaroslavl, Kostroma, and when I went down beyond the Lower - as if I had left Russia, ancient historical Russia, more and more new cities went, foreign speech was heard. How long has Russian culture touched the Volga region? And has it touched everywhere even now? The Rhine is a real historical German river. On the Rhine, you seem to be involuntarily immersed in the history of the German nation. When you talk about the Rhine, you just want to call it gray. At the word "Rhine" somehow immediately pops up in the mind not only the Middle Ages, but also more ancient history, up to and including the notes on the Gallic war of Julius Caesar.

As soon as I got to Mainz, I felt that I was standing on the old historical soil. The German capital Berlin is not a historical city. And the place where people have been living for a thousand years, where a long and varied history of human life has taken place - there you always experience something special. That is why you feel completely different in the Moscow Kremlin than in the Senate Square in Petrograd. Ancient Germanic cities have one striking feature: they have parts that are called Altstadt, an ancient city. Here the buildings are extremely crowded. Crooked, irregular alleys, often no more than two arshins wide. Sometimes galleries are thrown from one side of the lane to the other. For some reason, it is customary in our country to consider narrow streets a sign of the East. Petrograd residents reproachfully nod at Moscow for its narrow streets. But not to mention Moscow, even in Constantinople I have not seen such narrow alleys as in Frankfurt, Mainz or Cologne. For hours in Mainz I wandered through these sometimes semi-dark alleys, and I remembered times long gone. And the ancient Mainz Cathedral, which you can't get to, is built all around! Houses are glued to the cathedral itself. However, European leveling stubbornly fights against everything ancient and original. The old German cities present an extremely variegated picture. As if another picture was superimposed on one picture, not at all similar to the first. In some places, old colors break through the new picture. Such an impression is perhaps especially produced by Mainz from the side of the Rhine. New buildings stretch along the shore, built in the manner of boxes. After all, European culture did not create any other architectural form for human habitation, except for the form of a box either placed on the ground with its long side, or raised upwards and resting only on the ground with its short side. From behind such boxes, the massive figure of the ancient cathedral peeks out with its Gothic towers. Boxes, of course, are not interesting, do not remind you of anything, do not make you dream about anything. I wanted to be in the ancient city; I tried to settle in one of the narrow alleys, in a house with gradually narrowing floors, and I climbed almost to the top floor, which consisted almost entirely of one room.

I am often surprised, my Friend, at how European culture wants to introduce a common rather boring pattern throughout the globe. As soon as I think that somewhere, for example, in Alexandria, in Cairo, in the country of the pharaohs, there are European hotels and restaurants, I become annoyed and offended.

From Mainz to Cologne, the most interesting place to travel along the Rhine. You can read a description of the sights in any guidebook. But I will write to You, my Friend, about my impressions and my observations.

First of all, it turns out that not everything in Russia is as bad as it is customary to think and say. Travel, for example, on the Rhine is incomparably worse for the Germans than for us on the Volga. Steamships are good for nothing compared to our Volga ones, and passengers are stuffed without any restrictions, it seems. On the Volga, perhaps, we even have an excessive luxury: steamships, especially the latest, are like floating palaces. The breadth of the Russian nature shows. A Russian does not look like a "neat German". Neatness, of course, is a good thing, but if neatness nests in nature itself, does it not then indicate a certain limitation of nature? You enter a German Rhine steamer with a pleasant feeling of knowing that our home is better.

But the second feeling that you experience on the Rhine is the feeling of national envy: the Rhine is much richer in beauty than our Volga. From Mainz to Koblenz, even to Bonn, it is difficult to tear one's eyes away from the shores of the Rhine. All the time both banks are high, whole mountains approach the river itself, sometimes ending in steep bizarre rocks. It is not in vain that there are so many mysterious legends, for example, about the Lorelei rocks! Sometimes the mountains will move a little away from the river and open up a whole panorama of mountain views. With each turn of the river, there are more and more new beauties. With some resentment in your soul, you remember the monotonous banks of the Volga. Only on Zhiguli does the memory stop with joy. There are, they say, places on the Volga that are no worse than yours! But the Rhine is given a special, so to speak, historical beauty by castles. A rare mountain peak, a rare ledge of rock is not decorated with the original medieval building of the castle. Towers rise, mysterious narrow windows are blackened - as if the whole medieval complex history is looking at you through these distant windows! Some castles have been restored, others are empty and dilapidated. All this is both very beautiful and very original. Sometimes you begin to imagine the time when steamships were not whistling on the Rhine, railway lines were not running on both banks of the Rhine, steam locomotives were not smoking, when feudal lords lived in their fortresses and castles, when everything here on the Rhine lived its own special life...

It was a long time ago... Now the mountain peaks of the Rhine with their castles serve only as a place for walks for idle curious tourists. Here, my friend, on the Volga you cannot immerse yourself in historical memories and dreams when you sail past the most beautiful shores - unless you remember Stenka Razin. Our Volga or Kama beauties lack historical glory; it is still wild, desolate and primitive, especially on the Kama. Sometimes it gets kind of creepy. This means that we still have a lot ahead of us, if not much is behind. How much more work is before the great Russian people, if they wish to cultivate their native land, a great and abundant land! Wide and spacious are you, native country! It is poor in external effects, but rich in inner beauties of the spirit! Castles not proudly soaring on the rocks look into the quiet streams of our Russian rivers - humble villages and villages with squalid buildings approach these streams. There is only one decoration of these humble villages of the humble tribe of glory - God's temples with bell towers look into the mirror of Russian rivers. Since childhood, my dear Friend, I have been accustomed to seeing such a picture in my homeland, on the banks of my native Oka. In Lipitsy, you will go out on a hill behind the village, look at the valley of the Oka - you can see in the distance for forty versts. Only in the nearest villages of your own and neighboring parish do you dismantle individual houses, and then only the buildings of God's temples are noticeable: the red Teshilov church, the white church in Luzhki, in Pushchino, in Tulchin, and on the horizon in the fog rise the Kashira bell towers... You used to come home for Easter. You will come out to the river. For several versts it spilled, flooding the entire plain. And you hear on all sides the joyful Paschal bell ringing to the glory of the risen Christ: both from our Tula bank and from the Moscow shore the bells are ringing, as if two churches, two dioceses are merging in one solemn hymn. The spring sun shines brightly and gently, muddy streams run noisily along the ditches, rooks walk on the ground solemnly, the whole earth seems to have woken up and begun to breathe, the grass is already green. Nature comes to life, and humble people celebrate the feast of the Resurrection. You used to hear how the Easter bells rushed over the river - as if the waves of new life poured into the soul, tears welled up in your eyes. For a long time and silently you stand enchanted...

If you remember, my dear, this native picture - and it is not so offensive to realize that the banks of our Russian rivers are more modest than the banks of the German river. On the banks of this river, you do not hear the Easter bells - only the whistle of steam locomotives. And if so, then God be with them - with castles, and with mountains, and with rocks! Dearer to my heart are the modest rivers of my native land!

The shores of the Rhine are beautiful, but European culture fights with beauty here as well, bringing its mercantile spirit. Often the coastal mountains from the very water to the top are divided into vineyards and therefore have lost all their natural beauty. The irregularities are smoothed out, everything is leveled, and only monotonous green stripes are drawn. Like oases or like fragments of former beauty amidst artificial monotony, there are the ruins of castles, such as Ehrenfels Castle. But, of course, it turns out to be a picture: a German sails along the Rhine and drinks Rhein wein!

You look closely at the passengers and notice the peculiarities of the German public. In Europe in general, my friend, you don't see the people, but you meet the public. There is no our division into the public and the people, about which K.S. Aksakov wrote so eloquently and wittily. You, Friend, remember, of course, that when comparing the public and the people, the famous Slavophile took the side of the people entirely, because our audience is most respectable, and the people are Orthodox, because when the audience dances, the people pray. It seems to me that the journey (as well as the walk, of which I wrote to You, Friend, last time) is the business of the public, and not of the people. What can you do? Sympathizing with K.S. Aksakov more to the people than to the public, I, however, love to travel. But people do not travel in order to see foreign lands, to see the beauty of foreign nature. Do you remember, Friend, not so long ago I wrote you enthusiastic letters from the Volga and the Kama, regretting only that you were not with me! But then I saw how indifferent people were to the beautiful shores. He is sitting on the steamer, with his back to the shore; His face turns to the shore only when he needs to throw something into the water, rinse, for example, a kettle. There are also souls among the people who are sensitive to the beauty of nature, but their attitude to the beauty of nature is not aesthetic, but religious: they admire the beauty of God's world, God's creation. They do not need stunning beauties: for them God is great even in blades of grass on earth. Such admiration for God's creation I have encountered especially often among simple monks from among the people. After all, the monastery in Russia gathers within itself all that is most sensitive, the most tender, the most enthusiastic, the most profound of the Russian masses.