WARSAW.
ON the banks of the Danube, but just _where_ the story does not say, and
_when_ it is quite uncertain, lived three brothers, whose names were
Lekh, Teckh, and Russ. They were of the Slavonian race. Ambitious to
found distinct dynasties of their own, they set off on their travels.
Presently three eagles appeared, flying in as many directions, and the
brothers instantly agreed to follow the birds and the example. Russ went
after one of the eagles, and the region he went into he called Russia;
Teckh went to Bohemia, whose people were anciently called Teckhs; and
Lekh, led by a white eagle, came to Poland. The people adopted the white
eagle as their national emblem, and they were called Polekhs, or Polaks,
and in Shakespeare the people of Poland are Polaks. In some parts of
this country the Poles are yet called Lekhs. The great importance of
this recondite history is not very apparent; but it is enough to
intimate that the origin of nations is often involved in obscurity, and
this is specially true of these northern peoples.
The history of Poland, through its early centuries down to 1772, is one
of the most _romantic_ in the “book of time.” With the coming of the
Jesuits into Poland came trouble, as trouble always comes with those
pests of the human race. War with Russia followed, and the Polish
territory east of the Dnieper, or Little Russia, was subjected to the
Czar; and by and by, when the kingdom of Poland lay at the mercy of
three surrounding powers, it was “partitioned” between Russia and
Prussia and Austria. This was but the beginning of her trials. Never
conquered, though always overcome, fighting for independent existence
again and again, she has in her death-struggles shown a tenacity of life
that has commanded the admiring sympathy of mankind. Three times she has
been _divided_ among these devouring kingdoms; and at the settlement of
1815, after the battle of Waterloo, when a new map of Europe was made,
it was decided that a part of Poland, Galicia, should belong to Austria,
Posen to Prussia, and the large part which Napoleon had made into the
Duchy of Warsaw, should be a constitutional monarchy under the Russian
Emperor as King. In 1830 the Poles made another insurrection, and when
crushed they were deprived of their constitution, their language was
proscribed, and the last vestige of their nationality was beaten out.
There is a savage wickedness in this cutting up of nations, that does
not touch the moral sentiment of the world as it ought. To murder a man
is something palpable, and so obviously damnable. But to blot a nation
out of being, to strike down the life of a people and bury it out of
sight for ever, this is what has been done for poor Poland, and we have
only to drop a tear over her grave, enter a protest in the name of human
rights, and pass on. The most extensive portion of ancient Poland is
under Russia, the most populous in the grasp of Austria, and the most
commercial is held by Prussia. Warsaw is the unwilling serf of Russia.
The present Emperor has sought to gild the chains that bind this people;
but the iron chafes them, and will. He restored their language and
schools; a council of state was formed; all the local officers were
Poles. But nothing will satisfy a noble race but to be their own
masters: in 1863 Warsaw was again in insurrection; the men rushed to
arms, the women to the altars; the streets ran blood, the weak sank
under the strong, and the end came.
The city of Warsaw has nearly 200,000 inhabitants. It is a well-built
town, modern in its appearance, with many of its streets straight, and
having large and handsome houses. It stands on the Vistula. It is more
gay and attractive than you would expect to find it, under the heel of
an oppressor, and after years of fruitless struggle with a crushing
power. On every hand we see the signs of the ruler’s presence, in the
persons of his armed deputies, the soldiers of Russia, who are here to
keep order in Warsaw. In our hotel, the dining-room is always occupied
by soldiers, who are eating and drinking, especially drinking. “Sherry
cobblers” in quart tumblers are in front of them, and they are sucking
at them diligently. Venice, under Austrian rule, was not more vigilantly
guarded than Warsaw is at this day, after a subjugation that has been
endured for forty years! It will take two or three generations to make
Poland contented under foreign rule, and then the hereditary love of
nationality will remain, and rise to the surface whenever it gets a
chance for demonstration.
The city has a very unfinished appearance: there are splendid public
edifices near by others that seem only begun, or neglected in the midst
of building. Revolutions and the fears of revolution have made its
prosperity precarious, and the inhabitants lack the highest stimulus to
enterprise and exertion, the hope of permanent possession and enjoyment.
The splendid government houses are in many cases the palaces of the old
Polish nobility, now decayed or extinct families. Many of the former
owners, who once rolled in hereditary wealth, have long since been
exiled to the desolate wilds of Siberia, and their places will never
know them again. A pall, like a perpetual cloud, is on the face of
Poland, and by degrees the spirit of liberty will be extinguished. The
language and rule of Russia will become universal. There is no hope in
the future for the nationality of Poland.
In 1863 a spy of the Russian government was stopping at the _Hôtel de
l’Europe_ in Warsaw, where we are now writing; and, his business being
suspected, the patriotic Poles, who are not likely to abide the presence
of such a fellow if they know him, took the liberty of murdering him in
his bed. The Russian government seized the house, shut it up, and for
some years it has stood closed, a monument and a warning. Russia will
not allow her spies to be murdered without visiting her vengeance on the
house itself in which the murder is committed. As this hotel was
formerly the palace of one of the noble Polish families, and the only
hotel of large proportions, it was a serious injury to the city as well
as to the proprietors. And I do not apprehend that the Poles will be any
more gentle in their treatment of Russian spies, because their largest
tavern was shut up half a dozen years.
Out of my window I see a soldier standing with his back against the
wall; he has a soldier’s cap and long cloak reaching nearly to the
ground; he has been there five or six hours, marching now and then a few
rods and returning to his post: five soldiers come and stand in front of
him, one of them takes off the cloak and puts it on his own shoulders,
and, stepping into his place, mounts guard; and this process is
continued and repeated all over the city, day and night, year after
year. Thousands of Russian soldiers are thus quartered on the city
continually: lazy, intemperate, and licentious, they are a moral
pestilence; using their power to compel the subject people to submit to
their insolence, and corrupting by their example and association those
with whom they come into contact.
With this admixture of foreign and native people, it is impossible to
discriminate between them; but a more unmannerly set of people I have
never met at public places than they are here. The servants have no
manners but bad manners. They enter your private room without knocking;
they are grouty in their address, sulky in their answers, and generally
disagreeable. The same may be said of the officers of the hotel:
disobliging, inattentive. The women appeared to be lively in each
other’s company, but the men of Warsaw are grave and thoughtful.
We rode in the afternoon through the beautiful parks and meadows and
groves where the Russian military exercises are held, and through the
_Botanical Gardens_, and to the _Observatory_, for the pursuit of
science has not been arrested by the revolutions that have overturned
the government; and then we came to _Lazienki_, a splendid rural palace,
built by King Stanislaus Augustus Poniatowski. Here the Emperor of
Russia has his temporary abode when he visits Warsaw, which, by the way,
he does not often, for his presence is not specially agreeable to the
people. Beautiful villas are scattered through the park, the residences
of persons connected with the court; fountains play, a beautiful stream
flows by, and a monument to Sobieski, John III. of Poland, stands
conspicuous, the sight of which is said to have led the Emperor
Nicholas, in 1850, after the war in Hungary, to make the remark: “The
two kings of Poland that committed the gravest error are John III. and
myself; for we both saved the _Austrian_ monarchy.” It is hard to say
whether such reflections are sound or not; the rise and fall of kingdoms
are all in the plans of Infinite Wisdom, and what to us seems
exceedingly desirable may be the height of folly in the eye of Him who
reads the future. It is certainly not human wisdom that has spared
Austria or Turkey and sacrificed Poland, but the end may yet be well.
It was dark when we returned to the city. A feeble attempt at
illumination was going on in some of the public buildings. Dim lights
were hung along some of the walls, and now and then a private house had
an extra lamp or two in its windows! We inquired the cause of this
miserable imitation of rejoicing, this abortive demonstration. The
telegraph had brought the intelligence that to-day an unsuccessful
attempt had been made to assassinate the Emperor Alexander. The
illumination was thus very satisfactorily and _exactly_ explained. The
assassination was attempted by a Polander, and Poland would have madly
rejoiced if it had been a success. I was at a loss to know whether the
illumination signified joy at the Emperor’s escape from death or joy
that his death had been so nearly accomplished. The melancholy
exhibition of lights was just enough to suggest the two conflicting
sentiments; and if the Russian soldiers and officials and dependants did
their duty in hanging out the lamps, the inhabitants of Warsaw almost
without exception will go to bed regretting that the shot of the
assassin did not lodge in the heart of the Emperor whom they regard as
their oppressor.
The streets of Warsaw are badly paved; riding in some of them is a
protracted punishment. They are badly lighted, and it is not unusual for
an ordinance to be in force requiring every one going out after dark to
carry a light, under pain of arrest.
The first drunken person I saw in the streets of a city on the Continent
of Europe was here. In the southern capitals, as of Spain and Italy, and
even of France, there was gayety, but not intemperance. I had not been
long in the city before I saw a woman lying on the pavement dead drunk.
And nobody seemed to heed the spectacle, always and everywhere
disgusting as the most shameful exhibition of fallen humanity. They have
their favorite vices in the south of Europe, but this of drunkenness is
not one of them. The use of wine, light wine, is not the cause of the
sobriety of the people, though it is a fact beyond all denial that the
wine-growing countries are the most temperate countries in the world.
Yet they are not temperate _because_ they have wine to drink. They would
be just as temperate, and perhaps more so, if they had no wine. They are
temperate because the climate does not invite them to the stimulus of
alcohol. That’s all. It is not their virtue, nor their wine, that makes
them so. They are not tempted to drink strong drink. As soon as we get
into these northern countries we find the people making free use of
distilled liquors and getting drunk: and intemperance is the prevailing
vice of the clime, as licentiousness is the vice of the south of Europe.
Climate is to be considered in all our studies of the habits of a
people, and it must be allowed its proper effect when we are estimating
the virtues and vices of our fellow-men. Climate is no excuse for
wrong-doing, but it helps to know why people fall into one or another
class of sins.
On Sunday, after searching in vain to find the English service which was
said to be performed in an _evangelical_ chapel by a clergyman of the
Church of England, we went to the Lutheran Church. Its dome, rising from
an open square, is a prominent object in the city. The building itself
is a _rotunda_, and very large. The yard was filled with all sorts of
carriages, wagons, droskies, and carts, with horses of various grades,
by which the people had come in from the surrounding country. Some of
these vehicles were the rudest kind of rustic wagons, and being covered
with mud, and filled with straw as the only seat, having no springs, and
long and narrow, indicated that the roads were bad, and that the people
had encountered some difficulties in getting to the house of God. It is
rare to see such a show of _teams_ about a city church. It was all the
more interesting in Warsaw, in the heart of the old kingdom of Poland.
I entered the porch, and it was crowded by people unable to get into the
thronged church. Looking over their heads, I saw three successive
galleries rising above each other; and, following the winding staircase
in the vestibule, we reached the first, and, unable to get admission
there, we mounted to the second, which was also full, and then to the
third, where there was plenty of room. A singularly imposing spectacle
was presented. The vast audience-room was a perfect circle; the three
galleries sweeping completely around to the pulpit and organ behind it.
The pews on the ground floor were occupied by a class of persons by
their dress and manner more elevated in rank than the others. The pew
doors were kept locked, until the sermon was to be commenced, when they
were opened, and the crowd in the porch were permitted to take those not
occupied by their owners. The first gallery pews were filled with
plainer people. The second gallery had a set of worshippers whose coarse
and humble attire indicated the harder worked and poorer people; but
their dress was cleanly, and an air of comfort pervaded the whole
assembly. The third gallery, into which I found access, was not seated,
and the few persons in it stood at the front. It was a sublime
spectacle, this crowded sanctuary, perhaps three thousand people,
worshipping in a strange tongue, and all animated with the spirit of the
hour. Behind the pulpit was a life-size statue of the Saviour on the
cross. In front of it four immense candles, each four feet high, were
burning. These candles and statue would lead us to suppose that the
Lutheran was not wholly reformed, and that some relics of Romanism still
lingered. The minister read a hymn, and around the organ a large choir
of young men and boys, no females in it, stood up and sang,—the whole
assembly, men and women,—with the organ, singing with a mighty noise.
The sermon followed. The Polish is not one of the tongues with which I
am familiar, and I shall not undertake to pass an opinion upon the
eloquence or the orthodoxy of the discourse. But the clear rich tones of
the preacher’s voice fell upon attentive ears, and the earnestness of
his manner spoke well for him, though I could not understand a word.
At the door, as I came out, there was a row of mendicants, not asking
alms, but willing and expecting to receive the charities of those who
passed, and they were remembered by many. It was an inoffensive way of
begging. Whoever gave was moved to do a good thing without being
importuned.
The principal streets of the city had as many people in them, going to
and from church, as you would see in New York, and so widely do the
fashions of Paris prevail in the west and east and north, that the
fashionable people of Warsaw, riding or walking, looked to be the same
sort of people that one meets in cities with which he is more familiar.
I walked into the Jewish quarter of the town. Their Sabbath was
yesterday; but to-day is one of their feast-days, and they were all out
of doors, “a peculiar people” everywhere. The men wore long frock-coats
reaching to the ground. Their dwellings were mostly mean and low; but we
saw women going in and out of them dressed in rich silks, with splendid
velvet mantillas, and they were doubtless as well off for this world as
their people seem to be in all countries where they have a chance to
live and trade. They have the best hospital in Warsaw. They retain their
nationality, the expression of countenance, the curve of the nose, the
faculty of making and keeping money wherever they go. And they are
strangely hated in the Christian world since they crucified the Lord of
Glory, as the serpent has been among men since he tempted the woman in
Eden. Of the five or six millions of people in Poland, nearly one
million are Jews. This is a large proportion, perhaps larger than any
other country in Europe.
There are only about 300,000 Protestants in Poland, and when you learn
that of the Russian or Greek church there are but five or six thousand,
out of the five or six millions, you will see one grand reason why
Poland will never be submissive to the rule of Russia. Their religions
are at war. Poland is intensely bigoted in its Romanism. In the public
square we see a statue of the Virgin Mary, with an iron railing around
it; flowers in pots are kept before it, lamps by night are burning in
its presence, tumblers of oil with lighted wicks in them, and an old
woman to light them as often as the wind blows them out, and here the
people are constantly coming and throwing themselves down on the stones
and saying their prayers: one young man was so earnest in his devotions,
that he prayed with a loud voice, regardless of those around him, as if
he knew the statue was quite deaf and could hear no common prayer. In
1863, the frightened people rushed to this image, when they saw that the
insurrection was not to be successful, and the Russian troops charged
upon the praying multitude of men and women and scattered them on their
knees.
Before one of the churches two crosses are erected, to commemorate the
union of Poland and Russia. Tradition says that they also mark the scene
of the strangest duel that was ever heard of,—two brothers being jealous
of each other on account of their own sister’s love, fought here and
slew each other. The province of “Little Russia” lies between Russia
proper and Poland, and for the possession of it the two kingdoms have
fought till it has sometimes been thought they would devour each other.
As I saw people going into a court-yard I followed them, into a little
chapel, where a corpse was lying in state. It was of an old man; thirty
or forty candles were burning around him, but he was raised on a
platform so high that his face could not be seen. Leaving him, I came
out and met a funeral procession. The body was borne in a hearse,
surmounted with a gorgeous crimson canopy, and drawn by six horses
richly caparisoned and led by six grooms. The Emperor could not have
desired a more ostentatious funeral; all hats were removed as the
procession passed, and this practice, which prevails on the Continent
generally, and especially in France, is a beautiful and becoming tribute
of respect, which I would be glad to see prevalent at home. They uncover
their heads when the King passes by; and what monarch is mightier than
he to whom the stateliest head must bow.
Ours were the only English names on the register of the hotel, the
largest in the city; we called at another hotel, and not an English name
was there, and during the three days we were in Warsaw we did not hear a
word of our tongue, except when we spoke ourselves. We were not,
however, as much disturbed by this as the lady was in Paris, who was out
of all patience and spirits hearing nothing but French day after day.
One morning she heard a cock crowing, and exclaimed, “Thank God, there’s
somebody who speaks English.”
[Illustration: POLISH PEASANTS.]