Page:Dead Souls - A Poem by Nikolay Gogol - vol1.djvu/175

Rh though he may get the scribbling gentry for a consideration to trace his pedigree from an ancient aristocratic family, it is all of no use: the very sound of the nickname, like the caw of a crow, betrays where the bird has come from. A word aptly uttered or written cannot be cut away by an axe. And how good the sayings are that come out of the depths of Russia, where there are neither Germans nor Finns nor any foreigners, but only the native, living, nimble Russian intelligence, which never fumbles for a word nor broods over a phrase like a sitting hen, but sticks it on like a passport to be carried all one's life, and there is no need to add a description of your nose or your lips: with one stroke you are drawn from head to foot!

Like the innumerable multitude of churches and monasteries with their cupolas, domes and crosses scattered over holy, pious Russia, swarms the innumerable multitude of races, generations and peoples, a many-coloured crowd shifting hither and thither over the face of the earth. And each people, bearing within itself the pledge of powers, full of creative, spiritual faculties, of its own conspicuous individuality, and of other gifts of God, is individually distinguished each by its own peculiar sayings, in which, whatever subject it describes, part of its own character is reflected. The sayings of the Briton resound with the wisdom of the heart and sage comprehension of life; the Frenchman's short-lived phrase is brilliant as a sprightly dandy and soon fades away; the German