Page:The Earl of Mayo.djvu/36

28 In 1845 his great-aunt, Lady de Clifford, died, and Mr. Bourke, not being able to go out much, devoted the summer to a tour in Russia. Armed with introductions to a Court and society then famous for its hospitality to Englishmen, he saw what was best worth seeing, and made the personal acquaintance of many European statesmen and diplomatists who had hitherto been to him only names. His letters give one the impression of a keen young intelligence looking for its first time on unfamiliar objects, and of immense powers of physical enjoyment. On his return from his tour he published an account of it in two volumes. They are a very fair specimen of a young man's travels — modestly written, full of eyesight, and not overlaid with general reflections. His descriptions of Russian life are quiet and realistic, and had at the time a novelty which they do not now possess.

The Russians of that day appeared to him to be essentially in the imitative stage, both as regards art and letters; and he supports this position by well-chosen examples of pictorial design and by the statistics of the book-trade, contrasting the enormous number of volumes imported with the few original works produced in the country. He was particularly struck by the absence of a middle class. 'In no country,' he says, 'except, perhaps, in Ireland, is the transition from the palace to the cabin more