only an immense garrison; but now for some years past it has been taking
rank among the number of intellectual powers, and nowhere in Europe is
the ascending march of civilization displaying itself by signs so
striking. The summons to liberty of so many millions of men, which has
just been accomplished by the generous initiative of the ruling power,
and with the consent of the nation, testifies that that vast social body
is animated by the spirit of life and of progress. But in the solemn
phase through which she is passing, Russia is exposed to a great danger.
She is running the risk of substituting for a national development,
drawn from the grand springs of human nature, a factitious civilization,
in which would figure together the fashions of Paris, the morals of the
_coulisses_ of the Opera, and the most irreligious doctrines of the
West. May God preserve her!

We have passed in review some of the symptoms of the revival of atheism,
and it is impossible not to acknowledge the gravity of the facts which
we have established. What must especially awaken solicitude is, that the
irreligious manifestations of thought have assumed such a character of
generality, that the sorrowful astonishment which they ought to produce
in us is blunted by habit. Fashionable reviews, (I allude especially to
the French-speaking public), widely-circulated journals which take good
care not to violate propriety, and which could not with impunity offend
the interests or prejudices of the social class from which their
subscribers are recruited, are able to entertain without danger, and
without exciting energetic protestations, the productions of an open, or
scarcely disguised, atheism. Here are ample reasons for thoughtfulness;
but this thoughtfulness must not be mingled with fear. We have to do
with a challenge the very audacity of which inspires me with confidence,
rather than with dread. In fact all the productions of irreligious
philosophy rest on one and the same thought, the common watchword, of