It is a singular fact, that although, down to the year 1818 when the Russian government interfered to prevent it, foreign travel was one of the favourite means of education among the Polish nobility, their literature exhibits hardly any books of travels. A few were formerly written in Latin or French; among the latter we mention John Potocki's 'Travels for the purpose of discovering Slavic antiquities,' Hamb. 1795. In more modern times count Raczynski has published the 'Journal of his travels to Constantinople and the plain of Troy,' richly embellished with illustrations, mentioned above.[67] A view of Great Britain was given in 1828 by Ljach Szyrma, under the title _Anglia i Szkocya_.
_From the Polish Revolution in 1830 to the present time_.
We have thus brought down the history of Polish literature to the year 1830; an epoch of glorious, although most melancholy moment in the history of Poland. If the literature of a country could ever be regarded completely _in abstracto_; if it was not in intimate connection with the political fate and position of its country; we would have commenced this period with the first combats of the Romantic and Classical schools, that is, about fifteen years earlier.[68] But while these fifteen years may be considered in some measure as the time of the fermentation of that spirit, which broke out in 1830; this latter year--with its melancholy attempts on the part of Russia to crush all Polish nationality, by the annihilation of their higher seats of learning and the spoliation of all their libraries, as the principal means of cultivating it--forms only too distinctly an epoch, not only in Polish history in general, but specially in Polish literature.
The state of the country on the whole in the beginning of 1830 was not unprosperous. The cruel wrongs inflicted on the Poles since 1815 were all in express violation of a constitution, which met with the approbation of Kosciuszko and the best of the nation. A noble individual, or a high-spirited people, can more easily submit even to unjust laws, than to arbitrary despotism. _Legally_ the Grand Duke had no right to keep a single Russian soldier in Poland; by the terms of the constitution they could be there only as foreign guests. _Legally_ the press was free. _Legally_ Poland could have defended herself by her charter against any arbitrary act of her sovereign or his viceroy. It would seem, however, that even the repeated infringements of the constitution, and the direct violation of the laws by the government, did not contribute so much to induce the Poles to insurrection, as the fierce and brutal behaviour of the Russian generalissimo, and of the Russian civil and military officers high and low, whose profligacy had long made them the objects of deep contempt. The annals of Warsaw indeed present, during the Russian administration, one of the most revolting pictures which history exhibits. And the idea, that it owes its darkest shades principally to the reckless despotism of one individual, serves only to make them appear still darker.