1828. ] Dr. Granville’s Travels to St. Petersburgh. 407 
** This most indefatigable and active Princess rises at a very early hour in 
the day, and receives the sealed reports direct; and without the interference of 
her secretaries or other officers, from each institution placed under her govern- 
ment. She reads them all, makes remarks, and gives the necessary directions, 
either verbally, or in writing, whenever required. So attentive is she to the 
very minutie and details of each establishment, the plan of most of which is of 
her own suggestion, that, in the case of the Hopital des Pauvres, for example, 
which is particularly her own foundation, as I have been informed by her 
physician, /e conseiller Dr. Ruhl, she will make appropriate remarks to him 
whenever the number of diseases or the number of deaths appears greater than 
in the reports of a corresponding period in the preceding year, and will express 
a wish that an inquiry may immediately be set on foot by this her principal 
physician into the cause of those differences. Nothing, in fact, escapes her 
attention.” 
The institutions of Petersburgh, from which, unquestionably, the 
most important public results will, hereafter, spring ; and, consequently, 
those which are of most interest in the eyes of the rest of Europe, are the 
establishments connected with the education of the various classes of the 
people. Not that the utmost possible spread of education, which these 
establishments can give rise to, is at all likely to be attended by results 
similar to those which must grow out of general education in a country 
like England : for these establishments being, for the most part, confined 
to the capital, their effects will be in a great measure confined to that 
also, as the capital of Russia, unlike that of every other in civilized 
Europe, exercises but little general influence on the remote provinces 
of the empire. So that the most enlightened views, even on political 
subjects, may be permitted to prevail there, without any immediate fear 
of their proving fatal to the general system of the Russian government. 
Nevertheless, it must be admitted to shew a real liberality of feeling on 
the part of the absolute sovereign of an empire like that of Russia, and 
the consciousness of an unfeigned desire to promote the welfare of his 
people, when he consents to incur even the remote risks of a system of 
education like that which is at present pursued in the capital of 
Nicholas I. Certain it is that, however honourable and beneficial such 
a system may prove to the Emperor himself, it will one day or other prove 
more or less fatal to his successors ; and this will happen sooner or later, in 
proportion as those successors recede from, or follow the track which he 
and his immediate predecessor have marked out for them. We recommend 
to the particular attention of all those whose time and inclinations permit 
them, to apply to Dr. Granville’s book itself, all that part of the second 
‘volume which relates to the two great establishments for female educa- 
tion in the Russian capital. The doctor’s description of them is clear 
and interesting ; and it is impossible, on reading it, to doubt that some- 
thing of a similar kind might, with great advantage, be adopted in this 
and other countries, in place of the monstrous system of female educa- 
tion which prevails at present. Numerous modifications and ameliora- 
tions would, of course, be required, in order to adapt the system to the 
different habits and after views of the parties to be influenced by it. But 
all these would speedily suggest themselves ; and the bare announcement 
of an attempt to introduce such a system, under proper patronage, would 
work infinite good, if it were but by arousing the public mind to an 
cary into the unthought-of and nameless abuses which at present 
pollute the very springs of our private morals and manners. 
At about the middle of volume II., the doctor commences his disser- 
tations on the state of medicine in Petersburgh. Here we shall, in 
