11 
PREFACE. 
known as it may be, that the passage of a small 
rivulet, which separated the two countries of 
Sweden and Russia, at the period of the author s 
iourney, and before the dismemberment of 
Finland, the mere crossing of a bridge, con- 
ducted the traveller from all that adorns and 
dignifies the human mind, to whatsoever, most 
abject, has been found to degrade it. If, there- 
fore, the late Empress and Autocrat of all the 
Russias, Catherine the Second, could find a 
Folney, who would prostitute his venal pen to 
varnish the deformities of her reign and of her 
empire ; if Potemkin did not want an apologist, 
and an advocate, even among the Writers ot 
this country ; Great Britain will forgive the 
frankness of one, among her sons, who has 
ventured, although bluntly, to speak the truth. 
It is a language not wholly obscured in the 
more cautious descriptions ot former Writers. 
Tuhervile, of England ; Augustine, of Germany ; 
Olearius, of Denmark ; and, more recently, the 
Abbe de la Chappe, of France, together with the 
authors of many anonymous productions, re- 
present the real character of the people, in 
colours, which neither the antidote of Aleksye 
Mitsine Puchkine, the drivellings 1 of Voltaire, nor 
(I) See Voltaire's Correspondence with the Empress Catherine, ii* 
the latter part of his life. 
