Due North or Glimpses of Scandinavia and Russia by Maturin Murray Ballou (chromebook ebook reader txt) 📕

public expression of such sentiments is hardly admissible under the circumstances. It is not surprising that they should regret the loss of a condition of society which made them all princesses, so to speak. The representatives of this class are little seen in public, very many having removed to Paris, where they constitute a large and permanent colony. When encountered here, they are vehemently earnest as to patriotism, and ready to encourage any extravagant measure looking towards a possible restitution of Polish nationality.

A fellow traveller between Warsaw and Vienna, in responding to a casual remark touching the extraordinary beauty of the Polish ladies,--"ladies whose bright eyes rain influence,"--told the author of a gallant friend's experience with the gentler sex of several nationalities. It seems that the person referred to lost his heart in Germany, his soul in France, his understanding in Italy, and was made bankrupt of his senses in Poland. When his affections were thus reduced to a complete wreck, the gentleman settled down to matrimonial felicity in Russia! Some of the Jewish women of Warsaw, of the wealthier class, are extremely handsome, so marked in this respect that it was a pleasure to look at them. Many of the race are blondes of the most decided stamp. Unlike Parisian, London, or Vienna beauties, their charms are all quite natural. They require no rouge to heighten the color of their glowing complexions, no shading of the eyes, no dyeing of the hair, no falsifying of the figure, no padding. These Jewesses are beholden to Nature alone for their charms of person.

The Polish language as spoken by the people of Warsaw is indeed a puzzle to a stranger, being a sort of Slavic-Indo-European tongue. When Poland enjoyed a distinctive nationality, no less than six different dialects were spoken in the several provinces of the kingdom. There is so much similarity, however, between the Polish language proper and the Russian tongue that the people of the two nationalities easily understand each other, and on the borders there is a singular conglomerate of the two tongues spoken by the peasantry. Until towards the close of the eighteenth century, the Polish historians wrote almost exclusively in the Latin language, and her poets also expressed themselves in that classic medium; hence the paucity of Polish literature. As already intimated, the German and Russian languages are spreading over the country, and will eventually obliterate the native tongue without the enforcement of arbitrary measures on the part of the dominant powers.

Commercially, Warsaw seems destined to a steady growth and prosperity; but in the higher paths of civilization as evinced by mental culture, the growth and dissemination of scientific knowledge, and the general education of the masses, it is and must remain for a long time to come far behind the much more inviting and interesting capitals of Scandinavia.
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Publication Date: 07-14-2010

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