membered that madness is less frequent in Russia than in milder regions; and hence the people, for they are very far from being strangers to feelings which would do honor to the most civilized of the human race, are less acquainted with, and consequently less affected by its appearance; and when it is thus wantonly displayed upon the stage, it appears under the mask of buffoonery. The government would do well to suppress this and every similar exhibition, calculated only to imbrute a civilized mind, and postpone the refinement of a rude one.

I was much more pleased with the Russ opera of the Nymph of the Dnieper, which is so popular and attractive, that it never fails to fill the seats of fashion. It is chiefly intended to display the ancient costume and music of Russia. The story is very simple: A prince has sworn eternal constancy to a nymph, who is violently attached to him; his father, a powerful king, wishes him to marry a princess of an ancient house; the prince consents, but the nuptials are always interrupted by the stratagems of the jealous nymph, who appears in various disguises. The first scene was singularly beautiful: it displayed a river and its banks, and nymphs swimming; the manner in which they rose upon the water was admirably natural; the music of the ancient Russ airs, in which the celebrated Cossacka is introduced, were exquisite ; the scenery was very fine, and displayed a number of pantomimic changes.

The Russian noblemen are fond of the drama; almost every country mansion has a private theatre. Those of the nobility, who, from disgust to the court, or some other cause, confine their residence to Moscow and the adjácent country, live in the voluptuous magnificence of eastern satraps: after dinner they frequently retire to a vast rotunda, and sip their coffee, during a battle of dogs, wild bears, and wolves; from thence they go to their private theatres, where great dramatic skill is frequently displayed by their slaves, who perform, and who also furnish the orchestra. These people are tutored by French players, who are very liberally payed by their employers.

CHAPTER XIV.

A Gloomy Catastrophe.

T is with deep regret that I approach the delicate and awful subject of this chapter. Humanity would gladly cover it with the pall of oblivion; but justice to the memory of an unhappy monarch, and to the chief of the august family of Russia, demand a candid though careful developement of the events which preceded the fall of the last Emperor. The original source of my inforination is from one who beheld the catastrophe which I am about to relate, whom I can neither name nor doubt; a catastrophe which is too near the period in which I write, not to render an unrestrained disclosure of all the particulars with which I have been furnished, unfair if not imprudent. The causes that first created those well-known prejudices which Catherine II. cherished against her son, have perished with her; but all the world knows, that, during the many years which rolled away between the Grand Duke's arrival at the age of maturity and his elevation to the throne, his august mother never admitted him to any participation of power, but kept him in a state of the most abject and mortifying separation from the court, and in almost total ignorance of the affairs of the empire. Although Paul, by his birth, was generalis→ simo of the armies, he never was permitted to head a regiment; and although, by the same right, grand admiral of the Baltic, he was interdicted from ever visiting the fleet at Cronstadt. To these painful privations may be added, that when he was recommended, that is ordered to travel, during his absence Catherine seized and sent to Siberia one of his most cherished friends, because she discovered that he had informed her son of some inconsiderable state affair. Thus Paul beheld himself not. only severed from the being who gave him birth, but from all the ordinary felicities of life. The pressure of his hand excited suspicion; peril was in his attachment, and in his confidence guilt and treason. He could not have a friend, without furnishing a victim.

A gentleman nearly connected with me, now no more, a man of talent and acute observation and veracity, had several years since the honor of spending a short period at the little secluded court of Gatchina, upon which, as the dazzling beams of imperial favor never shone, the. abserver was left in the tranquillity of the shade, to make a more calm, steady, and undiverted survey. At this time, Paul displayed a mind very elegantly inclined, and without being brilliant, highly cultivated, accomplished and informed, frank and generous, brave and magnanimous, a heart tender and affectionate, and a disposition very sweet, though most acutely and poignantly susceptible: his person was not handsome, but his eye was penetrating, and his manners such as denoted the finished gentleman. In his youth he was seen by the bedside of the dying Panin, the hoary and able minister of Catherine, and his tutor, kissing and bathing his hand with tears. As an evidence of his intellectual vigor, let the elaborate and able ukase, by which he settled the precedence and provision of the imperial family, unquestionably his own unassisted composition, be referred to. He loved his amiable princess, and his children, with the most ardent, the most indulgent fondness, and it was the labor of their love, as well as of his servants, who were devotedly attached to him, to requite his affections and graciousness, and to endeavor to fill up with every endearing, every studied attention, the gloomy chasm which had been formed by an unnatural and inexplicable neglect; but this chasin was a bottomless abyss, upon the brink of which his wounded spirit was ever wandering! Paul possessed a high martia inclination, and, reflecting that he might one day mount the throne of a military empire, he made the art of war the principal object of his studies; but neither this pursuit, so copious, so interesting, nor the endearments of those who surrounded him, could expel from his mind the sense of his injuries. He beheld himself, the second personage and the destined ruler of the empire, postponed to the periodical favorite of his mother, the minister of her unbounded voluptuousness, not unfrequently elevated to the presidency of the Hermitage from the ranks, with no

other pretensions than vigorous health and a mighty frame; whilst, on the other hand, the bleeding shade of his father was for ever, in his morbid imagination, pointing to his wound, and whispering revenge. Thus exiled from the heart of his mother, is it a matter of surprise that he should exclude her from his own?

Catherine more than once observed, that her son would not long occupy the throne after her decease; and it has been the fashion to say, that her alienation from him was justified by the events which succeeded her death. With this prophetic spirit, she devoted all her care to the education of her grandsons, Alexander and Constantine, and exercised all the powers she possessed towards the consummation of her prediction. She foretold that the flower which she had planted would wither early she shook it till every blossom fell, and shaded it so, that the dew of Heaven should never visit it more: she pressed and pierced the delicate and ardent mind of her son until she subverted it. Was it then a proof of inspiration, to prognosticate the brevity of his reign over an empire, the history of which has too often and fatally proved, that however despotic its government, and there is not one under heaven more absolute, a cautious and dexterous cultivation of the interest, feelings, prejudices, and affections of the people, is inseparable from the safety of the ruler?

A short time before her demise, Catherine committed to PZ, her last favorite, whom she highly esteemed, a declaration of her will, addressed to the senate, purporting that Paul should be passed over in the succession, and that the Grand Duke Alexander should mount the vacant throne. As soon as the favorite was acquainted with the sudden death of the Empress, he flew to Pavlovsk, about thirty-five versts from the capital, where Paul occasionally resided, whom he met on the road; and, after a short explanation, delivered up to him this important document. Paul, charmed with his zeal and loyalty, preserved him in all his honors and fortunes, whilst a general and rapid dispersion, to all points of the compass, instantaneously succeeded amongst the members of the male seraglio of the Hermitage. The

Emperor ascended the throne without difficulty, but a total stranger to his subjects. One of the first measures of his reign displayed, in a very singular manner, the native goodness of his heart, under the clouds that rapidly began to overshadow it, in an act of piety towards his murdered father, whose remains he removed from the church of St. Alexander Nevski, called the Monastery; and having exhibited them in great funeral state, he consigned them to the sepulchre of Catharine II., in the cathedral of St. Peter and St. Paul. The latter part of this extraordinary transaction has often induced me to think that Paul did not believe that his mother issued the order for the assassination of his father. At this eccentric solemnity, he compelled Count Alexey Orloff, and Prince Baratynski, under whose hands the unhappy monarch is said to have perished, to stand on each side of the body as it lay in state, and afterwards to follow it to the tomb as the principal mourners.

Not long after this event, his mind began occasionally to display the most fearful symptoms of distraction; but when his reason was restored, the hapless Emperor never failed to endeavor, with the most affecting sensibility, to repair the ruin and havoc which his delirium had occasioned. The deposed. Stanislaus, the brokenhearted King of Poland, partook alternately of his beneficence and severity; but with what demonstration of respect and genuine grief did the Emperor attend the obsequies of this last of the Sarmates? On that gloomy occasion, he commanded in person the guards who assisted at the funeral; and uncovering himself, with the most affecting emotions, saluted the coffin as it passed. To the memory of the hoary and heroic Suvaroff, who fell a broken hearted victim to the distraction of his Imperial master, in periods of agonized and compunctious reflection, he raised a colossal statue of bronze, in the vast area behind Benskoi's palace, opposite to Romantzoff's monument; and, on the days when he reviewed his troops there, he used to order them to march by in open order, and face the statue, which he said represented one of the greatest and bravest generals of his own or any other age.