was nearly as potent in the breast of the latter as the thirst for acquisition : there was only one passion to which they both succumbed ; that of which I was now the object. It was no wonder, then, that every tongue was loud' in praise of his magnificence and generosity, and that --some reservations aside- I should have reconciled myself to my

lot. "The marriage was celebrated with great pomp in the chapel of the British embassy, for during her residence in England my mother had quietly subsided into a Protestant, and no stipulation in favour of Catholicism —as frequently happens—was made on my account.

“To England, in the first instance, we went, but remained there only a very short time; the season was over, and Lord Malpas made this an excuse for our brief sojourn, and for mixing so little in society there. His habits, moreover, were, he said, too continental to give him much pleasure in any lengthened stay, and at my age he felt sure I must greatly prefer to see the world." In truth, he had but, one object in paying this visit, to complete the pecuniary arrangements consequent on the marriage, by which he benefited so largely. That effected, he had no desire to linger'in 'à country where, it seemed, his character was better known, or the sense of it more strongly marked, than abroad. To the continent, therefore, we returned, but by a northern route, which put it out of my power to visit my mother on our way to Italy, whither we were bound. Nor did I ever see her more. Immediately after my marriage, by the advice of the physicians, she had left Paris for the waters of Vichy,' near to which Monsieur d'Alibert had one of his numerous châteaux." But her constitution was too much shattered for the baths to be of any avail, and that for which I had for some time been prepared took place." She died, and I had no one now to look to but my husband

"And such a husband !

“ Nevertheless, beyond a freedom of speech, which I tried to persuade myself was a vice of the habits of the last century, though it strangely jarred against my preconceived ideas of the charactor of Lord Malpas, and was no less“ at váriance with his correct seeming before marriage, there was nothing in his conduct that could lead me to imagine he was other than I had taken him for. He was too much of a voluptuary, and too fond of his own ease to sacrifice any portion of it by giving rise to any thing like discussion between us, or reserved himself only for great occasions, so that our journey to the south was performed with few incidents to cause me annoyance. I had not been deceived as to his taste and acquirements, and by the aid of these he rendered himself very companionable. If I' felt no enthusiasm on my travels, such as might have been excited'had I wandered with one whom my heart had chosen, I was, at least, fully occupied with all I saw and heard him tell of, and when we paused at Milan'to wait for a friend—and, perhaps, to pass the winter there—I fancied that I might have made a less agreeable selection than Lord' Malpas.

“The arrival of that friend speedily dispelled my illusion. “To my extreme surprise it was Monsieur d'Alibert.”

WHEN, at the commencement of the present century (March 24, 1801), the brief but eventful reign of the Emperor Paul was succeeded by that of Alexander Paulovitch, his eldest son, the work of Peter the Great was already accomplished in its more material points. Russia, incorporated with the European system, had assumed a rank among nations, and a commercial position, to a certain extent, ensured by an external trade less shackled than before, and extended by the opening of new lines of communication, and by the awakened activity of a people for the first time roused from the torpor of ages.

Upon his succession to the throne of the tsars, Alexander devoted his whole energies to the internal welfare of the country over which he was called by Providence to rule. An immense field lay before him. The emperor felt and understood his mission, and he never ceased to labour in the great work of civilising his people. Never had such expectations been attached to the successor to a throne. Klopstock celebrated the event in an ode, in which the emperor was designated as the prince of peace, and the tutelary angel of humanity. Just

, liberal, philanthropic, enthusiastic, Alexander was undoubtedly equal to his self-imposed task.

But like his predecessors, Alexander not only permitted himself to be distracted from these great objects by the ambition of European interference, but he was also led, by circumstances more or less unavoidable in states placed in immediate conjunction with ill-regulated and semi-barbarous nations, to foreign conquests, and finally, indeed, to add upwards of 36,000 square leagues, an amount nearly equal to the whole superficies of France, to the 300,000 which he had inherited.

Notwithstanding these distractions from a peaceful and philanthropic career, reforms made great progress under the young emperor. The system of terror and the absurd vexations introduced by Paul, were at once put an end to. He instituted a permanent council, and modelled a complete reorganization of the central administration. He diminished the burdens of taxation and the expenses of the court. He abolished, at least for the time, forced levies, and the inquisition and torture, for which he blushed as for a social leprosy. He forbad the confiscation of hereditary property; reformed the criminal code; established freedom of choice as to individual pursuits and occupations; gave permission to the nobles to sell lands, and to grant liberty to their serfs; and he first gave publicity to the national accounts. At the same time he diminished the severity of the censorship, and communicated greater freedom to the

press. Lastly, in order to assure himself, by personal observation, of the trustworthiness of officials, and to make himself personally acquainted with the wants of localities, he undertook frequent journeys, upon which occasions he received and listened to the claims and petitions of persons of all classes. It is said of Alexander, by Storch (Russland unter Alexander I.), that it was his wish to combine, as Tacitus says of Nerva, Imperium et Libertatem.

The splendid fabric thus raised up by the enthusiasm of youth fell, however, before Alexander's career was terminated, beneath that vast and ancient corruption which corrodes to the present day the Russian empire from its remotest extremities to its very

heart. After struggling for a long time with this gigantic evil, hurrying from place to place to destroy the hydra-headed monster, the young emperor was forced to give up the unequal contest, and to abandon the cares of the administration to the active, prudent, and loyal, but arbitrary, imperious, and tyrannical Araktcheief, a true Russian of the old stock.

II.-THE CAMPAIGN OF 1812. At the same time that Alexander withdrew from an active superintendence over the internal affairs of his country, events were implicating him more and more with European policy. Sworn over the tomb of the great Frederic to an eternal alliance with Frederic William, of Prussia, the disasters of Jena, Eylau, and Friedland, aroused apprehensions which were strong enough to cause duty to be neglected, or to awaken a feeling before unknown, of admiration for the conqueror, in the breast of the enthusiastic

emperor. Somewhat vain in his nature, flattered by the advances made by Napoleon, and fascinated by the genius of the great captain, there is every reason to believe that when Alexander accepted the secret conditions of the treaty of Tilsit, he in reality consented to divide the empire of the world with France, whose power and influence preponderated at that time as much as that of Russia preponderates in the present day.

A biographer of Alexander has said of this treaty, that “ Alexander only consented at Tilsit to that which his position did not permit him to refuse, and that he extricated himself from an awkward dilemma by his dissimulation.” M. Chateaubriand has also said of Alexander, that "sincere as a man in what concerned humanity, he was deceitful as a halfGreek in what concerned politics." And a still more severe remark was elicited at St. Helena, where it was said, “ He was a Greek of the Low Empire !"

M. iers, in his “ History of the Consulate and the Empire,” in his sleepless hatred of the English, attributes the emperor's conduct on this occasion solely to the grudge which he entertained against his English allies. “ Prince Lebanoff,” says M. Thiers, “hastened to Tilsit to express the strong desire felt by his master to put an end to the war, his excessive disgust for the English alliance, his extreme impatience to see the great man of his age, and to come to a frank and cordial explanation with him.” And the first thing Alexander is made to do upon meeting Napoleon is to enumerate his grievances against Great Britain, “ the avarice, the selfishness which she had manifested, the false promises with which she had lured him, the deserted state in which she had left him, with the resentment excited by a disastrous war, which he had been obliged to wage single-handed."

Although M. Schnitzler does not take quite the same view that we take of the feelings which actuated Alexander on this memorable occasion, and he is most inclined to think that the tsar only saw in the

treaty of Tilsit, a means of appropriating Finland to himself, still he does not fail to treat with disdain the suggestions of the French Anglophobists, as suggesting motives that never could have existed in a judicious policy. For he remarks, “by discouraging the antagonists of Napoleon, England, Prussia, and Sweden; by authorising, for however brief a time, his new usurpations beyond the Rhine and the Alps, what guarantee could Alexander obtain of the possibility of ever re-establishing the equilibrium that was thus destroyed ? Besides, such crafty conduct, would it not have given the formal lie to the many noble words which had issued from the mouth of the young monarch, and to the idea which it was his own wish should be publicly entertained of his character, and of his chivalrous sentiments ?”

Be this, however, as it may, the obstinate exclusion by Napoleon of the English from the continent, soon wore out the patience of Alexander and of the Muscovite nobles, who were all suffering from this oppressive system, and brought back a more healthy and loyal policy. The admission of British ships, at first under the Portuguese flag, and then in an open manner into the Russian ports, necessarily entailed a rupture with France, and on the 24th of June the French army crossed the Niemen.

It is unnecessary to enter into the details of this great campaign. Alexander showed himself modest under successes which in reality broke the chains which then bound all Europe. These events, decisive in the history of his life, brought him back again to a policy more consonant with the welfare of his country. The epoch was itself incontestably the most resplendent of his reign, and never had his country before appeared destined to play so important a part in the history of nations.

Schnitzler participates in the sentiments of Tourgueneff, who was on the field, in the service of the great Stein, that, although Alexander, to prevent rivalry, resigned the supreme command to Schwarzenberg, he was the soul of the coalition which overthrew the Emperor of the French. His presence, his enthusiasm, his addresses, electrified every one ; and when the Austrian hesitated, Alexander only pushed forward the more resolutely. France has also to thank the Russian, that she remained after the struggle in her integrity, and that she did not cease to be a respectable power after even the second treaty of Paris.

But while Alexander spared the stronghold of Jacobinism and revolution, he preserved nearer to himself the grand-duchy of Warsaw. And Cracow alone remained to fall in after

years
beneath the

pressure

of the three despoiling powers.

III.-THE LAST DAYS OF ALEXANDER. The re-establishment of peace, and the emperor's return to his country, led Russia to hope for and anticipate measures calculated to ensure the prosperity and happiness of the country. But the general expectation was doomed to disappointment. Instead of attempting to heal those wounds which involuntarily recalled to memory the white sepulchres of the Evangelists, the tsar devoted his whole attention to foreign politics, and entered with his adhesion to the Holy Alliance, in 1815, into a totally new career. The consequence was that the Greeks, co-religionists with the Russians, were neglected, for nations with whom the people themselves had few sympathies, and they did not fail to attribute all the

misfortunes that overtook Alexander during the few last years of his reign, to the just anger of the Almighty. In 1824, the emperor was attacked with an illness which nearly proved fatal ; and on the 19th of November, in the same year, a hurricane blowing from the westward drove back the waters of the Neva, till that river attained an elevation of twelve feet above its ordinary level. The whole city of St. Petersburg was inundated, and hundreds of lives were lost, besides an almost incalculable amount of property. At the same time, the fruits of the Holy Alliance began to manifest themselves in insurrectionary proceedings, which necessarily involved the aggrandizement of the protecting parties. Austria, more especially, manifested great activity in availing itself of the opportunity of strengthening its position in the States of North Italy. Insurrections broke out at the same time in Poland, and the members of secret societies were denounced and punished, while the representative form of government was virtually superseded. Worse than all, insurrectionary movements took place in Russia Proper. Novogorod set the example, and with the first detection of the secret societies,* Alexander learnt that his days were numbered, and that a dagger awaited him in almost every position of life. These circumstances combined with domestic afflictions to fill

up

the cup of unhappiness that remained for Alexander in his latter days; leaving him nothing but disgust of the world, and an habitual expression of grief and melancholy to which nothing could afford even momentary relief. He had been wedded in early life to the beautiful, pious, and good Louisa, Princess of Baden; who, with her new religion, had assumed the name of Elizabeth. Alexander was at that time sixteen years of

age ; the fair princess, fifteen ; and the parties were in every respect so suited to one another, as to give every promise of a happy union. But two girls who sprang from this marriage died while still very young, and the durable attachment founded upon paternity was thus broken. Alexander formed another attachment, destined to last for eleven years of his life. Three girls were the issue of this connexion, two of whom died in early life, and when the unworthy object of the emperor's affection proved herself as faithless a mistress as she had been a wife, there only remained to him one daughter, Sophia' N to engross all' his strong 'affections. But the hand of death was also upon this favourite daughter. Sent to Paris for the benefit of change of air and medical advice, she returned to St. Petersburg when seventeen years of age, and was betrothed with the emperor's consent to a young Russian, the son of an old and d faithful statesman; but before even the magnificent trousseau ordered from Paris had arrived, Sophia N. Alexander never recovered this last shock. If he sought for solace, it was in tranquillity, or in the domestic circle of some immediate friends. This was the means of bringing the emperor once more into the society of his wife, and the errors of by-gone days were forgiven him, by the resigned