discovering articles which he had not settled with the empress, and inquired if she had sent to request his signature of such conditions?

Markof having answered in the affirmative, the king replied, that the matter was an absolute impossibility. He observed that he did not wish to constrain the conscience of the princess; that she was welcome to the private profession of her religion; but that he could not grant a Greek chapel, or clergy, the royal palace of Sweden; and that in public, and on all days of ceremony, she must, on the contrary, profess the religion of the country. Imagine the surprise and embarrassment of the shallow Markof: he was obliged to take back his papers, and to tell Zoubof that the king refused to sign. Markof soon returned in the greatest agitation, to say that the empress had already arrived in the chamber of the throne, where the whole court was assembled; that it was not possible for him to speak to her; that she expected the king, and it was hoped that he would not make a rupture-that would be an unheard-of affront to the sovereign, to the young princess, and the whole empire. Besborodko and many others came successively, exhorting, pressing, entreating the king to yield; and all the Swedes who were called in were of that opinion. The regent was content with saying that it depended on the king; yet he took him apart, and walked round the chamber, talking to him in whispers; while the king answered him in a loud voice, “No, no; I will not, I cannot, I will not sign."

Yet the affair seems to have been preconcerted.—The demand of a chapel and priests is precedented in England in the reign of Charles the First; and religion rarely appears as a real political cause in modern times. After a short period, pretexts might have been found to shut up the chapel, and dismiss the Russian clergy. The princess certainly suffered greatly by the sudden explosion; and the feelings of Gustavus should have prevented the affair from proceeding to such a crisis: nor do any offers of modification appear to have been made on the Swedish side. Yet it is possible that a spirited and sensible prince might be impressed with sudden and irresistible resentment at the insult offered to his understanding by the sudden introduction of degrading articles, particularly if he regarded the clauses concerning the Greek church, &c. as assertions of a pretended superiority of the Russian empire over his kingdom. The empress, according to our author, was quite confounded, and stammered greatly when she heard the king's final determination; and immediately left the court, pretending illness; while she was, in fact, seised with a slight degree of that apoplexy which, not long after, terminated her existence.

The account of the Polish embassy, vol. i. p. 61, is not a

little singular, as it shows what a complete perversion of intellect despotism may introduce. The embassador said tha the empress had spoken, and despotism, which was ready to seise the throne of Poland, had fallen like an idol. The despotism, was the Polish constitution of the 3d of May! A pamphlet was also published under her auspices, in which all the grandees of Poland were called Jacobins, and the king a factious fellow. The violation of justice is commonly attended with the violation of truth.

Catharine affected at first to neglect the French revolution but, after the sudden death of the emperor Leopold, and the assassination of the Swedish king, she began to tremble, haunted perhaps by remorse; for they were innocent monarchs; and she was stained with a husband's blood, the deep tint of which was increased with the scarlet of other murders. She ordered the bust of Voltaire to be withdrawn from her gallery; and Fox having opposed the war against France, his bust was also concealed: Et præcellebant, quia imagines eorum non visebantur.

From vol. i. p. 111, we learn that a lieutenant of the police at Petersburg was so ignorant as to confiscate Tissot's medical work called Advice to the People; saying that the people had no occasion for any advice, and that it must be a very dangerous book. But our memoirist certainly pushes his satirism too far when he asserts that no good work was produced in Russia during the reign of Catharine II. except the Travels of Pallas and the Historical Researches of Müller, the latter being celebrated by the adage of Voltaire, whose ridiculous and pretended history of Peter I. he had criticised: He is a German. I wish him more sense and fewer consonants.'

From vol. i. p. 126, we learn that 240 towns are said to have been built by Catharine; while the greater part were miserable hamlets, the name only being changed by imperial edict, just as the wise emperor Paul ordered that every yacht should be called a frigate; and some of these miserable towns do not consist of houses, but of a post stuck up with a name upon it, the building being left to posterity. Our author observes, with republican spirit, upon this occasion, that despots can build nothing except prisons and barracks; but supposing men to be storks, they think if they set up a wheel they can build a nest; while cities can only be founded by commerce and liberty, It is, however, rather a blemish in this work that the author some times betrays too intolerant principles and too warm an attachment to his own party. When Catharine met the emperor Joseph, she invited him to lay the second stone of a city of which she laid the first. The emperor sarcastically observed, I have finished a great business in one day with the empress of Russia. She laid the first stone of a town, and I the last.'.'. The German descriptions of Petersburg are blamed by the

author as flattering and overcharged. He remarks a singular mistake of professor Giorgi. He does the author of these memoirs the honour of naming him among the literary men; but confounding names, quality, and works, he makes only one of general Melissino, major M. and his brother and yet he was at Petersburg and knew them all! After this you may trust such descriptions, if you please.'

From this perhaps the skilful may guess the name of the author.

At Petersburg the Germans are artists or tradesmen, particularly tailors and shoemakers-the English, sadlers or merchants-the Italians, architects, singers, and sculptors: but we do not know what the French are, as they change their employments every year. They often arrive as lacqueys, and become counsellors, or any thing. Sometimes a Frenchman is one year an actor, another a private tutor, another a merchant, another a musician, another an officer in the army; when he begins his round again, or becomes what he pleases. No-where are your Frenchmen observed to be more inconstant, enterprising, ingenious, and fit for any thing.

To perceive the manners and character of each nation, you must visit the interior of the houses; for in the streets all is Russian. The French amuse themselves with plays of wit, supping gaily, and singing merry songs; the English dine at five o'clock, drink punch, and chatter trade; the Italians have music, dance, laugh, and gesticulate, when their conversation turns on shows and the arts; the Germans talk of the sciences, smoke tobacco, discuss and eat deeply, and pay each other a great number of compliments. Among the Russians every thing is pell-mell; but gaming is the chief pursuit, being the soul of their societies and pleasures, though not to the exclusion of other diversions. The stranger, particularly the Frenchman, was surprised and enchanted, after having visited the inhospitable shores of Prussia, and the wild plains of Livonia, to find in the midst of a vast desert an immense and superb city, with societies, pleasures, arts, and tastes, which he had conceived only to exist in Paris.'

At the palace of Tzarsko Selo, which stands in a marshy desert, there is a strange mixture of monuments, erected in honour of the Russian victors, of favorite dogs, and of Lanskoi the most beloved favourite of the late empress; whence our author sarcastically infers, that a hero, a dog, and a lover, must be much the same object in the eyes of a female despot.

The chapter concerning the favorites is too much in the style of Suetonius to admit of any extract. In the next chapter the author considers the accession of Paul. By his account, it is

pretty generally believed at the court of Russia that Paul was the son of Soltykof, one of the first favorites of Catharine; and that in person he had no resemblance whatever to Peter the Third; while he was equally unlike his mother. At first he displayed goodness of heart, and other amiable qualities, which the cruelty of his mother stifled by bad treatment, and a constant series of repeated vexations, which an embittered female alone would have imagined or employed. He was kept in nonage by the usurper of his throne, not admitted to see his own children, surrounded with spies, constrained, harassed, humiliated, living retired and insignificant, and sometimes in want of common necessaries; while the minions of his mother were wallowing in profuse wealth. She thus succeeded in rendering him peevish, distrustful, harsh, whimsical, suspicious, and cruel. Like any other animal constantly teased, his original habits were completely altered.

These observations impress an appearance of truth and candour on the subsequent narrative of Paul's despotic oddities. Accustomed to be vexed in trifles, his attention was chiefly directed towards them; while, if they had never given him pain, his mind might, in the contemplation of great objects, have passed the smaller with complete indifference. His trifling regulations sometimes led to serious and dreadful consequences.

The brigadier-general Likarof being taken ill at his country-house near Petersburg, his affectionate wife would trust no messenger, but went herself to the city to bring a physician. People in the country did not yet know the new emperor, and still less his new regulations. Having ordered her servants to make all the speed possible, her carriage unhappily passed, without stopping, at a short distance from Paul, who was on horseback. In a rage, he immediately sent an aide-de-camp, who stopped the equipage, ordered the four servants to be enlisted as soldiers, and the impertinent lady to be sent to jail. These orders were executed immediately; and this unhappy woman was confined for four days. This horrible treatment, and the condition in which she had left her husband, wounded her heart and affected her brain. A burning fever was the consequence; and she was carried to an hotel to be attended: but her reason was gone for ever. Her husband, thus abandoned, left without medical assistance, deprived of his wife and of his domestics, expired in despair, without ever secing her again.'

This singular attention to trifling marks of respect, which seems to have formed the very spring of Paul's insanity, might easily be traced, by a philosophical inquirer into mental diseases, to the constant disrespect shown in trifles, which he was accustomed to suffer during the reign of his mother.

The anecdotes of Souworof, or Souwarrow, are not a little singular, but scattered at intervals through the work.

A stranger, having heard the name of Souworof resound throughout Europe, might, on his first arrival in Russia, wish to see this hero. There appeared a little old man, of a lank and shriveled figure, jumping upon one leg through the apartments of the palace, or running and playing in the streets followed by a crowd of children, to whom he threw apples to make them fight, and crying to them, "I am Souworof! I am Souworof!"-If the stranger could with difficulty recognise in this old fool the conqueror of the Turks and of the Poles, he might, however, reasonably suspect, from the haggard and ferocious eyes, and from the frothing and horrible mouth, that this was the devourer of the inhabitants of Praga. Souworof would have only been a ridiculous buffoon if he had not been a most barbarous warrior. He was a monster who, in the body of an ape, had the soul of a butcher's dog.'

Equal compliments are by our bold author addressed to the emperor Paul during his life-time. When in his youth he visited Paris, the polite populace could not help exclaiming, "My good God, how ugly he is!-And our author adds, that—

• Without offence to any savage whatever, Paul was certainly the ugliest man in his whole empire. He was himself se sensible of this deformity, that he forbade any impression of his face to appear on the current coin; which only bore his cipher, with the Scriptural phrase, "Not to us, but to thy name. A soldier suffering severely under the rod for some trifling failure in discipline, happened to exclaim, “Oh you cursed bald head!" An edict immediately appeared, ordering that the words bald head, and snub nose, should not be used throughout the empire under pain of death.'

We are far from pretending to warrant many of these anecdotes, which are doubtless exaggerated by the author's indignation. But, having already warned our readers of the satirical nature of this work, we translate them for their amusement, trusting the veracity to their own censure.

We now pass to the second volume, the chief chapters of which are upon the revolutions which may probably happen in Russia, the national character and religion, the influence of the fair sex, the state of education, the persecution of the French in Russia, and a description of a great festival given by prince Potemkin to Catharine.

This volume begins with some observations on the state of despotism in Russia, which our author describes as a dark atmosphere, separating the Russian from other nations, and pre