When Paul, the half-mad Czar, espoused the Princess Marie de Wurtemburg, Sophie Soymonof, then in her sixteenth year, and distinguished for her accomplishments, was chosen maid of honor to the new empress. Marie was endowed with rare beauty, and surrounded by seductions and difficulties; but she set such an example of amiable and solid virtue in her lofty place, that calumny never assailed her. A strong affection, based on mutual esteem and tenderness, sprang up between the empress and her maid. This affection was never interrupted nor chilled. The fury and puerility, the monstrous pride and jealousy of Paul, made him constantly quarrel with those who were brought into close relations with him. The empress alone triumphed over his outbursts, by dint of unfailing sweetness, modesty, and patience. She smilingly submitted to the capricious exactions, distasteful exercises, and excessive fatigues he imposed. However bitter her sufferings, the serenity of her soul was never visibly altered. But, in sympathizing with the hardships of her kind mistress, Sophie early learned to penetrate the secret of noisy pomp and hidden woes, glittering prosperity and silent tears.

Under this salutary protection, these stimulating auspices, she reached her seventeenth year. The copious force with which her constitution was supplied, made constant labors a resource, solace, and pleasure to her. She spoke Russian, Italian, English, and French with ease and purity; German with care; and had studied Latin, Greek, and Hebrew. Her colored drawings would have done honor to a professional artist. Her voice, full, sonorous, flexible, of rare compass, was familiarized with the learned and affecting harmonies of the North, as well as with the brilliant melodies of Italy. She was not beautiful; but her features, gesture, and accent had a sympathetic charm that was indefinable. Her small, slightly irregular blue eyes were animated and benevolent; her nose had the Calmuck point; her complexion was of extreme clearness, her figure tall, her bearing easy and gracious, her least words and motions stamped with delicacy and distinction.

Secretary Soymonof, aware of the precarious tenure by which the dependents of the court held their prosperity, was

anxious to secure for his daughter a trustworthy protector, and a handsome position in the future. He cast his eyes on his personal friend, General Swetchine, a man of an imposing aspect, a firm character, a just and calm spirit, who had had an honorable career, and was held in high consideration. Sophie accepted, with her usual deference to her father's wishes, the husband thus chosen, although he was twentyfive years older than herself. It cost her many a secret pang; for she was already in love with a young man of noble birth and fortune, with rare qualities of mind and a brilliant destiny. She knew that her affection was reciprocated. But, from a sense of filial duty, she silently renounced him; and, when he in turn resigned himself to another marriage, she became the warm and steadfast friend of his wife. This painful renunciation, in the introspective reflection, and the dissolution of romantic dreams to which it led, was the first of those earthly disenchantments which, shattering and darkening the empire of social ambition, transferred her interest from material pleasures and hopes to the imperturbable satisfactions of religion.

The second blow quickly followed. Only a few days after that marriage which her father thought promised so much security and consolation to his old age, the Emperor Paul, in a cruel whim, suddenly banished him from Petersburg. Retiring to Moscow, the galling sense of his disgrace, the separation from his darling daughter, together with a frigid reception by a friend on whom he had especially relied, plunged him into the deepest grief. A terrible attack of apoplexy swept him away. At the dire announcement, Madame Swetchine sunk on her knees; and, in the spiritual solitude, unable any more to lean on her father, turned with irrepressible need and effusion to God.

General Swetchine was made military commandant and governor of St. Petersburg. At the head of a splendid establishment, his young wife found herself in the highest circle of the most brilliant society in Europe; for at that time the Revolution had banished the noblest families of France, and their headquarters were in the Russian capital.

Madame Swetchine always possessed, in remarkable union, an earnest desire for action and companionship, and a strong taste for solitude and meditation. She managed her life so skilfully, that both these inclinations were largely gratified. With many of the most high-toned and accomplished persons whom she met, both of the Russian nobility and the French emigrants, she formed earnest and lasting relations of mind and heart. The most refined, pronounced, and impressive characters in St. Petersburg, between the years 1800 and 1815, were embraced in her friendships. Her leisure hours were scrupulously and eagerly devoted to self-improvement. She engaged in a wide range of literary, historic, and philosophical studies; making copious extracts from the books she read, patiently reflecting on the subjects, and setting down independent comments. The progress she made was rapid, and soon rendered her a notable woman. The volumes of the extracts and notes she made, formed at last a huge collection. It is interesting to trace in them, how naturally her mind was drawn to the highest ranges of inquiry, the most important and difficult topics, the most celebrated and stimulative works. She seems to have been interested, above all, in whatever pertains to the affections, to the intercourse of society, to the most exalted and contrasted styles of human character, to the most valuable and elusive secrets of human experience. Such quotations as the following are frequent in her earlier volumes: "To receive a visit is to run a risk.". "Conversation is an arena in which one ought to conquer by his own swiftness, never by arresting his adversary with golden apples."—"A gibbet is a flattery of the human race: from time to time, three or four persons are hung, that the rest may believe themselves honest people."—"The man most inferior to us, in general, is superior to us in some point: we should talk with him on that point."—"An expressionless face is a face deaf and dumb by birth."-" A friendship would still be young after an age: a passion is already old after three months."

One day, in the year 1800, the passionate Czar ordered General Swetchine to execute a cruel sentence on a colone who in some way had given him offence. The general went

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to the review-field; and, advancing to the condemned officer, who was already stripped even to his sash, said to him, "Resume your sword, and quit Petersburg this instant: the emperor pardons you." Then, returning to the palace, he went into the emperor's apartment, and said, "Sire, I bring you my head. I have not fulfilled your majesty's orders. The colonel is free; I have given him honor and life: have me punished in his stead." The emperor seized him by the arm, hesitated a little, and said, "You have done well; but never let this be known in Petersburg." A short time elapsed, when Paul, full of lugubrious visions and suspicions, disgraced General Swetchine by removing him from his office. But this official dismission did not entail banishment, and was followed by no loss of social caste. The general and his exemplary wife continued to live amidst their numerous friends as happily as before. The interchange of literary and philosophic ideas shared the hours in their attractive parlor with the revolutionary and re-actionary politics of the time. The profound attachments, stamped with reverence and the rarest truthfulness, which in those years united many admirable persons with Madame Swetchine, were frequently reporting themselves, under far other circumstances, in a distant land, half a century later.

On the accession of Alexander to the Russian throne, with his romantic sensibility and liberal ideas, a sense of freedom was felt; a fermentation of generous thoughts and hopes began; the whole state of things about the court underwent a change equivalent to a renewal of the atmosphere or an alteration of climate. The particular friends of the Swetchines were those most in the favor of the new sovereign. Had the general wished it, he might easily have re-entered his public career: but he was devoid of ambition; and the ardor and energy belonging to the character of his wife lavished themselves on her moral life, and were not in accord with the pomps and servitudes of official grandeur. Her only tie to the court was an unabated attachment to her former mistress, the Empress Marie, widow of Paul, who in her retirement, surrounded by a costly library, devoted herself to

serious studies and to philanthropic and religious works. The Empress Elizabeth joined her imperial mother-in-law in these tasks of piety and beneficence, the relief of the necessitous, the patronage of educational institutions, the endowment of charitable foundations, the inspection and oversight of monastic retreats. Madame Swetchine, to whose inextinguishable thirst for aiding and loving, visits to the poor, and other positive deeds of service, were as daily bread, not only offered her prompt tribute to these acts, but soon rose from the position of simple co-operation to that of authoritative direction. When a national society was formed, during Napoleon's invasion of Russia, to relieve the sufferers by the war, she was placed at the head of it. It is obvious that the same devotedness to the good of others, struggling against bad health and a swarm of pre-occupations and solicitudes; the same rare combination of winsome ways and solid merits which lent such beauty and dignity to her maturity and her old age, also characterized her youth, gave unity to the various periods of her existence, always clothing her with extreme interest and giving her an extraordinary influence.

Madame Swetchine had an only sister, ten years younger than herself, of whom, after the early death of their mother, she was the assiduous and loving guardian. This dear sister she never parted with, until the date of her happy marriage with the Prince Gargarin. The love and care she lavished on her orphan sister rather excited than appeased her maternal instinct; and, when it befell the general to form a strong attachment to a young girl named Nadine Staeline, she gladly joined with him in adopting her as their own. Within a few years, the Princess Gargarin had five boys, the first two of whom were the objects of Madame Swetchine's especial predilection, though she tenderly loved them all. "The whole five," she said, "are my nephews; but the first two are my own children." The sisters occupied a common residence, during the summer, on an island of the Neva. The aunt mingled in the lessons and the sports of the little troop, and watched the growth of their intelligence with a fond joy. They, in turn, confounded her with their mother, and bore