knowledged. Moreover, he was at heart | is termed the first partition of Poland. a Saxon and not a Polish prince, and, whenever the wars of Frederic the Great allowed of it, he resided in Dresden far more willingly than either in Warsaw or in Cracow. But if he was an indifferent absentee, there was another eye fixed day and night on this expiring majesty of Poland. From that moment the sorrows of the Poles have become matters of European interest. Stanislaus Poniatowski made some futile efforts to reorganize the fragments of the country, but his hand was eminently unfitted for the task, and the Diet of Grodno, like the Confederation of Targovice, provoked fresh expressions of the antagonism existing between the two parties. A second war led to a second partition (1772), and, after the triumphs of Souvaroff and the abdication of a king who was one in name only, Poland was, in 1793, finally dismembered. Russian statesmen are like vultures. They do not wait till their victim has rendered his last sigh, but they scent from afar the taints of weakness, instability, bankruptcy, and decay in any country or government. They mean eventually to tear the carcase piecemeal, and to pick its To none of these scenes had the Czarbones, but they begin by hovering over-toryski and their heir, Prince Adam, been head. Before indicating conquest they strangers. The young man was present make tributaries, clients, debtors, and at the Diet of 1782. There he saw the partisans; and before proceeding to par- power of his family receive a heavy blow. tition and to the annihilation of race, lan- His father, sure of the sympathy of the guage, and creeds, they will offer freely Lithuanians, had hoped to carry by a masympathy, subsidies, and help. They jority the measures he advocated, and to intrigue, they foment insurrection, they promote to power the men of whom he was remove landmarks, separate families, ab- the head. But the royal and Muscovite duct rulers, browbeat regents and pala-party proved too strong for him. Russia tines, suggest candidates, bribe electors, and sow the land with Russian roubles, which are as dragons' teeth; so that in the end they reap the crop they have long desired, "red ruin, and the breaking up" of treaties, if not of laws. Catherine, whose policy was of this stealthy sort, had her left hand busy in Georgia. One struggle more, and hers would then be the sceptre of the famous Queen Tamara, and hers the inheritance of the oldest Christian dynasty in the world. Nor was one such intrigue sufficient for her ambition. With the right hand she had for long manipulated Polish elections, and she it was who in 1764 procured the nomination of her sometime lover, Stanislaus Poniatowski. To Adam Casimir Czartoryski that election was every way antipathetic. He at once proposed himself as a rival, and failed; but four years later the Catholic, national, and anti-Muscovite party, to which he belonged, and which was headed by Krasinski, formed itself into the socalled Confederation of Bar. Its first act was to ignore Catherine's nominee, and to declare the throne vacant. A civil war was inaugurated, and on it followed what scored another victory, and the stubborn old starost retired to his estates in Podolia. His son says that the time passed' there in hunting, coursing, fencing, and studying. The family next moved across Galicia to their estate of Pulavy, beyond Jaroslav. There their house served as a rendezvous for all who in politics and religion shared their views, and the young men had Polish and French professors, went to Carlsbad, and made a tour in Germany, visiting Goethe in Weimar. The Diet of 1787 saw them again at Warsaw; but the tide set strongly against nationalism, and in 1789 Prince Adam travelled, joined his married sister in Würtemberg, and went with his mother to England. He stayed with Lord Lansdowne, and made, both in London and in the industrial centres of England and of Scotland, valuable studies of our social and commercial systems. In Edinburgh his name is not yet forgotten, though the group of men who founded this review, and who were his personal friends, have now all gone over to the majority. The year 1791 was an important one to the young politician. He went through Russian society was then, as it is today, the mere reflection of the court. This is Prince Adam's first impression of it: his drill under his brother-in-law, Louis of | Their hearts were not less full of wounded Würtemberg, and when, after the Confed- pride and patriotism, to say nothing of eration of Targovice, Russian troops again aversion to Catherine, whose crimes and broke into Poland, he fought at Polomna. indecorums, monstrous as they really Now occurs a blank in the memoirs. were, had assuredly lost nothing when rePossibly the missing pages have been de- hearsed in their ears by Polish tongues. stroyed by the writer, or for him. At all Their position was painful enough, but on events he does not explain how he came reaching St. Petersburg they found that to be in England when Kosciusko fell it was not singular. The struggle being (1793), nor how he came to be arrested in over it was to be expected that Catherine Brussels, when on his way home to carry would make some arrangement of the vast arms under the hero of Macziewice. It confiscated estates of the malcontent Powas the Austrian police who stopped him, lish aristocracy. Many hastened up to and as after the close of the campaign he the capital to assist at the curée. Some went to join his parents in Vienna, it is hoped to enrich themselves in the general only fair to suppose that the Austrian scramble, some to gratify an old grudge, emperor, judging the Polish cause to be and some, like the young Czartoryski, to hopeless, had begged his old servant and save a little out of this vast wreck. marshal, Adam Casimir Czartoryski, to restrain the patriotic ardor of his son. The heir was kept for some time longer in Vienna, out of harm's way, and thus prevented from further endangering the family fortunes. The same imperial friend it was who next opened a negotiation with Catherine to get the Czartoryski estates restored. The czarina had confiscated them to render her great opponents powerless, but now that she had carried every position, and ruled over a dismembered and prostrate Poland, it was her policy to rally, and as it were Russify, as many of the great Polish nobles as she could win over to her side. Humbler houses might perish, unpitied because unnoticed, but the Czartoryski were the observed of all observers, therefore it would be well to exhibit them in her train. She accordingly replied that she would consider their case, but that as hostages for future good behavior she should first require to see both the young princes, Adam and Ladislaus, at her court. At such a demand the blood of all these palatines, old and young, rebelled. But the emperor advised a more conciliatory demeanor, and pointed out that ruin, and obliteration through ruin, stared them in the face if they persisted in asking for favors while they conceded nothing to the haughty and victorious sovereign whom they had so long withstood, in the cabinet as in the field. Perhaps the old marshal, Prince Adam Casimir, had a vague hope that this might be a case of reculer pour mieux sauter. At any rate, he gave in; a confidential tutor, named Gorski, was selected to accompany them, and on this strange errand the young men departed. Their heads were full of curiosity as to the career along which Providence and the czarina had unexpectedly started them. It might be compared to the vestibule of a temple where all present had only ears and eyes for the divinity before whom they burned incense. The Empress Catherine, the immediate author of the ruin of PolandCatherine, whose very name disgusted us, cursed as she was by every one who carried a if judged out of her capital had neither virtue Polish heart in his breast, this Catherine, who nor even the decency required in a woman, had gained none the less, in her own country, and above all in its capital, the veneration, nay even the love, of her subjects. Through the long years of her reign, the army, the privileged classes, and the administrators had had days of lustre and of prosperity. It is beyond a doubt that ever since her accession tion both at home and abroad, and that order the Muscovite empire had gained in considerawas established at home as it had never been during the preceding reigns of Anne and of Roman Cæsars. temper and fantastic disposition inspired all sorts of terrors, and some contempt. At the summit of the edifice sat Catherine the Great, in all the prestige of her victories and of her prosperity; secure in the love of the subjects whom she led about at her good will and pleasure. All those hopes to which the sight of the young court gave rise could only have their fruition in a distant future, and they in no way took off from the general affection for the Czarina, or from her supreme authority: nay, the young court was considered as an emanation or creation of the reigning power. And in truth Catherine reserved to herself the exclusive education of her grandchildren. Any influence of either father or mother was forbidden. From their birth the princes and princesses had been withdrawn from parental hands, and thus grew up under the eyes of Catherine, to whom alone they seemed to belong. The Grand Duke Paul served as a mere shadow which only heightened the effect of this picture. The very terror which he inspired strengthened the general attachment to the government of Catherine, for all must desire that the reins of government should long remain in the strong hands of his mother. Just as every one was afraid of Paul, so all admired the capabilities of a mother who was able to keep him in subjection to herself, and far from a throne which belonged to him by right. This is a masterly sketch, and it is followed by many more, all equally well drawn, of Catherine's minions the brothers Zubow, and of despotic proconsuls like Toutoulmine, of Bezborodko, of the vicechancellor Ostermann, and of Poles like his kinsman Lubomirski, come up to recover their fortunes, or of travellers like De Ségur and the Prince de Ligne, come to hear the wisdom and see the splendors of this Semiramis of the North. Prince Adam does not mention Grimm. Perhaps the proud young Polish officer secretly despised the factotum who was flatterer-in-chief to the czarina, and who busied himself now with her literary efforts, now with her lace ruffles, and now with the marriages of the eligible young grand dukes and duchesses in Germany and all the Russias. The two men certainly looked at her from very different points of view. Both felt the originality of her character and the strength of her will; but Prince Adam, sick at heart from her tyranny, was blind to the gaiety and power of pleasing which she possessed, and which she herself valued as her strongest points. This is how she and the young Polish officer met: "It was long before she would see us; but when we were presented to her she met us with her fixed smile, but was gracious enough to add, 'Your age recalls that of your father when I first saw him. I hope that you enjoy yourselves in this country.' A Capua for Polish spirits she hoped that St. Petersburg might prove, and accordingly that evening the young men were admitted to dine in her presence at one of those dinners with which Grimm has made us familiar. There, in front of the imperial sofa and of the sovereign of All the Russias, we talk and chat of things gay, serious, or frivolous; often gaily of grave things, often gravely of trifles. The entrée to the Hermitage makes every one equal, and one leaves one's rank with one's hat and one's sword at the door. In the dining-room there are two tables, placed side by side, each with ten covers. The service is done mechanically, no servants wait, and the lieutenant de police is sold, for he can never send a single report to her Majesty of what passes at those dinners. The places are drawn by lot, and it sometimes happens that the empress finds herself placed at a corner of her own table, and that M. Grimm, or some other man of his value, occupies the centre.* To be so entertained was indeed a mark of favor, and the brothers accordingly received next day from flatterers many compliments on the step which they had made in her imperial good graces. As to their estates, Catherine long observed a diplomatic and cruelly tantalizing silence. She had exhibited the hostages in her triumph, but they had as yet received nothing from the supposed clemency of their conqueror. At last she sent to let them know that it was impossible for her even to think of granting anything to their father. The whole of his estates in Podolia were declared to be forfeited to the crown, but to Prince Adam and his brother the value of forty-two thousand souls (male serfs) was to be paid over, to enable them to live in a manner suitable to their station. It was understood, if not expressed, that these supplies were to be subject to good behavior, so the young men could see no term to their involuntary residence in the capital. They paid over to their parents the fortune they had received, put on uniforms of the Russian Imperial Guard, and prepared to make the best of life at the court of a woman who had not only dismembered their country, but annexed their estates, and outwitted themselves. While on duty Adam Czartoryski attracted the attention of the young Grand Duke Alexander Pavlovitch. Eldest of the sons of Paul Petrovitch and of Maria of Würtemberg, Alexander was really what Melchior Grimm, par Edmond Scherer, p. 263. he was wont to term himself, "a happy | gaged his esteem and gained his affection. accident." His brother Constantine, who already reproduced much of their father's strangeness and brutality, could not be termed an equally happy effort of nature, and Catherine's education was in many ways a peculiar one. Separated by her from his parents, and little attracted to his brother Constantine, Alexander's generous sensibilities ran out in friendships, while in his head there fermented an odd mixture of the autocratic traditions of his race with the maxims of Colonel La Harpe, the Swiss tutor to whom his education had been committed. He was early married to a grand duchess of Baden, but the alliance contracted at sixteen years of age was not one of intense affection. As for Constantine's union with one of the daughters of the house of Saxe-Coburg Gotha, suffice it to say that it was one of the first of the great marriages by which that family has allied itself to every reigning house in Europe, and that, though it was of short duration, it was very far from happy. He sympathized with our sentiments, guessed them, and approved of them, so that he had felt the necessity of enlightening us as to not bear the idea that we should take him to his real way of thinking, and that he could be that which he was not. He told me that he in no degree shared the policy or approved of the conduct of the cabinet, and was far from approving that of his grandmother; that he condemned her principles; that the Poles had his best wishes in Poland's glorious struggle; that he deplored her fall; that Kosciusko was, in his eyes, both great by his virtues and by the cause he defended, which was that of justice and humanity. He further confessed to me that he detested despotism wherever or by whomsoever exercised; that he loved liberty, to which all men have an equal right; that he had taken a most lively interest in the French Revolution; and that, while he deplored its greatest excesses, he wished all success to the Republic, and rejoiced in it. He said that he could not confide his Alexander soon distinguished the two Czartoryskis, and Empress Catherine saw with favorable eyes a liaison establishing itself between her grandson and the two broth ers. She approved of the friendship, but assuredly without guessing its true motive, or what might have been its consequences. I imagine that in her mind, and considering the ideas prevalent about the splendor of the Polish aristocracy, she thought it useful to attach a powerful family to her grandson. . . . We made excursions together on foot every day, for Grand Duke Alexander enjoyed walking and visiting the neighboring villages; and then it was that he gave vent to his favorite themes. He was under the charm of early youth, which creates images and dwells on them without considering their impossibilities, and which constructs projects without limit for a future without an end. His opinions were those of a pupil of '89, who wishes to see republics everywhere, and esteems only that form of government which is conformable to the wishes and the rights of humanity. On one spring day in 1796, just after the court had moved out to the palace known as La Tauride, Alexander begged Prince Adam to meet him, that he might show him the so-called "English garden," and that they might talk together at their ease. The conversation, which for one of the party at least was to be so momentous, lasted three hours. The grand duke told me that the conduct of myself and my brother, our resignation under an existence which must be painful to us, and the calm indifference with which we accepted favors that in our eyes had no merit, had en sentiments to any one, because no one in Rusthat for the future I must feel how sweet it sia was capable of understanding them, but would be for him to have some one to whom he could open his heart, and do so with entire confidence. This conversation was inter ... I was young, woven, as may be supposed, with expressions to some one. What other motive could he Alexander, besides his liberal opinions, had other tastes and other dreams. He had a great love of nature and of country life, and to it he often threatened to re tire, though, like his father, he loved | She had been wont to boast that "no military spectacles and military details. Esculapius of them all had ever passed Parademania was perhaps the only taste her door." She believed in gaiety and which Paul and his sons had in common, cold baths, in an orviétan, and in Bestoubut a circumstance was at hand which was jef's drops - a quack medicine which she to bring into stronger relief the terribie was apt to administer in the palace rather oddities of Paul, and the defective edu-at hazard. But now she had come to the cation which Catherine had given to the end of her simple pharmacopoeia, or, grand-dukes Alexander and Constantine. rather, as Madame de Staël would have That authoritative and high-tempered said, "the forces of that powerful life empress was suddenly called to her ac- were exhausted." The czarina died of count. She had just received an affront overwork of the brain. She had written from the young king of Sweden, come just before her seizure to Grimm, in that to her court to engage the hand of one tone of banter which she used with him, of her granddaughters. We know by about her literary occupations. She was Grimm's correspondence how closely she engaged on a work (not her autobiography) had these establishments at heart, and which would be, she assured him, very how she ransacked every court to find the useful to the country, and remedial in a cadets or cadettes suited to her purpose. hundred thousand ways. There can be This bridegroom had the hardihood to little doubt that, from the text of her own break off the match after the court had arguments, she preached in it the immeassembled to witness his betrothal. The diate succession of her grandson Alexanground assigned was that it would be im- der to a throne which she had ever treated possible for him, in a Protestant country, her son as unfit to fill. Familiarity with to allow the bride to have in Stockholm a these views of hers goes far to explain chapel where the rites of the Russo-Ortho- Alexander's subsequent conduct, and his dox Church could be celebrated. Cath- first ukase, in which he speaks of himself erine was intensely mortified, and her as intended to continue the measures of face wore, says Prince Adam, a sombre his ever-glorious grandmother. She says expression of sadness and fury, though of the book she was compiling:she received all her guests with impassive firmness. It It was November. The weather was foggy and cold, but the Grand Duke Alexander continued his walks on the quays. One day he met my brother, and after walking for some time they stopped at the gateway of the house which we occupied. I had just reached it, and we were all there standing talking when a messenger from the Palace arrived, and told the grand duke that Count Soltykov expected him for a matter of great urgency. The grand duke left at once, unable to guess what could be the cause of the pressing summons. was soon known that the empress had had an apoplectic fit. She had for some time had very swelled feet, but would not follow the orders of any physician, alleging that she did not believe in doctors, and applying at her own hand some old woman's remedies of which her waiting woman had told her. Lying, as it were, insensible, the empress only once opened her eyes. It was on the approach of her faithful valet, Zachary; then with a look of intense suffering she laid her hand on her heart, and closed her eyes never to open them again in this world. That was the only sign of consciousness she ever gave; but the doctors assembled, and for the space of three days lavished on her all the resources of their art. It was useless. There was in Catherine's resistance to all remedies a something grimly appropriate. I work It is the most stupid work in the world! it is immense the six chapters I have written are each of them marvels in their own way, and I put into it all an amount of work, exactitude, wit, and genius of which I never supposed myself to be capable. I am quite amazed at myself when I finish a chapter. Heaven bless those who will have to carry all this out! It is really a curious affair; and I shall require another year to finish it. hard, and I am so taken up with it that even during sleep my head composes whole chapters. Here we have unconscious cerebration; and when to this irritable state of the brain we add the blow to her pride just received before her assembled court of grandchildren, favorites, flatterers, and officials, it is not unfair to say that Gustavus IV. shortened the empress's life by some years. We resume Prince Adam's account of her last hours: The morning after her seizure the fatal news spread through the town. Those who had the entrée crowded to the court in all the haste of fear, and with anxious doubts as to what might be going to happen. Most of the assisting spectators expressed sincere grief, while there were many whose pale and fallen faces betrayed their dread of losing the advantages they enjoyed, and of having to give an account of their stewardship. My brother and I were among those present at these scenes of terror |
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