the hands of the native princes, and enjoyed themselves in the manlier sports of hunting through the plains and mountains, they commanded that every vassal prince should attend at the imperial tent to receive permission to reign, or perhaps to live; and that, even when they sent their Tartar collectors to receive the tribute, the Russian princes should lead the Tartar's horse by the bridle, and give him a feed of oats out of their cap of state!

But another of those sweeping devastators, one of those gigantic executioners, who seem to have been sent from time to time to punish the horrible profligacies of Asia, now rose upon the north. Timour Khan, the Tamerlane of European story, the Invincible, the Lord of the Tartar World, rushed with his countless troops upon the sovereignties of Western Asia. This universal conqueror crushed the Tartar dynasty of Russia, and then burst away, like an inundation, to overwhelm other lands. But the native Russians again made head against their Tartar masters, and a century and a half of sanguinary warfare followed, with various fortunes, and without any other result than blood.

Without touching on topics exclusively religious, it becomes a matter of high interest to mark the vengeances, furies, and massacres, of heathenism, in every age of the world. Yet while we believe, and have such resistless reason to believe, in the Providential government, what grounds can be discovered for this sufferance of perpetual horrors? For this we have one solution, and but one: stern as the inflictions are, may they not be in mercy? may not the struggles of barbarian life be permitted, simply to retard the headlong course of barbarian corruption? may there not be excesses of wickedness, extremes of national vice, an accumulation of offences against the laws of moral nature, (which are the original laws of Heaven,) actually incompatible with the Divine mercy? Nothing can be clearer to the understanding, than that there are limits which the Divine Being has prescribed to his endurance of the guilt of man, and prescribed doubtless for

the highest objects of general mercy; as there are offences which, by human laws, are incompatible with the existence of society.

The crimes of the world before the flood were evidently of an intense iniquity, which precluded the possibility of purification; and thus it became necessary to extinguish a race, whose continued existence could only have corrupted every future generation of mankind.

War, savage feuds, famines, and pestilences, may have been only Divine expedients to save the world from another accumulation of intolerable iniquity, by depriving nations of the power of utter self-destruction, by thinning their numbers, by compelling them to feel the miseries of mutual aggression, and even by reducing them to that degree of poverty which supplied the most effective antidote to their total corruption.

Still, those sufferings were punishments, but punishments fully earned by their fierce passions, savage propensities, remorseless cruelties, and general disobedience of that natural law of virtue, which, earlier even than Judaism or Christianity, the Eternal had implanted in the heart of his creatures.

In the fifteenth century Russia began to assume a form. Ivan III. broke off the vassalage of Russia to the "Golden Horde. He had married Sophia, the niece of the Greek emperor, to which we may attribute his civilisation; and he received the embassies of Germany, Venice, and Rome, at Moscow. His son, Ivan IV., took Novgorod, which he ruined, and continued to fight the Poles and Tartars until he died. His son Ivan, in the middle of the sixteenth century, was crowned by the title of Czar, formed the first standing army of Russia, named the Strelitzes, and established a code of laws. In 1598, by the death of the Czar Feodor without children, the male line of Ruric, which had held the throne for seven hundred and thirty-six years, and under fifty-six sovereigns, became extinct.

Another dynasty of remarkable distinction ascended the throne in the beginning of the seventeenth century. Michael Romanoff, descended

from the line of Ruric by the female side, was declared Czar. His son Alexis was the father of Peter the Great, who, with his brother Ivan, was placed on the throne at the decease of their father, but both under the guardianship of the Princess Sophia. But the Princess, who was the daughter of Alexis, exhibiting an intention to seize the crown for herself, a revolution took place in 1689, in which the Princess was sent to a convent. Ivan, who was imbecile in mind and body, surrendered the throne, and Peter became sole sovereign of Russia.

The accession of Peter began the last and greatest period of Russian history. Though a man of fierce passions and barbarian habits, he had formed a high conception of the value of European arts, chiefly through an intelligent Genevese, Lefort, who had been his tutor.

The first object of the young emperor was to form an army; his next was to construct a fleet. But both operations were too slow for his rapidity of conception; and, in 1697, he travelled to Holland and England for the purpose of learning the art of shipbuilding. He was forced to return to Russia after an absence of two years, by the revolt of the Strelitzes in favour of the Princess Sophia. The Strelitzes were disbanded and slaughtered, and Peter felt himself a monarch for the first time.

The cession of Azof by the Turks, at the peace of Carlowitz in 1699, gave him a port on the Black Sea. But the Baltic acted on him like a spell; and, to obtain an influence on its shores, he hazarded the ruin of his throne.

Sweden, governed by Charles XII., was then the first military power of the north. The fame of Gustavus Adolphus in the German wars, had given the Swedes the example and the renown of their great king; and Charles, bold, reckless, and half lunatic, despising the feebleness of Russia, had turned his arms against Deumark and Poland. But the junction of Russia with the "Northern League" only gave him a new triumph. He fell upon the Russian army, and broke it up on the memorable field of Narva, in 1700.

Peter still proceeded with his original vigour. St Petersburg was founded in 1703. The war was prosecuted for six years, until the Russian troops obtained a degree of discipline which enabled them to meet the Swedes on equal terms. In 1708, Charles was defeated in the memorable battle of Pultowa. His army was utterly ruined, and himself forced to take refuge in Turkey. Peter was now at the head of northern power. Frederic Augustus was placed on the throne of Poland by the arms of Russia, and from this period Poland was under Russian influence.

Peter now took the title of "Emperor and Autocrat of all the Russias." In 1716 he again travelled in Europe. In 1723 he obtained the provinces on the Caspian, by an attack on Persia. But his vigorous, ambitious, and singularly successful career was now come to a close. The death of a Russian prince is seldom attributed to the course of nature; and Peter died at the age of fifty-two, a time when the bodily powers are still undecayed, and the mental are in the highest degree of activity. The day, still recorded by the Russians with the interest due to his extraordinary career, was the 28th of January 1725. In thirty-six years he had raised Russia from obscurity to a rank with the oldest powers of Europe.

We hasten to the close of this sketch, and pass by the complicated successions from the death of Peter to the reign of the Empress Catherine.

The Russian army had made their first appearance in Germany, in consequence of a treaty with Maria Theresa; and their bravery in the "Seven Years' War," in the middle of the last century, established their distinction for soldiership.

Peter III. withdrew from the Austrian alliance, and concluded peace with Prussia. But his reign was not destined to be long. At once weak in intellect, and profligate in habits, he offended and alarmed his empress, by personal neglect, and by threats of sending her to a convent. Catherine, a German, and not accustomed to the submissiveness of Russian wives, formed a party against him. The people were on her side; and, what was of more importance, the Guards

declared for her. An insurrection took place; the foolish Czar, after a six months' reign, was dethroned July 1762, was sent to a prison, and within a week was no more. The Russians assigned his death to poison, to strangulation, or to some other species of atrocity. Europe talked for a while of the "Russian Tragedy!" but the emperor left no regrets behind him; and Catherina, Princess of Anhalt Zerbst," handsome, young, accomplished, and splendid, ascended a throne of which her subjects were proud; which collected round it the elite of Germany, its philosophers and soldiers; which the empress connected with the beaux esprits of France, and the orators and statesmen of England; and which, during her long, prosperous, and ambitious reign, united the pomp of Asia with the brilliancy and power of Europe. The shroud of the Czar was speedily forgotten, in the embroidered robe which Catherine threw over the empire.

But the greatest crime of European annals was committed in this bold and triumphant reign. Russia, Prussia, and Austria, tempted by the helplessness of Poland, formed a league to seize upon portions of its territory; and the partition of 1772 took place, to the utter astonishment of Europe, but with scarcely a remonstrance from its leading powers.

Poland had so long been contented to receive its sovereign from Russia, its religious disputes had so utterly weakened the people, its nobility were so profligate, and its peasantry were so poor, that it had lost all the sinews of national defence. It therefore fell an easy prey; and only waited, like a slave in the market, till the bargain for its sale was complete.

In 1793, a second partition was effected. In the next year, the Polish troops took up arms under the celebrated Kosciusko; but the Rus sians advanced on Warsaw with a force which defied all resistance. Warsaw was stormed, twenty thousand gallant men were slain in its defence, Suwarroff was master of the unfortunate capital; and, in 1795, the third and last partition extinguished the kingdom.

Having performed this terrible exploit, which was to be as terribly

avenged, the career of Catherine was closed. She died suddenly in 1796.

Paul, her son, ascended the throne, which he held for five years; a mixture of the imbecility of his father, and the daring spirit of his mother. Zealous for the honour of Russia, yet capricious as the winds, he first made war upon the French Republic, and then formed a naval league to destroy the maritime supremacy of England. This measure was his ruin; England was the old ally of Russia, France was the new enemy. The nation hated the arrogance and the atheism of France, and resolved on the overthrow of the Czar. In Russia the monarch is so far removed from his people, that he has no refuge among them in case of disaster. Paul was believed to be mad, and madness, on a despotic throne, justly startles a nation. A band of conspirators broke into his palace at midnight, strangled the master of fifty millions of men, and the nation, at morning, was in a tumult of joy.

His son, Alexander, ascended the throne amid universal acclamation. His first act was peace with England. In 1805, his troops joined the Austrian army, and bore their share in the sufferings of the campaign of Austerlitz. The French invasion of Poland, in two years after, the desperate drawn battle of Eylau, and the disaster of Friedland, led to the peace of Tilsit. Alexander then joined the Continental system of Napoleon; but this system was soon found to be so ruinous to Russian commerce, as to be intolerable. Napoleon, already marked for downfal, was rejoiced to take advantage of the Russian reluctance, and instantly marched across the Polish frontier, at the head of a French and allied army amounting to the astonishing number of five hundred thousand men.

Infatuation was now visible in every step of his career. Instead of organising Poland into a kingdom, which would have been a place of retreat in case of disaster; and, whether in disaster or victory, would have been a vast national fortification against the advance of Russia, he left it behind him; and, instead of waiting for the return of spring, commenced his campaign on the verge of winter, in the land of winter itself, and madly ran

all the hazards of invading a boundless empire of which he knew nothing, of which the people were brave, united, and attached to their sovereign; and of which, if the armies had fled like deer, the elements would have fought the battle.

Napoleon was now infatuated in all things, infatuated in his diplomacy at Moscow, and infatuated in the rashness, the hurry, and the confusion of his retreat. His army perished by brigades and divisions. On the returning spring, three hundred thousand men were found buried in the snow; all his spoil was lost, his veteran troops were utterly destroyed, his fame was tarnished, and his throne was shaken.

He was followed into France by the troops of Russia and Germany. In 1814, the British army under Wellington crossed the Pyrenees, and liberated the southern provinces of France. In the same year, the Austrian, Prussian, and Russian armies marched to Paris, captured the capital, and expelled Napoleon. The battle of Waterloo, in the year after, destroyed the remnant of his legions in the field, threw him into the hands of the British government, and exiled him to St Helena, where he remained a British prisoner until he died.

Alexander died in 1825, at the age of forty-eight, and, leaving no sons, was succeeded by his brother Nicholas, the third son of Paul-Constantine having resigned his claims to the throne. We pass over, for the moment, the various events of the present imperial reign. Its policy has been constantly turned to the acquisition of territory; and that policy has been always successful. The two great objects of all Russian cabinets, since the days of Constantine, have been the possession of Turkey and the command of the Mediterranean. Either would inevitably produce a universal war; and while we deprecate so tremendous a calamity to the world, and rely on the rational and honourable qualities of the Emperor, to rescue both Russia and Europe from so desperate a struggle, we feel that it is only wise to be prepared for all the contingencies that may result from the greatest mass of power that the world has ever seen, moved by a despotic will,

and that will itself subject to the common caprices of the mind of man.

The volumes to which we shall now occasionally refer, are written by an intelligent observer, who began his study of Russia by an office under her government, and who has, since that period, been occupied in acquiring additional knowledge of her habits, finances, population, and general system of administration. A Frenchman by birth, but a German by descent, he in a very considerable degree unites the descriptive dexterity of the one with the grave exactness of the other. His subject is of the first importance to European politicians, and he seems capable of giving them the material of sound conclusions.

The author commences with the reign of Alexander, and gives a just panegyric to the kindliness of his disposition, the moderation of his temper, and his sincere desire to promote the happiness of his people. Nothing but this disposition could have saved him from all the vices of ambition, profligacy, and irreligion; for his tutor was La Harpe, one of the savans of the Swiss school, a man of accomplishment and talent, but a scoffer. But the English reader should be reminded, that when men of this rank of ability are pronounced hostile to religion, their hostility was not to the principles of Christianity, but to the religion of France; to the performances of the national worship, to the burlesque miracles wrought at the tomb of the Abbé Paris, and to that whole system of human inventions and monkish follies, which was as much disbelieved in France as it was disdained in England.

In fact, the religion of the gospel had never come into their thoughts; and when they talked of revelation, they thought only of the breviary. The Empress Catherine, finding no literature in Russia, afraid, or ashamed of being known as a German, and extravagantly fond of fame, attached herself to the showy pamphleteers of France, and courted every gale of French adulation in return. She even corresponded personally with some of the French litterateurs, and was French in every thing except living in St Petersburg, and wearing the Russian diadem. She was even so

much the slave of fashion as to adopt, or pretend to adopt, the fantasies in government which the French were now beginning to mingle with their fantasies in religion.

She wrote thus to Zimmerman, the author of the dreamy and dreary work on "Solitude," "I have been attached to philosophy, because my soul has always been singularly republican. I confess that this tendency stands in strange contrast with the unlimited power of my place."

If the quiet times of Europe had continued, and France had exhibited the undisturbed pomps of her ancient court, Alexander would probably have been a Frenchman and philosophe on the banks of the Neva; but stirring times were to give him more rational ideas, and the necessities of Russia reclaimed him from the absurdities of his education.

La Harpe himself was a man of some distinction-a Swiss, though thoroughly French and revolutionary. After leaving Russia, he became prominent, even in France, as an abettor of republican principles, and was one of the members of the Swiss Directory. La Harpe survived the Revolution, the Empire, and the Bourbons, and died in 1838.

The commencement of Alexander's reign was singularly popular, for it began with treaties on every side. Paul, who had sent a challenge to all the sovereigns of Europe to fight him in person, had alarmed his people with the prospect of a universal war. Alexander was the universal pacificator; he made peace with England, peace with France, and a commercial treaty with Sweden. He now seemed resolved to avoid all foreign wars, to keep clear of European politics, and to devote all his thoughts to the improvement of his empire. Commencing this rational and meritorious task with zeal, he narrowed the censorship of the press, and enlarged the importation of foreign works. broke up the system of espionage formed a Council of State-reduced the taxes-abolished the punishment by torture-refused to make grants of peasants-constituted the Senate into a high court of justice divided into departments, in order to remedy the slowness of law proceedings

He

established universities and schoolsallowed every subject to choose his own profession; and, as the most important and characteristic of all his reforms, allowed his nobility to sell portions of land to their serfs, with the right of personal freedom: by this last act laying the foundation of a new and free race of proprietors in Russia.

The abolition of serfdom was a great experiment, whose merits the serfs themselves scarcely appreciated, but which is absolutely necessary to any elevation of the national character. It has been always opposed by the nobles, who regard it as the actual plunder of their inheritance; but Alexander honourably exhibited his more humane and rational views on the subject, whenever the question came within his decision.

A nobleman of the highest rank had requested an estate "with its serfs," as an imperial mark of favour. Alexander wrote to him in this style: "The peasants of Russia are for the most part slaves. I need not expatiate on the degradation, or on the misfortune of such a condition. Accordingly, I have made a vow not to increase the number; and to this end I have laid down the principle not to give away peasants as property."

The Emperor sometimes did striking things in his private capacity. A princess of the first rank applied to him to protect her husband from his creditors, intimating that "the empe ror was above the law."

Alexander answered, "I do not wish, madam, to put myself above the law, even if I could, for in all the world I do not recognise any authority but that which comes from the law. On the contrary, I feel more than any one else the obligation of watching over its observance, and even in cases where others may be indulgent, I can only be just."

The French war checked all those projects of improvement; and the march of his troops to the aid of Austria in 1805, commenced a series of hostilities, which, for seven years, occupied the resources of the empire, and had nearly subverted his throne. But he behaved bravely throughout the contest. When Austria was beaten and signed a treaty, Alexander refused