is no less than a direct challenge to
our good King. Chivalry is not yet dead, as I supposed. After expulsion
from the sunny plains of Italy and Spain, it has revived among the polar
snows.

The Russian Emperor has actually published this defiance to the world,
in the St Petersburg _Gazette_. "It is said that his majesty the
Emperor, perceiving that the European powers cannot come to an
accommodation, and wishing to put an end to a war which has raged eleven
years, has conceived the idea of appointing a place, to which he will
invite the other potentates to engage together with himself in single
combat, in Lists which shall be marked out. For which purpose they shall
bring with them, to act as their esquires, umpires, and heralds, their
most enlightened ministers and able generals, as Thugut, Pitt, and
Bernstorff. He will bring, on his part, Counts Pahlen and Kutusoff."

The first impression on the appearance of this singular document was
surprise; the next, of course, was ridicule. The man must have utterly
lost his senses. He has been for some months playing the most fantastic
tricks in his capital: cutting off people's beards if they happen to
displease his taste as a barber, cutting off coat-skirts if they offend
his taste as a tailor, ordering the passers-by to pay him a kind of
Oriental homage, and threatening to send every body to Siberia. Under
such circumstances, the air of Russia is supposed to be unfavourable to
royal longevity.

The death of a singular character occurred a few days since, a
_protegee_ of Hannah More, and, as might be expected from that lady's
publishing habits, rendered sufficiently conspicuous by her pen. She was
a total stranger, apparently a German by her pronunciation of English,
yet carefully avoiding to speak any foreign language. She was first
found taking refuge under a haystack, apparently in a state of insanity,
and determined to die there. The peasantry, who occasionally brought her
food, of course soon gave her a name, and, as she was evidently a
gentlewoman, they called her the lady of the haystack. Hannah More, who
had unquestionably some humanity, though she was rather too fond of its
public exhibition, made her the heroine of a tale, and thus drew upon
her considerable notice. She was prevailed on, though with some
difficulty, to leave the haystack; and after a residence of a
considerable period in the country, supported by subscriptions, she was
removed, on its being as