ssembly to Moscow to
consider a new code; and her "Instruction" to the delegates, saturated
as it is with Montesquieu and the rest, shows her abreast of her time.
Politicians of the old school, indeed, shuddered at its array of
grandiloquent maxims--"there are bombs enough in it," cried Panin, "to
bring the walls about our ears." She is here, in spite of all that has
been said, exactly where we invariably find her, neither a day in front
of her age nor a day behind.

Reform of the _ex cathedra_ sort was just then in the air. From the
Tagus to the Dnieper, and from Copenhagen to the Vatican, Europe was
crowded with paternal monarchs and earnest ministers, who were willing
to do almost everything for the people and nothing by them. The world
had not seen statesmen so sincere, enlightened, and plausible. A
generation later, on the meeting of the National Assembly, the despotic
reformation of Montesquieu and Voltaire will still seem about to be
translated into action. Men read their Rousseau: soon they will
understand him; they will also understand that _Non de nobis sine
nobis_, which was the haughty motto of the Hungarian magnates.

But her attention soon became diverted. She was not, as Gunning thought,
insincere, only fickle; she wanted patience and continuity of aim. The
"States-General" had produced an excellent effect in the world, and, in
fact, had afforded her information afterward turned to account. Her eye
is on the Turk: as with the second Pitt, had it not been for this cursed
war we should have seen greater things. "Beginnings--only beginnings!"
exclaims an eye-witness, "there are plenty of sketches to be seen, but
where is the finished picture?" Another reports that shoals of academies
and secondary schools bear witness to Catharine's enthusiasm for
education, but that some exist only on paper, while others seem to have
everything except scholars. Things are done hastily, and without just
measure or proportion; the imitative talent of the Russian does not seem
to carry him quite far enough. At her death, says a historian who wrote
eight years after it, most of her foundations were already in ruins;
everything seemed to have been abandoned before completion. Yet we must
not forget that liberal ideas were in themselves a revelation to the
Russia of her days, and that after a succession of contemptible
sovereigns she appeared as the first worthy successor of Peter. It was
already something for a woman there to b