some of her attendants entered and found
her on the floor senseless. She had fallen in a fit of apoplexy, and
died at ten o'clock in the evening of the next day without regaining
consciousness or uttering a word, in the sixty-seventh year of her
age, and after a reign of thirty-five years.

Paul, who was at his country palace, being informed of his mother's
death, and of his accession to the throne, hastened to St. Petersburg.
He ordered the tomb of Peter III. to be opened and placed the coffin
by the side of that of the empress, with a true love knot reaching
from one to the other, containing the inscription, under the
circumstances supremely ridiculous, "divided in life--united in
death." They were both buried together with the most sumptuous funeral
honors.

The character of Catharine II. is sufficiently portrayed in her
marvelous history. The annals of past ages may be searched in vain for
her parallel. Two passions were ever predominant with her, love and
ambition. Her mind seemed incapable of exhaustion, and notwithstanding
the number of her successive favorites, with whom she entered into the
most guilty connections, no monarch ever reigned with more dignity or
with a more undisputed sway. Under her reign, notwithstanding the
desolating wars, Russia made rapid advances in power and civilization.
She protected commerce, excited industry, cultivated the arts,
encouraged learning, promoted manufactures, founded cities, dug
canals, and developed in a thousand ways the wealth and resources of
the country. She had so many vices that some have consigned her name
to infamy, and so many virtues, that others have advocated her
canonization.

By the most careful calculation it is estimated that during the
thirty five years of the reign of Catharine, she added over four
hundred thousand square miles to the territory of Russia, and six
millions of inhabitants. It would be difficult to estimate the
multitude of lives and the amount of treasure expended in her
ambitious wars. We know of no more affecting comment to be made upon
the history of our world, than that it presents such a bloody tragedy,
that even the career of Catharine does not stand out in any peculiar
prominence of atrocity. God made man but little lower than the angels.
He is indeed fallen.

CHAPTER XXVIII.

THE REIGN OF PAUL I.

From 1796 to 1801.

Accession of Paul I. to the Throne.--Influence of the Hereditary
Transmission of Power.--Extravaga