result of a duel. His last
work, the drama "Boris Goudunov," was left uncompleted. After his recall
from his exile in Bessarabia, Pushkin had been appointed as imperial
historian by Czar Nicholas, in which capacity he wrote a history of Peter
the Great and an account of the conspiracy of Pugatshev. Of his poetic
works, the most important was "Eugene Onegin," an epic written after the
manner of Byron's "Don Juan." "Eugene Onegin" has remained one of the
classics of Russian literature throughout the Nineteenth Century. Pushkin's
brother poet Lermontov, then an officer of the Guards, wrote a poem
demanding vengeance for Pushkin's death. He was banished to the Caucasus,
and his writings were suppressed. Under a false name he now wrote his
famous epic: "Song of Czar Ivan Vasilyevitch."

[Sidenote: The first kindergarten]

[Sidenote: German clerical struggle]

A joyful event in German letters was the great festival at Mainz in honor
of Gutenberg and his invention of the art of printing. Froebel opened his
first kindergarten at Blankenburg in Thuringia. Auerbach, the popular
novelist, brought out his "Spinoza." Much was made by Germans of the
opening of the first railway between Dresden and Leipzig, and of the
invention of coal-tar colors, or aniline dyes, by a process destined to
revolutionize the arts of coloring and dyeing throughout the world. A great
stir was created by the imprisonment of the Archbishop of Cologne at Minden
after a quarrel with the Prussian Government concerning marriages between
persons of different creeds. He was forbidden to go to Bonn. Backed by the
Holy See in Rome, he continued to defy the Protestant authorities.

[Sidenote: Death of William IV.]

[Sidenote: Victoria's accession]

A change of rule, fraught with future consequences for Hanover, resulted
from the death of William IV., King of England and Hanover, on the 20th of
June. By the death of the old King, his niece, Victoria Alexandra, then in
her eighteenth year, became Queen of England. Miss Wynn, in her "Diaries of
a Lady of Quality," has told how the news was brought to the young Princess
at Kensington by the Archbishop of Canterbury (Dr. Howley) and the Lord
Chamberlain (Marquis Conyngham): "They did not reach Kensington Palace
until five o'clock in the morning. They knocked, they rang, they thumped
for a considerable time before they could rouse the porter at the gate;
they were again kept waiting in the courtyard, then turned int