which Pushkin was the most distinguished
ornament, and of whose African origin the poet, both in personal
appearance and in mental physiognomy, bore the most unequivocal marks.
To the memory of this singular progenitor, Pushkin has consecrated more
than one of his smaller works, and has frequently alluded to the African
blood which he inherited from the admiral.

In 1811, Pushkin obtained (through the interest of Turgenieff, to whom
Russia is thus, in some sort, indebted for her great poet) admission
into the Imperial Lyceum of Tsarskoe Selo, where he was to receive the
education, and to form the friendships, which so strongly coloured, not
only the literary productions of his whole career, but undoubtedly
modified, to a considerable extent, the personal character of the poet.
This institution, then recently established by the Emperor Alexander,
and always honoured by the peculiar favour and protection of its
illustrious founder, was modelled on the plan of those _lycees_ which
France owed to the genius of Napoleon; and was intended to confer upon
its pupils the advantage of a complete encyclopedic education, and, not
only embracing the preparatory or school course, but also the academic
_curriculum_ of a university, was calculated to dismiss the students, at
the end of their course of training, immediately into active life. The
Lyceum must be undoubtedly considered as having nursed in its bosom a
greater number of distinguished men than any other educational
institution in the country; and our readers may judge of the peculiar
privileges enjoyed by this establishment, (the primary object of whose
foundation was, that of furnishing to the higher civil departments in
the government, and to the ministry of foreign affairs in particular, a
supply of able and accomplished _employes_,) from the fact of its having
been located by the emperor in a wing of the palace of Tsarskoe
Selo--the favourite summer residence of the Tsars of Russia since the
time of Catharine II. It is to the last-named sovereign, as is well
known to travellers, that this celebrated spot is indebted for its
splendid palace and magnificent gardens, forming, perhaps, the most
striking object which gratifies the stranger's curiosity in the environs
of St Petersburg.

The students of the Lyceum are almost always youths of the most
distinguished families among the Russian nobility, and are themselves
selected from among the most promising in point of intelle