e to his Danes, some think. For certain, did adopt the Russian
Expectancy, the Greek religion so called; and was," in the way we saw
long years ago, "married (or to all appearance married) to Catharina
Alexiewna of Anhalt-Zerbst, born in Stettin; [Herr Preuss knows the
house: "Now Dr. Lehmann's [at that time the Governor of Stettin's],
in which also Czar Paul's second Spouse [Eugen of Wurtemberg a NEW
Governor's Daughter], who is Mother of the Czars that follow, was born:"
Preuss, ii. 310, 311. Catharine, during her reign, was pious in a
small way to the place of her cradle; sent her successive MEDALS &c. to
Stettin, which still has them to show.] a Lady who became world-famous
as Czarina of the Russias.

"Peter is an abstruse creature; has lived, all this while, with his
Catharine an abstruse life, which would have gone altogether mad except
for Catharine's superior sense. An awkward, ardent, but helpless kind of
Peter, with vehement desires, with a dash of wild magnanimity even: but
in such an inextricable element, amid such darkness, such
provocations of unmanageable opulence, such impediments, imaginary and
real,--dreadfully real to poor Peter,--as made him the unique of
mankind in his time. He 'used to drill cats,' it is said, and to do the
maddest-looking things (in his late buried-alive condition);--and fell
partly, never quite, which was wonderful, into drinking, as the solution
of his inextricabilities. Poor Peter: always, and now more than ever,
the cynosure of vulturous vulpine neighbors, withal; which infinitely
aggravated his otherwise bad case!--

"For seven or eight years, there came no progeny, nor could come; about
the eighth or ninth, there could, and did: the marvellous Czar Paul that
was to be. Concerning whose exact paternity there are still calumnious
assertions widely current; to this individual Editor much a matter of
indifference, though on examining, his verdict is: 'Calumnies, to all
appearance; mysteries which decent or decorous society refuses to speak
of, and which indecent is pretty sure to make calumnies out of.' Czar
Paul may be considered genealogically genuine, if that is much an object
to him. Poor Paul, does not he father himself, were there nothing more?
Only that Peter and this Catharine could have begotten such a Paul.
Genealogically genuine enough, my poor Czar,--that needed to be garroted
so very soon!

2. OF CATHARINE AND THE BOOKS UPON PETER AND HER. "Catharine too had an
i