Protestant. Strange destiny! for one of the last descendants of the Genghis Khanides, who were once the dread of all Christendom, and frightened western ecclesiastics into holding a general council, to have become Christian, and Protestant also, in the heart of the only beatific Russo-Greek Church.

The fate of the Bey Mansour is not known with certainty. According to the Russian accounts, a prisoner answering to descriptions of the formidable chieftain came into their hands at the capture of Anapa in 1791, who was sent to end his days either in the convent of Solovetz, in the White Sea, or the fortress of Schlusselburg at the outlet of the Ladoga. Other relations identify him with a venerable recluse who lived in a lonely glen of the Caucasus, with a strange assortment of articles in his dwelling,-maps and weapons, books in foreign languages, and mathematical instruments. A wild legend is current among some of the highland tribes that, because he was not a true Mussulman, the warrior-prophet has been condemned to one hundred years' imprisonment in the bowels of a mountain as a kind of penance, at the expiration of which term he will reappear, and wave his conquering sword, to the terror of the Muscovites. The only point positively known is, that he suddenly vanished from public notice, left behind him

the memory of brave deeds and an unconquerable spirit, and that, next to that of Mohammed himself, his name is venerated in the defiles and valleys of Circassia.

No change was ever more striking, or could well be more melancholy, than that which took place with reference to Potemkin a few months after his repetition of Belshazzar's feast. For sixteen years he had been almost omnipotent in the empire, ruling the empress, delighting to make the magnates feel his power, and putting no restraint upon his passions, however costly or difficult the gratification. Generals trembled at his frown, and major-generals were happy to be his valets. In the city and the camp, his palace or tent, was a court, a harem, a den for swindlers, and a temple for bacchanals. In winter, he had cherries at his table from a greenhouse at the rate of a ruble each. From Cherson, officers were despatched to Riga, a thousand miles, to wait the arrival of the spring ships to bring him oranges, or to Moscow to fetch sterlet soup. Yet he was a man of grand conceptions and great sagacity, but utterly failing in details from negligence; for, with abundance of champagne in his camp, he was often without a drop of water, and, with piles of petit patties, he had not a morsel of bread. Worn out,

though not more than fifty-two years of age, he attended the congress of Jassy, but did not witness the conclusion of the treaty. One morning, in the autumn of 1791, a carriage left the town, conveying the governor-general of the Crimea and Southern Russia, on his way to Nicolaief, to recruit himself. It was long before dawn. The air was keen, and the wind moaned and sobbed as it swept over the steppe. Scarcely had a few versts been accomplished, when the carriage stopped, and its inmate was lifted out. Attendants laid him on the grass at the foot of a tree, and, without a covering for his head, he expired. The body was temporarily placed in a church at Cherson. Catherine is said to have designed splendid funeral honours, but her sudden death prevented them. Paul, who succeeded, ordered the corpse to be thrown into the first hole that was met with, and it was buried, without ceremony, in the ditch of the fortress. No person can now point to the spot and say, Here lies Potemkin.

The ambitious sovereign expired in the sixth autumn after the decease of the imperious minister. On the morning of November the 6th, 1796, she rose in usual health, chatted gaily over her coffee, and retired to her cabinet. In half an hour afterwards she was found stretched senseless upon the

T

floor, struck down by apoplexy. The obsequies of Catherine are unique in the history of funerals. The new monarch, Paul, ordered the remains of his murdered father to be exhumed from an obscure grave in the monastery of St. Alexander Nevsky, and placed by those of his mother in the winter palace. The two bodies, after a separation of more than thirty years, were then conveyed together to the imperial vaults of the Peter and Paul Church; while Orloff and Baratinsky, the main instruments of the one in the assassination of the other, were compelled to walk in the procession behind them. Most of the buildings erected to accommodate the empress on her way to the Crimea, or to commemorate the visit, upon which immense sums were expended, have gone to decay. In less than fifteen years afterwards, Dr. Clarke found the villa at Stara Crim crammed with heaps of liquorice root, collected for the use of the military hospitals from the neighbouring mountains. Ekaterinoslav, a town on the Dnieper, to which she gave her name, and founded in the presence of Joseph II., has not prospered. Though planned upon a gigantic scale, as if intended to be the abode of a million of souls, it has only gathered a population of a few thousands in the space of nearly threescore years and ten.

The palace provided at this spot for the imperial tourist was a splendid edifice, standing on a slope by the river, surrounded by an extensive park. The trees have grown up to be magnificent timber; the stream flows on with undiminished majesty and might; but the royal dwelling, spoiled by the peasantry for materials to erect or repair their cabins, is a heap of shapeless fragments-a ruin without the interest of history or the dignity of age.

Permanent shiftings of population in the southern part of her dominions marked the reign of Catherine. They were both voluntary and enforced, and involved enormous hardships. A horde of Kalmucks in the steppe between the Don and the Volga had long borne with patience the exactions of official inspectors, who spoiled them of their cattle for their own private benefit, and tyrannically interfered with their national customs. Upon remonstrating, corporal punishment was offered to a chief, a venerable old man, respected by the whole people. This was an indignity not to be endured. Priests and elders proclaimed a fast, held a council, and proceeded from one encampment to another, passing from tent to One determination inspired every breast. Suddenly they all vanished, old and young, strong and weak, tents and goods, flocks and herds. Not a

tent.