NICHOLAS.

THE Emperor Paul of Russia, during the later years of

his reign, developed a character of extraordinary eccentricity. By many it was supposed that he had become actually insane. At one time he published an invitation, in the Court Gazette, to all the sovereigns of Europe, to come to St. Petersburg, and settle their disputes by a personal combat, in an inclosed field, with their prime ministers for esquires. There was, indeed, some method in this madness. If enraged kings would but settle their quarrels by shedding their own blood, instead of compelling the unoffending peasant to cut down his equally unoffending brother, the interests of humanity would be greatly subserved. Paul had issued a decree, commanding the noblesse, of whatever rank or sex, to alight from their carriages whenever they met any member of the imperial family, and to stand in reverential homage till the person in whose veins the royal blood circulated had passed by. In a thousand ways his administration had become tyrannical and capricious in the extreme. He began to look with an angry eye upon his wife and his children, and dropped ominous hints of his intention to send Alexander into Siberian exile, to immure Constantine in the dungeons of a prison, and to consign the empress-mother to the cells of a cloister.

Alarmed at this threatening state of affairs, many of the leading nobles entered into a conspiracy to compel Paul to

abdicate. Alexander and Constantine, trembling in view of the doom impending over them, consented to it with the express provision that their father's person should be uninjured. At two o'clock in the morning of the 11th of March, 1801, a small band of armed men, in disguise, were seen approaching the palace of Paul. The night was dark, and, late as was the hour, lights were glimmering from many of the apartments. The suspicious-looking band boldly approached the massive gateway, and entered without difficulty. A sentinel at the door of the emperor's chamber opposed their entrance; one blow with a saber laid him lifeless upon the floor. The conspirators rushed into the apartment of the king. Paul, alarmed by the tumult, had sprung from his bed, and hid himself in a clothespress. The warm bed-clothes indicated that the emperor was not far off. He was soon discovered, and dragged from his retreat. With the utmost deliberation, the conspirators wound around his neck his own sash, and drew it in a tight knot. For a few moments the emperor struggled in the agony of strangulation, and then fell upon the floor motionless in death.

Alexander and Constantine were in the room below, awaiting the result of what they supposed was to be merely a forced abdication. Nicholas was then but a child. The conspirators, consisting of the highest nobility of the realm, placed the body of the king upon his bed, and descended into the apartment where the two grand dukes, with intense solicitude, had been listening to the fearful struggle in the room above them. As they entered, Alexander eagerly inquired if they had spared his father's life. Silence proclaimed the melancholy truth. The two sons