ALEXANDER, EMPEROR OF RUSSIA.

In the first year of the present century Petersburg was kept in a state of constant distraction by its crazy Emperor. His monomania assumed a form which is not unfrequent among old kings and young clergymen of a certain school, -a morbid zeal in affairs of man-millinery. Ukases came forth directed against the round hats of the English and the pantaloons of the French; and if a gentleman appeared in the streets with top-boots, he was apt to be sent home on his stocking-soles, whilst ladies were imprisoned and fed on bread and water for not wearing their hair in the fashion approved by his majesty. For causes the most frivolous, and not unfrequently for no cause at all, veteran officers were cashiered, and nobles were sent off to Siberia: for a very harmless epigram a man of letters was sentenced to lose his tongue; and many persons disappeared who were believed to have been privately executed. Consternation spread through every circle, and existence became intolerable amidst the caprices and barbarities of a delirious despotism.

At last recourse was had to the extreme remedy of subjects under absolute government. About two in the morning of March 24, 1801, several officers of rank, including some of the Emperor's favourites, presented themselves at the door of his chamber. The hussar on guard refused them admission, and was cut down on the spot. The Emperor hearing a scuffle sprang out of bed, and hid himself in a closet where armour was kept. But he was soon disco

vered, and dragged from his retreat. The conspirators presented a written abdication, and told him to sign it. This made him furious. He attempted to strike one of the party, and in return the grand equerry dealt him a blow which broke his arm. Others instantly closed in upon him, and bore him to the ground, when the sash of an officer was passed round his neck, and the unhappy Czar was strangled.*

Thus closed the career of Paul, the father of Alexander and Constantine, and of the present Emperor Nicholas. Of these, the eldest, Alexander, ascended the throne so fearfully vacated; and at the ceremony of his inauguration, as a French lady wrote to Fouché, "the young Emperor walked, preceded by the assassins of his grandfather, followed by those of his father, and surrounded by his own."

Alexander was born December 28, 1777. From his mother, Maria of Würtemberg, he inherited a gentle and affectionate disposition, with more susceptibility of friendship than is always convenient for an absolute monarch. Whilst still a little boy,. he often felt powerful religious impressions; and so did his brother Constantine. The brothers slept in the same room, and when they grew old enough they gave up the form of devotion which they had been taught to commit to memory, and often poured out their hearts together in free and unpremeditated prayer. But unfortunately there was no one at hand to show them the way of God more perfectly. Their grandmother, Catherine, who took the entire charge of their up-bringing, was a virago and a scoffer, and the French tutor to whom she consigned them was a freethinker. At the same time Cesar Laharpe was a man of many virtues. He was a true republican, and he constantly laboured to fill with humane

* Biographie Universelle, tom. 56. Clarke's Travels in Russia, chap. 1. Alison's Europe, chap. 33. Bell's History of Russia, vol. iii. p. 255.

sentiments and liberal ideas the minds of his imperial pupils.

On assuming the sceptre, the young sovereign remembered some of the best lessons of his tutor. He abolished torture as a means of procuring evidence. He gave large

concessions to the press. mistry, of medicine, and marine. He sought to encourage commerce, and for the improvement of agriculture he invited English farmers to settle in the country.

He established schools of che

But it was the time of the great Continental war, and internal improvements are usually suspended amidst conscriptions and campaigns. Alexander levied armies against Napoleon. The murder of the Duc d'Enghien roused his generous indignation, and to considerations of policy added an element of almost personal hostility. But the Russian arms were unsuccessful. The bloody fields of Austerlitz and Eylau were soon followed by the rout of Friedland; and in June of 1807 Alexander proposed to Napoleon an armistice, which led to an interview at Tilsit, and to that treaty which for nearly five years severed Alexander from his allies.

Up to this period the young Emperor was a man of the world, with more generosity and enthusiasm than most worldlings retain, but withal a lover of pleasure, and almost as ambitious as any of his predecessors. He was flattered by the friendship of Napoleon, and he was excited by a scheme which divided Europe betwixt himself and his new confederate. The project was as perfidious as it was daring, and the only excuse for Alexander is that he had fallen under the spell of a freebooter whose ascendancy over others was little else than magical.* Alexander was enchanted.

"We are going to give the emperor a glass of laudanum, and whilst he is sleeping we shall go and occupy ourselves elsewhere."JOMINI.

THE NINETY-FIRST PSALM.

451

It seemed as if an apotheosis had taken place, and their twin-star hung in the firmament with a world at the feet of the new Castor and Pollux. At Erfurt, when Talma played before a "parterre" of sovereigns,-princes on benches, kings on common chairs, and the two autocrats enthroned in front of all,- at the line,

"L'amitié d'un grand homme est un bienfait des dieux,"

grasping Napoleon's hand, Alexander bowed and exclaimed, "Never did I feel it more," and the house resounded with imperial thunder.

At last the sorcery began to dissolve, and the masque fell from the face of the Italian Mephistopheles. In 1812 war was declared betwixt "the great man” and his friend, and the flames of Moscow on the one side, and the sepulture of half a million of men amidst the snows of Russia on the other, were the afterpiece to the drama of Erfurt.

It was after this great lesson that the soul of Alexander began to crave something more enduring and more satisfying than the friendships of this earth. Aspirations began to visit him such as he had often felt in the guileless days of his childhood; and although enfeebled by long habits of evil, and checked by infidel doubts, such aspirations were welcome, and he wondered if it were possible for a sinner to obtain peace with God. He began to pray. He read the Bible. He tried to regulate his temper and forgive his enemies. He became exceedingly thoughtful. Many would have said he was religious. He was everything except satisfied and happy.

When he was departing on the campaign of 1813, a lady of rank wrote out a copy of the 91st Psalm. At the moment when he received it he was just quitting Riga, and without reading the paper he put it in his pocket. He travelled three days without changing his clothes; and on

the frontier he went into a church, where he heard a sermon on the words, "Thou shalt tread upon the lion and adder; the young lion and the dragon shalt thou trample under feet." The sermon arrested his attention, and made a considerable impression on his mind. But in the evening, when, examining his papers, he alighted on the lady's transcript of the self-same Psalm, he felt that there was here the hand of a special Providence, and not only was he encouraged as to the success of the campaign, but he returned to the reading of the Scriptures with new earnestness.

Grave and God-fearing as the Emperor had now become, so that his staff remarked a certain grandeur or solemnity superadded to his wonted affability, he still longed to find one who could solve his doubts, and guide him into the light of clearer knowledge: when one day he heard a letter read which Madame de Krüdener had written to a friend. Madame de Krüdener was a lady of an ancient Livonian family, at one period of her life remarkable for her wit and her brilliancy, and now in her declining years not less remarkable for her ardent piety. With a faith in God, to which nothing was formidable, with uncommon vigour of mind, with sleepless zeal and activity, she had become the Russian Countess of Huntingdon, and very wonderful was the influence which she exerted over the minds of others. On hearing that letter of hers, Alexander felt, There is one who could help me! but she was then at a distance, and his time was engrossed in the urgencies of a great campaign.

It was early in June 1815 that Alexander reached Heilbronn, on his way to meet Napoleon, who had escaped from Elba. Borne down by the double load of personal and imperial anxieties, he was sitting alone in his apartment, and had taken up a book,-but he could not read. The volume dropped from his hand, and he was thinking what a comfort the conversation of a pious friend would