A. D. determined resolutely to meet his foes, and to anticipate their meditated attack. Accordingly, that monarch having invaded 1750. Saxony, Elizabeth took a very active part in the wonderful contest of seven years, which was commenced in behalf of Maria Theresa, and would have been more sensibly, and perhaps, fatally felt by Frederic, had not the grand-duke, whom the empress had appointed her successor, been the friend of the king of Prussia. Elizabeth's orders, which tended to the ruin of Frederic, were not so punctually performed as they ought to have been; and many, who were employed in military affairs, were afraid of injuring the Prussian monarch, that they might gain the approbation of their future sovereign, and acted in conformity with the secret instructions of the grand-duke, without regarding the commands of the empress. Elizabeth tarnished her reign by the institution of a political court of inquisition, under the name of a secret state-chancery, which was empowered to examine into, and punish all expressions of displeasure with the measures of government. This introduced the vilest practices: the lowest and most profligate of the people were employed as spies and informers, who were paid for their denunciations and calumnies, and for aspersing the most virtuous characters. The prisons were frequently insufficient to contain the number of those who were accused of a want of respect for the government. Elizabeth is reported to have indulged, particularly for a few years preceding her death, in the most unbounded intemperance and sensuality. She also evinced great apprehensions and alarins, alarms, lest she should suffer a fate similar to that of Anne, and is said to have cursed the memory of those who first conceived the design of dethroning princes. She continued, however, in the undisturbed and tranquil enjoyment of her exalted station, and departed this life after a reign of twenty-one years. A. D. On the death of Elizabeth, Charles Peter Ulric, only son of the duke of 1762. Holstein, and who assumed the title of Peter III. peaceably ascended the throne of Russia as the declared successor of the late empress. He was grandson to Peter the Great and Catharine I. whose eldest daughter, the princess Anne, had married his father Charles Frederic. If, in ascending the throne of his ancestors, Peter III. met with no opposition, his elevation was beheld with a passive acquiescence, rather than with cheerful attachment: the public was distrustful, the court reserved, and in his own family all was cold. The Russians were averse to foreign masters, and the emperor was a native of Holstein, and had not long been resident in Russia, to the manners of which he was obnoxious. His heart was in Holstein, and the Germans possessed his confidence: to the concerns of the empire, from which he had been kept aloof by his predecessor, he was cold and repugnant. He had disapproved of the participation of Russia in the war against Prussia; he was suspected of a design of new modelling the nation; of using its force for the aggrandise ment of Holstein; of dividing himself from his family, and securing his inheritance to a patermal relation. Whilst grand-duke of Russia, the empress Eliza K. 3 Elizabeth had given him for a wife Sophia-Augusta princess of Anhalt-Zerbst, who, at her initiation in the Greek religion, and at the ceremony of her coronation, assumed the name of Catharine, was declared grand-duchess of Russia; and it was settled that she should succeed to the throne, if she survived her husband. Great was the contrast which this pair exhibited: the one united grace with majesty in her physiognomy and deportment; whilst the other was ugly and ridiculous in every respect. The grand-duke affected the Prussian habiliments, of which he carried the forms to excess. An enormous hat, whimsically cocked, covered his little, sneering ill-featured face. He was not, however, deficient in genius; but he was void of judgment, and "loved what was great, but loved it with littleness." Frederic III. king of Prussia, was his hero, or rather his divinity; and he was seen to fall on his knees before the portrait of that monarch, exclaiming, " "My "brother! together we will conquer the uni Several years had elapsed, during which conjugal tenderness, ill-cultivated, had produced no fruit; and Catharine weary of the barren caresses of her husband, procured for herself the gratification of becoming a mother by an in-. trigue with a young nobleman of her court, whose name was Soltikoff. Elizabeth, being informed of their criminal intercourse, appointed Soltikoff, under the title of envoy-extraordinary, to repair to Stockholm, and notify to the king of Sweden the birth of Paul Petrowitz, of whom the grand-duchess had been recently delivered. Catharine, feeling for her separa tion from the object of her choice, prepared to exert, with the empress, her talents and interest in favour of her exiled lover. But finding her efforts vain and useless, she provided herself with another paramour, Stanislaus Poniatowski, a Polish nobleman, whom the British ambassador to Russia had introduced, and who was afterwar is raised to the throne of Peland. The grand-duchess being pleased with him at a secret interview, to which she repaired in disguise, it was agreed, that, for the purpose of guarding against unforeseen accidents, and of securing him from personal danger by the privilege of inviolability derived from the law of nations, Poniatowski should go back to Poland, and return vested with the dignity of an ambassader. This precaution was not useless, for being surprized by the grand-duke himself in the very act of furtively entering the chamber of Catharine, the privileges of his public character saved him from the first emotions of fury; and Peter suffered Poniatowski to escape, and contented himself with obtaining his recal to Polan 1. This was a heart-felt stroke to Catharine, who endezvoured, but in vain, to obtain a revocation of the doom, by which her paramcar was to be torn from her. However indulgent Elizabeth might be to her own weaknesses, she would not venture to leave in her family a germ of discord, which might be productive of disastrous consequences. The grand-duchess now lived at court as in a desert, and had no visible connections, exept with young women, who, like herself, had been enamoured of Polish geal men. During this period, she laid the foundations of her subse quent quent greatness. Then it was, that she secured for herself friends against the hour of need; that all the men of importance were persuaded, by the secret connections which she formed with them, that they would become still more important, if she obtained possession of the go-vernment; that, while under the cloak of a great but unfortunate passion, she enjoyed some consolatory private adventures, several of them were fully authorised to suppose that they should fill the rank of favourites at her court. Such was the situation of Catharine, when the empress Elizabeth died, and the grandduke assumed the imperial sceptre. In the proclamation which announced this event to the empire, Peter made no mention of Catharine or her son, an omission that to some appeared to presage the overthrow of the lineal succession: neither was there any preparation for the coronation at Moscow; a solemnity, rendered, by its usage and antiquity, highly impressive to the Russians. Some of the first measures of the emperor, however, were popular and auspicious: to the Russian nobility and gentry he gave freedom; he recalled the state-prisoners, with which jealousy and despotism had peopled Siberia; he abolished the inquisition, that dreadful tribunal, the insult of reason, and the scourge of humanity; he exercised his kindness on all who had been attached to Elizabeth; and he forgave his enemies, and continued in their post every great officer of state. In a word, reflection succeeded to passion; to fury and violence, gentleness and humanity; and as if enlightened by the importance of his station, he shewed himself in an instant patient, rational, and just. The administration |