49 CATHERINE II. OF RUSSIA. Ir is the common lot of the great arbiters of the destinies of their race to be remembered far more distinctly for the abuse which they may have made of their power than for the benefits which they have conferred through its employment. The name of the Empress Catherine is more familiar to European ears as that of the sanguinary destroyer of Polish independence, than of the second founder of Russian greatness. And to many readers, perhaps, it is a name which calls up even more readily associations of a simply ignominious character. European history has preserved no other record, certainly not since the days of the Cæsars, of such utter obliteration of moral sense and self-respect in habitual profligacy, as were exhibited especially in the later years of her reign. It was a state of things in which a so-called civilised and Christian palace seemed reduced for a period to the level of more than savage licence; self-indulgence of every kind was without limit or disguise, and scandal itself—that which furnishes the daily interest of ordinary courts, and the common link between that class of society which swims and that which sinks-had almost ceased to exist, because the sensibilities in which it originates were altogether blunted, and the observer had ceased to be scandalised at anything. But with the disorders of the Czarina's private life we need have no concern on the present occasion, except in so far as they affected her conduct of public affairs; and so, in the name of common decency, we will let the curtain E drop on Catherine the woman, and rise on Catherine the ruler. Her training was one of no common severity, and calculated to develop to the utmost the gifts of a mind of firstrate power, as well as tact and acuteness. It is singular that the three great cotemporary rulers of Eastern Europe, who founded, or reestablished, its three great monarchies, had to undergo in this respect a similar probation-broken to the collar by years of bondage in youth, and only emerging on the scene of independent action in middle age, with chastened and sharpened faculties. What Frederic the Great suffered under his father is well known; Joseph II. was subject all his youth to the more affectionate, but jealous and importunate, sway of his mother, Maria Therese. But the trial which Catherine underwent was of a still more searching nature. She was brought a mere child from Germany, to be delivered to a husband whom she, and those whom she inspired, may have painted in too dark colours; but who certainly seems, from all we know of him, to have been little above a cunning idiot in intellect, and a brute in propensities. She had to live for some years in dangerous proximity of rank and position to her predecessor, the Empress Elizabeth, whose mind, though not originally weak, was impaired by habitual self-indulgence: not an ill-natured personage, nor ill-affected towards herself, but irritable, gusty, suspicious, and only to be propitiated by watchful cajolery. Handsome, audacious, and intellectual, Catherine passed the best years of youth in a court composed of drunken uneducated men and frivolous women, whose range of ideas was confined to show, except when it extended to intrigue and partisanship. And the consequences to be dreaded from a single false step amidst the pitfalls through which her path lay, were not merely court disfavour, or loss of influence; the convent amidst the snows of Archangel, the prison vault below the level of the Neva, Siberia, the scaffold, these were in daily, and hardly in distant, prospect. By the time her husband ascended the throne, he and she had become mortal enemies; he had thrown her aside for others, and she had been notoriously and all but avowedly unfaithful to him. Thenceforth it became a struggle for existence between the two. Had she not accomplished the revolution of 1762, her life or liberty would have been assuredly forfeit. Had his life been spared after his dethronement, the next turn of the wheel would have placed her again at his mercy. Whether she was actually guilty or cognisant of his murder, is an unsettled problem: and those who are inclined, may give her the benefit of the doubt, for it is probable that those who accomplished the design would have deemed themselves more likely to be embarrassed than protected by her participation in it. But she made it her own by adoption of its results, and by the strongest devotion to its perpetrators. Whether the very curious fragment lately published by Herzen, under the title 'Mémoires de l'Impératrice Catherine,' be genuine or not, I have no means of conjecturing. It appears to have been handed about for many years in manuscript in the circles of St. Petersburg. Considering that it all but directly establishes, by the avowal of the empress herself, the illegitimacy of her descendants, it might seem strange that it has attracted no government notice and no efforts at suppression. But the absolute indifference with which the Russian authorities have treated it is certainly a great proof of their practical good sense, and has done much towards rendering the work innocuous, and inclining people to dispute its authenticity. It appears, however, to be admitted without doubt by most of the writers who have concerned themselves with the reign of Catherine since its appearance. And it certainly is proof against one test by which false autobiographies are said to be detected: namely, that the impostors who compile them never venture to impart to the reader anything which he might not derive from known sources; for its revelations are as new as they are strange, and betoken either authenticity or a singularly inventive genius in the way of romance. From these memoirs we learn one result of her forced mental insulation in the middle of that coarse barbaric society, for which her subsequent life might indeed have prepared us. 'I had always a book in my pocket,' she says, 'and read it whenever I could find an opportunity.'* Adversity first made her a student; and then her strong imagination, always dwelling on the part she might one day have to play, combined with her craving for mental employment to increase her passion for books, especially such as might afford nourishment to the future ruler of men. Plutarch, Tacitus, Montaigne, Voltaire, were ner early favourites. And she was a reader of that class in whose powerful memory whatever they acquire becomes a fixed possession. She had gone into that purgatory of her youth a girl, with scarcely opened mind and childish tastes; she came out of it fit to correspond on equal terms with Voltaire and Diderot, and to discuss public affairs with the most experienced members of her council. • I have remarked a partial coincidence between the Memoir and the Empress's correspondence with Voltaire (printed in the works of the latter) which seems to me to afford a curious indication of authenticity. In the Memoir she says that for a year after her marriage she read nothing but novels; that the first book which called her attention away from novels was Madame de Sévigné; and then the works of Voltaire. In one of her letters to Voltaire, she says, 'avant 1746 je ne lisais que des romans,' and, afterwards, his writings. The omission of the intervening book (Madame de Sévigné) in the desire to please the philosopher, seems extremely natural. If the writer of this passage in the Memoir be a forger, he is a clever one. Another and even more important result of this iron discipline, was the singular equanimity which characterised Catherine, not merely in special conjunctures, but throughout the whole of her long and chequered reign. The gift of a good-natured and forgiving disposition— gutmüthigkeit, the favourite German name, is that which best expresses it had been improved by the lessons of necessity. Inured to rebuffs, slights, mortifications, she had learnt to bear opposition of all kinds with a calmness strange in any one, most strange in a proud woman and absolute sovereign.* Inured to win her own way to her ends through patience and tact, she carried into the council-room and senate the same long-suffering good humour, much enduring of violence, selfishness, and tiresomeness, which had been so precious to her in the early trials of her married childhood. Jamais,' says Major Masson, no partial observer, jamais on ne la vit s'emporter à la colère, ni s'abandonner à la tristesse, ni se livrer à une joie immodérée. Les caprices, l'humeur, la petitesse, n'entraient pour rien dans son caractère, et moins encore dans ses actions. Catherine sut quelquefois récompenser, elle ne sut jamais punir.' Her public servants, like those of our Elizabeth, might have reason to fear lest they should be sacrificed to the overwhelming influence of a favourite, or to promote a political intrigue, or to save appearances; but they were in none of that danger which the others incurred from gusts of passion or * The Prince de Ligne told her that her special quality was to be 'imperturbable.' And she used to sign her letters to him playfully 'Votre imperturbable.' † Author of the Mémoires Sécrets sur la Russie et sur les Règnes de Catherine et Paul II., a scandalous work in many respects, but written with more intimate knowledge of facts, and more acuteness of judgement, than are usually met with in books of that character. It had evidently formed part of Byron's reading just before he wrote some cantos of 'Don Juan,' |