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London, England, 1836-12-16 00:00:00

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5

LITERATURE.

LARDNER'S CABINET CYCLOPEDIA—HIS-
TORY—RUSSIA—VoI. H.
Longman, London, 1336.
There is no character, in ancient or modern history,
more remarkable than that of Peter the First. He
is the only really great man of whom Russia can boast,
and stands out in striking contrast to the pigmies—we
do not even except Catherine the Second—who have
since succeeded to the throne of the Czars. In point
of indomitable energy and determination of purpose,
and daring originality of mind, even Napoleon will not
bear a comparison with him. The Corsican was made
and moulded by the circumstances of his age and
country; the Muscovite was independent of such influ-
ences. Instead of receiving an impression from the
tastes, habits, opinions, and prejudices of his country-
men, he himself stamped his own impress upon them,
which still endures, while the impulse given to the mind
of France by the character and conquests of Napoleon
has almost wholly passed away, or been diverted into ano-
ther channel. In every respect the mind of Peter was a
strictly original one. He owed nothing to education ;
nothing to the force of example ; nothing to the opinions
instilled into him by others ; his thoughts and actions
were all his own. At the early age of twenty, when
the majority of men are yet scarcely out of their lead-
ing-strings, he set about the herculean task of breaking
up old customs, and enlightening his empire against
its will. And this he did, alone and unassisted, de-
spite the opposition of the Church, the Noblesse, and
indeed every class of the Russian community. He
sought no advice—for indeed there was no one about
him capable of advising such a man—but considered,
digested, compared, and decided, for himself. Being
well aware, however, that before a man at-
tempts to refo:m others, he must reform him-
self, he began by correcting the defects of his
own education, and blastered nearly all the modern
languages, and acquainted himself with many of their
most important legal, legislative, and commercial usages,
before he had attained his twenty-first year. This
done, he next applied himself to the organization and
disciplining of a standing army, which he officered by
foreign veterans, and which enabled him, after frequent
rebellions, to raise Russia from a fourth-rate, into a first-
rate, Power. His navy, like his army, was the creation
of his own hands. When he ascended the throne, Russia
had not one ship of war, and scarcely one sea-port ;
when lie died, she had a fleet capable of coping with,
and vanquishing, the best appointed Danish and Swe-
dish ones, together with numerous ports, harbours,
and outlets for commercial enterprise. In the year
1703, Peter laid the foundation of St. Petersburgh,
which was then a low marshy island, covered with
brushwood, and inhabited by a few fishermen ; before
the expiration of that year, during which upwards of
one hundred thousand men perished, the city con-
tained not less than thirty thousand houses, and twenty
years afterwards was one of the most magnificent, po-
pulous, and thriving capitals in Europe. But it was
not the physical aspect only of his country that this
extraordinary man changed—his influence was equally
great over its moral aspect. He converted a wild horde
of savages into a comparatively civilized nation ; en-
dowed schools and colleges of divinity, law, literature
,and medicine ; compelled Iris highest nobility to serve,
•like himself, in subordinate situations in the army and
navy ; and allowed them no honors but such as they
won by their own individual skill and talent. But per-
haps the most extraordinary trait in Peter's character,
was his utter absence of any thing like conventional
prejudice. Most men, even the greatest, have been the
slaves of habit, but Peter knew no such master.
Though born to empire, he despised the trappings of
royalty ; and could work like a common shipwright, in
the dock-yard at Saardam, just as if he had sprung
from, and had been reared among, the lower classes.
His sense of religion was equally enlarged ; be despised
all priest-craft, and skewed no mercy to fanaticism.
And yet the man thus enlightened—thus ever mindful
of the welfare of his subjects—their best, indeed, their
only, " guide, philosopher, and friend," whose magna-
nimity was so great, that he risked his own life a dozen
times to save that of others, and at last died of a cold
caught in an attempt to rescue some poor men whose
boat had run aground upon the rocks—the man capa-
ble of these exalted actions, is the very same who poi-
soned his own son, and was the chief actor in the fol-
lowing atrocious catastrophe :
The particulars of the vengeance which, on this dread-
ful occasion, the czar inflicted upon the strelitz are revolt-
ing. He did not satisfy himself with ordinary cruelty,
but sp,ved no detail of physical pain thagtoncieosulodf phrioslvoincg.
and render still more acute the dying a
tims. He first put them to the torture, interrogating and
reviling them during the operation ; and when he had suf-
ficiently feasted his eyes with that exhibition of cruelty, he
ordered 2,000 of the mangled wretches to be put to death,
taking a part in the ex,nutions himself, and compelling his
nobles to assist him in cutting off the heads of the guilty
chiefs. Throughout this barbarous scene, Peter, seated on
his throne, gazed with calm and unpitying looks on the
work of death, and never moved from his stern, composure,
except to indulge his cruelty by participating in the busi-
ness of the executions. Nor did his vengeance rest here ;
to these horrors he added the intoxication of win, as if his
blood were not inflamed enough already. th the wine-
cup in one hand, and the axe in the other, he drank twenty
successive draughts, as he smote off twenty successive
heads within a single hour, exulting at every stroke in the
skill and dexterity he displayed."
" In the following year these ferocious acts produced
such results as might have been anticipated. Insurrections
broke out in distant parts of the empire ; the discontent of
the people could not be repressed, and the safety of the
czar was threatened by increasing proofs of popular dis-
gust. But Peter was prepared for these .manifestations of
disfavour ; he had entered upon a decisive course, and was
resolved to persist even at the cost of the throne itself:
Eighty strelitz, who had taken part in the disturbances,
were dragged from Asoph to Moscow in chains ; and their
heads, held up at each interval by the hair, and shown to
the assembled crowd, were successively struck off by the
hands of the czar. But, terrifying as this spectacle was,
it did not completely destroy the lingering projects of the
strelitz ; they still sect'qtly looked towards Sophia, and still
hoped that the czar ru;glit be driven from the throne.
Three of their body rashly prepared an address to the
princess, inviting her to assume the crown ; but the vigi-
lant officers of the czar discovered the authors, and Peter
hanged them in front of the princess's windows. As if,
however, this consummation were not enough to demon-
strate to the unfortunate Sophia the hopelessness of her
ambitious designs, he ordered the stiffened arm of one of
the dead men to be placed in her chamber, with the re-
bellious address clasped in the fingers in the attitude of
presentation, until it should moulder into dust and drop at
her feet,"
Napoleon once observed to his brother Louis, " I am
Trance :" with far more truth and propriety might
peter have said, " I am Russia ;" for lie infused into
every branch of her political, social, military, and com-
mercial system, a portion of his own energy, which did
not cease with his own life, but has continued una-
bated up to the present day. For every advantage
Russia now possesses, she is indebted exclusively to
Peter. She is as much the offspring of his loins, as
the son is of the father's. Catherine may have extended
the dominion of the Czars, but it was Peter who sup-
plied the means. But for him she had still been a
illation of barbarians, without physical or moral re-
sources of any kind. Of this extraordinary man, the
volume before us furnishes with an interesting and well-
written Memoir, whose only fault is that it is too scanty
in its details. Considering the abundance of his raw'
terials the aut!ior should have turned them to better
account ; and devokid mote than two-thirds of a volume
to the biography of the founder of the Russian empire.
We are much better please l with his acentna of the reign
of Catherine the Second, /chose character he tite,pAirg
thoroughly to understand. T 1 portion of his volume is
written with considerable fluency and animation ; contains
many well-drawn historical portraits, among the best of
which we may mention that of the famous Cossack

impostor, Pugatschef, who at one time shook the
throne of Catherine ; and is full of statistical de-
tails, respecting the progress made by Russia in
war, commerce and the arts, during the reign o►.,
the Northern Messalina. Nor must we omit to
notice the spirited style in which the historian relates
the conspiracy against, and murder of, her husband,
Peter the Second, which placed Catherine on the Rus-
sian throne. It has all the interest of the wildest and
most stirring romance. We.subjoin a brief account of
the fortunes of Catherine the First, wife of Peter the
Great, and subscqently empress of all the Russias,
which, if we remember rightly, Madame de Geniis has
made the subject of a pleasing tale ;
" Amongst the prisoners of war was a young Livonian
girl, called Martha, an orphan who resided in the house-
hold of the Lutheran minister of Marienburgh. She had
been married the day before to a sergeant in the Swedish
army ; and when she appeared in the presence of the Rus-
sian general Bauer, she was bathed in tears, in consequence
of the death of her husband, who was supposed to have
perished in the melee. Struck with her appearance, and
curious to learn the history of so interesting a person, the
General took her to his house, and appointed her to the
superintendence of his household affairs. Bauer was an
unmarried man, and it was 'not surprising that his inter-
course with Martha should have exposed her to the impu-
tation of having become his mistress ; nor, indeed, is there
any reason, judging by the immediate circumstances, as
well as the subsequent life of that celebrated woman, to
doubt the truth of the charge. Bauer is said to have de-
nied the fact ; which is sufficiently probable, as it was evi-
dently his interest to acquit the lady of such an accusation;
but, however that may be, it is certain that Prince Menzi-
koff, seeing her at the General's house, and fascinated by
her manners, solicited the General to transfer her services
to his domestic establishment ; which was at once acceded
to by the General, who was under too many obligations to
the Prince to leave him the option of a refusal. Martha
now became the avowed mistress of the libertine Menzi-
koff, in which capacity she lived with him until the year
1704, when, at the early age of seventeen, she enslaved the
Czar as much by her talents as by her beauty, and ex-
changed the house of the Prince for the palace of the So-
vereign. The extraordinary influence she subsequently
exercised, when, from having been the mistress, she became
the wife of the Czar, and ultimately the Empress Catherine,
developing, throughout the various turns of her fortune, a
genius worthy of consort with that of Peter himself, opens
a page in history not less wonderful than instructive. The
marriage of the Sovereign with a subject was common in
Russia ; but, as Voltaire remarks, the union of royalty
with a poor stranger, captured amidst the ruins of a pillaged
town, is an incident which the most marvellous combina-
tions of fortune and merit never produced before, or since,
in the annals of the world."

A HISTORY OF BRITISH QUADRUPEDS.

PART VI.
Van Voorst, London, 1836.

There are several curious particulars in this Number,
of the habits and peculiarities of that amphibious ani-
mal, the seal, which no one can read without instantly
calling to mind the famous battle between the phoca
and Captain M'lntyre, which Scott has turned to such
diverting account in his best novel, " The Antiquary."
The scal is, it seems, endowed with great sagacity,
which our author, who is evidently a phrenologist, ap-
pears to think is the necessary consequence of the con-
formation of its skull. " The form of its cranium,"
quoth he, " deserves especial notice, with relation to
the development of the intellectual faculties. The
cerebral cavity is of very considerable extent, and the
facial portion comparatively small, indicating a high de-
gree of intelligence and docility—a conclusion which
is amply confirmed by all the facts with which we are
acquainted, both of its natural manners and acquired
habits." The author then proceeds to give several
anecdotes illustrative of the intellectual faculties of the
seal, which, it must be confessed, show this animal
quite in a new light ; and will go far to convince the
most stubborn sceptic that, with a little previous dis-
cipline, the phoca might be made a better politician than
half the ultra-Tories of the clay ; for it can conform
to circumstances ; is anything but impracticable in its
nature ; and is imbued with a truly laudable spirit of
inquisitiveness. Moreover, when duly cured, its flesh
makes ' capital hams, which, to our thinking, is a fact
far more deserving to be publicly insisted on, than its
sagacity. The following remarks may perhaps amuse :
" Seals seem to have a great deal of curiosity ; if people
are passing in boats, they often come quite close up to
the boat, and stare at them, following for a long time
together ; if people are speaking loud, they seem to
wonder what may be the matter. The church of Hoy,
in Orkney, is situated near a small sandy bay, much
frequented by these creatures, and I observed when the
bell rang for divine service, all the seals within hear-
ing instantly swam for the shore." Possibly they were
of a pious turn of temperament, and were going to make
their appearance, among the Elders, at church !

The sum of 22,0001. has already been subscribed
for the Liverpool Music Hall ; but the intention of the
Committee is to raise 50,000/., so as to enable them to
erect a building which shall surpass anything of the kind in
the kingdom.
DESTRUCTIVE FlRE.—Last night, about 10 o'clock,
a destructive fire broke out in the boiling-house of the ex-
tensive soap manufactory of Mr. Knight, Old Gravel-lane,
Shadwell. The parish engine was in a few minutes in
active operation on the devouring element, but tended little
to check the progress of the flames till the arrival of the
London Establishment engines, and upwards of forty men
from various stations, under the orders of Mr. Braidwood,
their superintendent. A powerful engine also from the
West of England Office contributed great assistance in
saving the adjoining warehouses, containing several floors of
stock ; but the portion of the building where the fire ori-
ginated is, together with the various utensils and machinery,
entirely consumed. The conduct of the firemen and police
constables of the H and K divisions is beyond all praise.
The property destroyed is estimated in value at 5,000/.,
but is insured in the Suit and County Fire-offices. How
the fire originated is unknown.
INTEREST( NQ ANECDOTE.--At a public meeting
held at Durham, in January last, the following statement
was made by the Rev. J. Townsend, as illustrative of the
fact that the children of the poor may attain to the highest
honours and emoluments of the Church of England :—" I
should detain you too long if I confirmed this view of the
usefulness of cathedral preferments by any anecdotes illus-
trative of their value by encouraging the hopes of parents
that their sons might be benefitted by their acquiring them.
May I, however, mention that instance which is recorded of
one of our Archbishops of Canterbury ? He was the on
of a poor farmer in Oxfordshire. On one of his public days,
when many noblemen and gentlemen of high rank were at
his table, his servant came to inform him that a vonerable
looking man was inquiring for him, and insisted on seeing
John Potter (the Archbishop). The Archbishop, on further
inquiry, ordered a chair to be placed at his right hand, and
that the old roan ghould be brought in. He wits so, and
the Archbishop introdrieed to the assembled noblemen his
own aged father, and begged big father's blessing in their
presenc,e ; and declared to them all the double delight
which he kit when he could welcome his pram in the
splendour of his own prosperity, and remember the humility
of his home, and think of the happiness of his father on
looking on and blessing his StieoX4tfill son."
We learn that a memorial has been forwarded this
requestng t to lose no
day to the Commissioners of the Admiiraltyhem , signed by se-
veral inhabitants of the townr
time in despatching two VC64i814 to the North Seas, with
stores, provitoions and clothes, so that thwy pay be in rea-
diness to relieva the distressed seamen on tacit, 64a4pe from
their horrible imprisoowent. It states the names of the
six voigels—viz., the Swan, of Hull ; the Dee, of Aber-
deen ; the Grenville Bay, of Newaaipt)e i the No7/0//r, of
Berwick ; and du: Thames and Advice, of W4tl4OP i and
that their crews must to at least 300. The plp-
morial further suggests the prof:piety of re-establishing the
hospital at fittiomness, which rendered so oph service last
year to the crews of those vessels which had been 4ef4ined
so long.—Hull (Saturday.) Joyrnal.
coped) piece of plate is about 0 he presented to
Lord Hattief4,e by his late constituents, the eleeters of the
county of Stafford: lisitte yilse is elegantly supported by the
spreading branches of a finei,y,A.i.,;;Mi oak-tree, rising from
4n octagon base, on which also 'rests qpen of horses,
, executed, and full of animation. it k P.!", fee~
three inches keigl4l of silver gilt, weighing rather mere
than 590 ounces, "44' aft value of 500 guineas. On
three sides of the base are eicsPiayoa i4e; ems of the Noble
Lord, and on the fourth is the following inscrlPtiOn
anted to the Right Hon. Edward John Lord Hatherton,
44.44yrifropus body of the inhabitants of the county of Staf-
ford, as a ram*wt I.heir esteem, and in testimony of their
approbation of his zealous to the interests of the
county while representing them la ‘leilou:ie aj 12;airfli1}Pn::
dvring twenty-three years,"