LITERATURE OF THE MONTH.

AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF THE PRINCESS DASCHKAW.*

To those who are acquainted, however superficially, or however intimately, with the known circumstances connected with the extraordinary revolution which dethroned (and subsequently destroyed) Peter III. of Russia, and placed Catherine II. at the head of the Russian empire, it were superfluous to state that an autobiography of the Princess Daschkaw, if written with ordinary candour and freedom, must almost necessarily be among the most curious and interesting documents that were ever put into print: since it is well known that that extraordinary woman was not only the chief agent and concocter, but the actual leader, bodily as well as in spirit, of that truly great event—an event scarcely less striking and startling in its immediate results, or less vast and important in its ultimate consequences, than any similar change which has agitated Europe in modern times. When it is recollected, too, that the conspiracy in question was planned and carried into successful operation, before the chief conspirator was nineteen years of age, the eager curiosity which must in any case have attended the appearance of these memoirs will be greatly increased. When we add that the Princess Daschkaw was, throughout the whole of her long public and private career, one of the most justly-distinguished women that ever lived, both as regards mental endowments and personal character, and that she was unquestionably the most extraordinary female, in all respects, that her own country has yet produced, we shall doubtless have sufficiently excited public curiosity respecting a work which chiefly consists of her own life written by her own hand.

The Princess Daschkaw may be said to have been born, cradled, and bred in the Court of St. Petersburg. She was daughter of Count Robert Worontzow, whose brother was the grand chancellor of the empire; and she was held over the baptismal font by the Empress Elizabeth, the grand duke (afterwards Peter III., to whose dethronement she lent the chief hand), being her godfather. At the age of sixteen, she was married to Prince Daschkaw, a young nobleman of appropriate age; and the union being one of affection on both sides, was productive of unmixed gratification to all parties, until its premature termination only four years afterwards, by the death of the prince; after which the princess, who was devotedly attached to her husband, never seems to have even thought of a second marriage.

We have referred to the early age at which the princess was engaged in the memorable revolution of the 27th of June, 1762. On the day of that event she was on horseback (in man's attire), side by side with the empress, for many hours, at the head of the revolted troops, and directed in person all the movements, and even the thoughts, of the empress.

Memoirs of the Princess Daschkaw, Lady of Honour to the Empress Catherine II. Written by Herself. 2 vols.

It should be mentioned that the prince her husband had been absent from St. Petersburg for many months previous to the events of July— having been despatched by Peter III., in the previous January, on a foreign mission: nor does it appear that he had any cognizance whatever of the projected change. Within a few months from the period just referred to, Prince Daschkaw, having been appointed to the chief command of the army in Poland, died there suddenly, leaving the princess a widow of twenty years of age.

A few years subsequently to this event the princess visited England, and afterwards France, and spent several years in travelling through the principal states of Europe; becoming acquainted with the leading men and women of the day in France and Germany-scarcely one of whom escapes her notice in these deeply-interesting volumes. On her return to her own country the princess was appointed Director of the Academy of the Arts and Sciences of St. Petersburg, of which academy the celebrated Euler was one of the professors; and this post she practically filled to the satisfaction of all parties, for several years! During this period she not only planned and performed many reforms in the academy, but actually projected and executed a comprehensive dictionary of the Russian language-the first ever produced.

In 1796 the princess obtained permission from the empress to retire from public life. This circumstance did not prevent her from meeting, on the death of Catherine shortly afterwards, with the most virulent persecution from her successor, Paul, and she subsequently passed several years in the rigid Siberian exile to which he condemned her. She was at length allowed to return to her country-place, but was never received into the favour of Paul. On his death, however, she once more visited the capital, to be present at the coronation of Alexander; after which she spent the remainder of her life in the peaceful retirement of her estate of Troitskoe.

We have merely enumerated the leading features of this woman's extraordinary life, the minutest details of which are set forth in these volumes, by the only hand capable of recording them. To expatiate on the interest, both personal and political, of such a work, composed under such circumstances, would be wholly superfluous. It must be clear that the volumes have such claims on public attention as have rarely been equalled in any similar case.

It would really be an act of unfairness, both to the reader and the editor of these volumes, if we were to extract from them largely; but we cannot avoid giving a few detached specimens of the anecdotical part of their contents: the narrative portion being unfitted for disjointed perusal.

Peter the First and the Empress Anne." It is well known that, during the reign of Peter the First, it was the custom of that tyrant to punish those nobles who offended him, by an imperial order that they should become fools; from which moment the unfortunate victim, however endowed with intellect, became the laughing-stock of the whole court; he had the privilege of saying every thing he chose, at the peril, however, of being kicked or horsewhipped, without daring to offer any sort of retaliation; every thing he did was ridiculed, his complaints treated as jests, and his sarcasms sneered at and commented on, as marvellous proofs of understanding in a fool. The Empress Anne surpassed this abominable cruelty, but sometimes mingled in her prac tices so much of oddity that it was impossible not to be entertained. Once

she decreed that a certain Prince G—— should become a hen, to punish him for some trifling misdemeanor; and for this purpose she ordered a large basket, stuffed with straw, and hollowed into a nest, with a quantity of eggs inside, to be placed conspicuously in one of the principal rooms at court. The prince was condemned on pain of death, to sit upon this nest, and render himself to the last degree ridiculous by imitating the cackling of a hen.”— Vol. i., pp. 103, 104.

The Empress Catherine.-"I was enthusiastically fond of music, but she was far from being so; and Prince Daschkaw, though with some taste for it, was as little of a performer as the empress. She was, nevertheless, fond of hearing me sing, and sometimes, when I had done, secretly passing a sign across to Prince Daschkaw, she would gravely propose a duet, which she used to call the music of the spheres, and which, without either of them knowing how to sing a note, they both performed in concert. A sudden burst of the most exalted and ridiculously discordant tones was the consequence,-one seconding the other, with scientific shrugs, and all the solemn self-complacent airs and grimaces of musicians. From this, perhaps, she passed to the cat concert, and imitated the purring of poor puss, in the most droll and ludicrous manner, always taking care to add appropriate half comic, half sentimental words, which she invented for the occasion; or else, spitting like a cat in a passion, with her back up, she suddenly boxed the first person in her way, making up her hand into a paw, and mewing so outrageously, that instead of the great Catherine, nothing but the wrongs of a grimalkin remained upon one's mind."—Vol. i., pp. 110, 111.

The Princess Daschkaw and Marie Antoinette.-" Her majesty, with the most graceful condescension, came forward to receive us, and having placed me by her side on a sofa, and my son and daughter at a little round-table near it, she addressed us with so much affability as set us completely at our ease, and absolutely captivated us all. Among other little civilities, she complimented my son and daughter on their proficiency in dancing, in which accomplishment she said it had been told her they were perfect. For my part,' added her majesty, I grieve to anticipate the loss of so favourite an amusement which I soon shall be obliged to relinquish.'

“And why, madam,' I could not help saying, 'should you feel such a necessity?"

"It is,' replied she, because one is not permitted to dance here after fiveand-twenty.'

"According to my usual awkwardness of a Ninette à la cour, forgetting what I had heard twenty times, that the queen had a decided passion for play, I can never approve,' said I, 'such a prohibition; for as long as the inclination lasts, and the feet do not refuse their aid, I should have no idea of not gratifying a taste so much more natural than its usual alternative-a love of play?'

"Her majesty expressed herself to be perfectly of my opinion, and we continued to converse on a variety of subjects, luckily for myself, without reflecting on the awkward observation of which I had been guilty, and without her majesty's betraying the slightest mark of having noticed it herself.

"Not so, however, with the beau monde of Paris, of which there was not a circle the next day but was occupied with comments on my unfortunate blunder; and it was generally looked upon in the light of a reprimand on her majesty for a propensity already severely censured, I could not but regret my thoughtlessness, notwithstanding the sort of consequence I might derive from thus making myself talked of in all the coteries of Paris."-Vol i., pp. 223, 224.

Pope Pius VI. and Prince Kaunitz.-" The following anecdote is related of the want of decent ceremoniousness of Prince Kaunitz towards an illustrious personage who happened one day to be his guest. Pope Pius the Sixth, whilst at Vienna, was invited to dine at his house; but Prince Kaunitz, so far from imposing upon himself the smallest restraints even in his amusements, having gone that morning into the country, and taken his exercise in the riding-house

longer than usual, was not ready to receive the pope at the appointed hour of dinner. At length, booted, and with a whip in his hand, he presented himself before his dignified guest, who had been some time awaiting his arrival, and with great unconcern continued in his morning equipment doing the honours of his mansion, and until dinner was served, pointing out with his whip such of his pictures as he deemed most worthy of notice."-Vol. i., pp. 257, 258.

Portrait of the Princess Daschkaw. "In the midst of this immense establishment (Troitskoe), and in the centre of riches and honours, I wish you were to see the princess go out to take a walk, or rather to look over her subjects. An old brown great-coat, and a silk handkerchief about her neck worn to rags, is her dress; and well it may be worn to rags, for she has worn it eighteen years, and will continue to wear it as long as she lives, because it belonged to her friend Mrs. Hamilton. There is an originality in her appearance, in her manner of speaking, in her doing every description of thing, which distinguishes her from every creature I ever knew or heard of. She helps the masons to build walls, she assists with her own hands in making the roads, she feeds the cows, she composes music, she writes for the press; she talks out loud in the church, and corrects the priest if he is not devout; she talks out loud at her little theatre, and puts in the performers when they are out in their parts; she is a doctor, an apothecary, a surgeon, a carpenter, a magistrate, a lawyer; in short, she daily practises every species of incongruity; corresponds with her brother, who holds the first post in the empire; with authors, with philosophers, with Jews, with poets, with her son, with all her relatives; and yet appears as if she had her time a burden on her hands. She gives me continually the idea of her being a fairy; and I protest it is not jokingly that I say so, for the impression never quits me for a moment. There is a marvellous contradiction, too, in her speaking like a child, in her broken English, and with her unaccountable expressions, unconscious, as she seems, whether she is speaking French, English, or Russian, mingling them in every sentence. She speaks German and Italian equally well; but her pronunciation is not clear, which takes from the pleasure I have in her conversation."-Vol. ii., pp. 341, 342.

We must not conclude our notice of these deeply-interesting volumes without adding that they contain various supplementary matters, of the most curious and attractive nature, and which, in connexion with any thing of less absorbing importance than the autobiography itself, would assume a leading interest. They consist, first, of a series of original letters to the Princess Daschkaw and others, from the Empress Catherine II.; a second series from Voltaire, Diderot, the Abbé Raynal, Lalande, and many other of the leading men of Europe; a third series from the Empress Elizabeth, consort of the late emperor Alexander; and finally, a personal narrative, by the editor, Mrs. Bradford, relating the singular and highly-interesting details of a visit (of four years duration) to the princess in Russia, and several delightful and most graphic and characteristic letters from the late Miss Wilmot, the editor's sister, describing a similar visit.

Upon the whole, these volumes deserve, and will undoubtedly obtain, a degree of immediate popularity, and ultimately of general and permanent estimation, which has rarely been accorded to any similar work.

They contain a beautiful portrait of the princess in early life; another (singularly curious and characteristic) taken during her exile in Siberia; and one of the Empress Elizabeth, wife of Alexander.

THE QUEENS OF ENGLAND.*

THE lives and reigns of the Queens of England offer a subject for historical delineation and record, no less important than interesting, and one that is peculiarly so at the present time, when we are commencing a new era, under a Queen regnant. We owe an apology, therefore, both to our readers and to Miss Strickland, for not having formally introduced to notice the first volume of this very agreeable and useful work. It has, however, so promptly and permanently taken its place in public favour, and its various merits and attractions have been so universally admitted and described by our most esteemed critical contemporaries, that our momentary oversight is of the less consequence. Miss Strickland proposes to herself a comprehensive undertaking-no less than a Life of every English Queen, consort as well as regnant, from the Norman Conquest to our own day; and the task is one as delicate and difficult as it is extensive; for of many of our queens there are no existing records, in England at least, except the brief and passing mention that may be made of them in our old chroniclers. The life, for instance, of Berengaria, the crusading Queen of Richard Cœur de Lion, was never before put on record, if we mistake not; and yet it is one of the most interesting that can be conceived, and reads more like the fragment of a Provençal romance than the veritable history which it is. It forms the opening life of Miss Strickland's second volume, now just published. The other lives in this volume are those of Isabella of Angouleme, Queen of King John; Eleanora of Provence (surnamed La Belle) Queen of Henry III.; Eleanor of Castile, first Queen of Edward I.; Marguerite of France, second Queen of Edward I.; Isabella of France, Queen of Edward II.; Philippa of Hainault, Queen of Edward III.: and Anne of Bohemia (surnamed the Good) first Queen of Richard II. Nothing can be at once pleasanter and more appropriate than the manner in which Miss Strickland performs the details of a task which she has planned with so much judgment. Where circumstances permit, she traces her subject from the cradle to the grave; blending the purely personal and domestic events of the life with the regal and political ones, till the reader scarcely knows whether to feel more interest in the woman or the queen. Indeed, in the simple olden times, the two characters are usually so coloured and modified the one by the other, and at the same time so intimately united, that the early volumes of this work have all the personal interest of domestic stories. We must add, too, in justice to Miss Strickland, that the large amount of novelty which her industrious and careful researches have enabled her to introduce into the work, has given to many of the lives, all the effect of newly-discovered historical documents. To give a random example of this, both Madame de Cottin, in her celebrated romance of" Mathilde," and Sir Walter Scott in "Ivanhoe," have referred to the circumstance of Berengaria being accompanied to Palestine by a female friend; but it is clear that neither of those writers knew who that friend She was, however, no less a personage than the widowed Queen Joanna, sister of Richard. Another circumstance, the details of which

was.

* Lives of the Queens of England. By Miss Strickland. 2 vols.