1795)
associated her name forever with the long and pathetic tragedy of
that nation.

Voltaire, whose admiration for Catharine engages Johnson's
attention, seems really to have regarded her as the political
teacher of Europe, for, referring to her, he said, "Light now comes
from the North." The woman who so enslaved men of genius and
enlarged the empire which Peter the Great had already made powerful,
was not herself a Russian. She was born at Stettin, Prussian
Pomerania, in 1729, the daughter of Christian Augustus, Prince of
Anhalt-Zerbst and Governor of Stettin.

Johnson gives an interesting account of her introduction to the
court of the Empress (Czarina) Elizabeth Petrovna, daughter of Peter
the Great and Catharine I. His story of her marriage and sudden
usurpation of the throne is a spirited picture of a dark event in
her career. Above all, he furnishes a most animated and searching
analysis of her character and acts, and of her relations with great
personages of her day. His critical observations, happily blending
with the historical review, shed a revealing light upon this famous
ruler and her reign.

It is January, 1744, and the commandant of Stettin, Prince of
Anhalt-Zerbst zu Dornburg, is keeping New-Year festivities at his castle
of Zerbst, when suddenly couriers from Berlin, couriers from St.
Petersburg, throw everyone into wild commotion. For the Czarina
Elizabeth, casting about for a wife for her nephew, the young grand duke
Peter of Holstein, nominated heir-presumptive to all the Russias, has
accepted advice from Frederick, soon to become "the Great." She is
formally desirous of a visit from the Princess of Zerbst and her
daughter, Sophie Frederika, now fifteen years of age, and already
noticeable for her good looks and good-sense. Not a moment is to be
lost. So eastward, northward, the sleighs hurry them through the white
leagues of snow, to arrive within six weeks at the Russian court, now
established in Moscow; with little state or ceremony, nevertheless, for
the princely house of Zerbst is poor as it is ancient. Sophie's
wardrobe, she informs us herself, consists just of three, or it may be
four, dresses, with twelve chemises. For here begins that singular
autobiography; an unauthenticated fragment, it is true, but a
self-portraiture convincing as any in literature.

At Moscow they made the best of impression; the Czar