es,
and with the men who made her reign illustrious grouped about her feet.
Among these representatives of the army, navy, literature, science, art,
there is one woman,--that dashing Princess Elizaveta Romanovna
Dashkoff, who helped Katherine to her throne. As Empress, Katherine
appointed her to be first president of the newly founded Academy of
Sciences, but afterward withdrew her favor, and condemned her to both
polite and impolite exile,--because of her services, the princess
hints, in her celebrated and very lively "Memoirs."

In the Alexandra Theatre, for Russian and German drama, which rears its
new (1828) Corinthian peristyle and its bronze quadriga behind the great
Empress, forming the background of the Square, two of the Empress's
dramas still hold the stage, on occasion. For this busy and energetic
woman not only edited and published a newspaper, the greater part of
which she wrote with her own hand, but composed numerous comedies and
comic operas, where the moral, though sufficiently obvious all the way
through, one would have thought, in the good old style is neatly labeled
at the end. These were acted first in the private theatres of the
various palaces, by the dames and cavaliers of the Court, after which
professional actors presented them to the public in the ordinary
theatres.

It is in vain that we scrutinize the chubby-cheeked countenance of the
bronze Prince Potemkin, at Katherine II.'s feet, to discover the secret
of the charm which made the imperial lady who towers above him force
upon him so often the ground upon which they both now stand. He stares
stolidly at the Prospekt, ignoring not only the Theatre, but the vast
structures containing the Direction of Theatres and Prisons, the
Censor's Office, Theatrical School, and other government offices in the
background; the new building for shops and apartments, where ancient
Russian forms have been adapted to modern street purposes; and even the
wonderfully rich Imperial Public Library, begun in 1794, to contain the
books brought from Warsaw, with its Corinthian peristyle interspersed
with bronze statues of ancient sages, on the garden side,--all of
which stand upon the scene of his former garden parties, as the name of
the avenue beyond the plain end of the Library on the Prospekt--Great
Garden Street--reminds us. Not far away is the site of the tunnel dug
under the Prospekt by the revolutionists, which, however, was
fortunately discovered in time to