y his chief counsellor,
but his dearest friend, to whom he submitted all his projects for
consideration and revision. The most interesting of these projects was
the plan for the emancipation of the peasantry (1818). On the accession
of Nicholas I., Arakcheev, thoroughly broken in health, gradually
restricted his immense sphere of activity, and on the 26th of April
1826, resigned all his offices and retired to Carlsbad. The 50,000
roubles presented to him by the emperor as a parting gift he at once
handed to the Pavlovsk Institute for the education of the daughters of
poor gentlemen. His last days he spent on his estate at Gruzina,
carefully collecting all his memorials of Alexander, whose memory he
most piously cherished. He also set aside 25,000 roubles for the author
of the best biography of his imperial friend. Arakcheev died on the 21st
of April 1834, with his eyes fixed to the last on the late emperor's
portrait. "I have now done everything," he said, "so I can go and make
my report to the emperor Alexander." In 1806 he had married Natalia
Khomutova, but they lived apart, and he had no children by her.

See Vasily Ratch, _Memorials of Count Arakcheev_ (Rus.) (St
Petersburg, 1864); Mikhail Ivanovich Semevsky, _Count Arakcheev and
the Military Colonies_ (Rus.) (St Petersburg, 1871); Theodor
Schiemann, _Gesch. Russland's unter Kaiser Nikolaus I._, vol. i.,
_Alexander I._, &c. (Berlin, 1904). (R. N. B.)

ARAL, a lake or inland sea in the west of Asia, situated between lat. 43
deg. 30' and 46 deg. 51' N., and long. 58 deg. 13' and 61 deg. 56' E. It
was known to the ancient Arab and Persian geographers as the Sea of
Khwarizm or Kharezm, from the neighbouring district of the Chorasmians,
and derives its present name from the Kirghiz designation of
Aral-denghiz, or Sea of Islands. In virtue of its area (26,233 sq. m.)
it is the fourth largest inland sea of the world. It has nearly the same
length as width, namely about 170 m., if its northern gulf
(Kichkineh-denghiz) is left out of account. Its depth is insignificant,
the maximum being 220 ft. in a depression in the north-west, and the
mean depth only 50 ft., so that notwithstanding its area it contains
only eleven times as much water as the Lake of Geneva. Its altitude is
242-1/2 ft. above the Caspian, i.e. about 155 ft. above the ocean. The
lake is surrounded on the north by steppes; on the west by the rocky
plateau of Ust-Urt, which separates it fro