, and no less apparent to the eye of
enlightened criticism, than are the mighty physical influences which
guide the planets in their course, to the abstract reason of the
astronomer.

Alexander Pushkin was born (as if destiny had intended, in assigning
his birth-place--the ancient capital of Russia, and still the
dwelling-place of all that is most intense in Russian nationality--to
predict all the stuff and groundwork of his character) at Moscow, on the
26th of May 1799. His family, by the paternal side, was one of the most
ancient and distinguished in the empire, and was descended from Ratcha,
a German--probably a Teutonic knight--who settled in Muscovy in the
thirteenth century, and took service under Alexander Nevskii,
(1252-1262,) and who is the parent root from which spring many of the
most illustrious houses in Russia--those of Pushkin, of Buturlin, of
Kamenskii, and of Meteloff. Nor was the paternal line of Pushkin's house
undistinguished for other triumphs than those recorded in the annals of
war; his grandfather, Vassilii Lvovitch Pushkin, was a poet of
considerable reputation, and was honoured, no less than Alexander's
father, with the intimacy of the most illustrious literary men of his
age--of Dmitrieff, Karamzin, and Jukovskii.

But perhaps the most remarkable circumstance connected with Pushkin's
origin--a circumstance of peculiar significance to those who, like
ourselves, are believers in the influence, on human character, of
_race_, or _blood_, is the fact of his having been the grandson, by the
mother's side, of an African. The cold blood of the north, transmitted
to his veins from the rude warrior of Germany, was thus mingled with
that liquid lightning which circles through the fervid bosom of the
children of the desert; and this crossing of the race (to use the
language of the course) produced an undeniable modification in our
poet's character. His maternal grandfather was a negro, brought to
Russia when a child by Peter the Great, and whose subsequent career was
one of the most romantic that can be imagined. The wonderful Tsar gave
his sable protege, whose name was Annibal, a good education, and
admitted him into the marine service of the empire--a service in which
he reached (in the reign of Catharine) the rank of admiral. He took part
in the attack upon Navarin under Orloff, and died after a long and
distinguished career of service, having founded, in his new country, the
family of Annibaloff, of