rs frequently allude to
this disgraceful topic, and always with the contempt and reprobation
which were so amply its due. "The worst enemies"--such is his
expression--"which the empress has, are flattery and her own passions.
She never turns a deaf ear to the first, let it be ever so gross; and
her inclination to gratify the latter appears to grow upon her with
age."

The policy of Russia had two grand objects, both of them wholly
inconsistent with the policy of England; and therefore rendering the
ambassador's zeal wholly useless. The King of Prussia favoured both, and
therefore commanded the highest influence with the empress. It was thus
the impossible task of the unfortunate diplomatist, to convince a
haughty and self-sufficient woman against her will. Of course, failure
was the necessary consequence. But in the mean time, dining and dancing,
feasting and frivolity, went on with Asiatic splendour. The birth of the
grand-duke's son, "Constantine," (expressly so named with a view to
Turkish objects,) gave occasion to fetes which it tasked the whole power
of Russian panegyric to describe. The empress gave one in the period of
the Carnival, ultra-imperially magnificent. The dessert and supper were
set out with jewels to the amount of upwards of two millions sterling!
and at the tables of macao, the fashionable game, besides the stake in
money, a diamond of fifty rubles' value was given by her majesty to each
of those who got _nine_, the highest point of the game. One hundred and
fifty diamonds were distributed in this manner.

But a new event occurred to stir the lazy politics of Europe--that act of
infinite treachery on the part of the French government--the breach of
treaty with England, and the alliance with America. The menaces of war
which are held out at this moment by the Jacobin party, and its insolent
eagerness to turn every trivial incident into a mortal quarrel, give a
new and additional interest to this former act of desperate perfidy. But
let it be remembered with what tremendous vengeance that perfidy was
punished--that the American alliance was the precursor of the French
republic; and that the long train of hideous calamities which broke down
the French throne, banished the nobility, and decimated the population,
dates its origin from the day when that fatal treaty was signed. A letter
from Sir Gilbert Elliott (afterwards Lord Minto) to the ambassador,
(March 20, 1778,) thus briefly communicates the int