or promotion; and exhibiting
the strongest personal interest of the sovereign in the elevation of
those able servants of the crown. The consequence was, success in all
the enterprises of Catharine, the rapid advance of the nation in
European influence, the establishment of an insecure throne on the
strongest footing of public security, the popularity of a despotism, the
comparative civilization of a people half Asiatic, and who but half a
century before had been barbarians, and the personal attachment of the
nation to Catharine in a degree scarcely less than adoration. The chief
cause of this triumphant state of things, beyond all question, was the
high spirit, the generosity, and the affability of the empress. The
unhappy transactions of her private life are matters of painful record;
and the letters of the ambassador are full of the reprobation which the
memoirs of the time authenticate. But we have no gratification in
dwelling on such topics. We infinitely prefer paying the tribute due to
great talents splendidly exercised, to the public achievements of a
powerful intellect, and to the superiority which this munificent
promoter of the genius of all classes of her people exhibited to all the
haughty, exclusive, and selfish sovereigns of her time.

The ambassador now found it necessary to look for support against the
Prussian propensities of the minister; and he had recourse to Potemkin
and the Orloffs, as the antagonists of Panin. Potemkin was one of the
most extraordinary men whom the especial circumstances of the court and
country raised into public distinction. He had been but a cornet of
cavalry on the memorable night when Catharine, uncertain whether she was
mounting a throne or a scaffold, put herself at the head of the guards,
and deposed her husband. As she rode along, observing that she had not a
military plume in her hat, she turned to ask for one; the cornet
instantly plucked out his own, and presented it to her--as Raleigh threw
his cloak on the ground for Elizabeth to walk over. These gallant acts
are never lost upon a woman of the superior order of mind. The favour of
the throne followed alike in both instances; and Potemkin soon became
the guide of the Russian councils. It was the custom of the French
memoir writers--a race who always aimed at pungency of narrative in
preference to truth, and who, for their generation, performed the part
of general libellers--to represent Potemkin as a savage, devoted to