powerful of all of them, until he was banished from the court
for trying to win Catherine in lawful marriage. Potemkin endeavored,
though with barbarous methods, to build up southern Russia, and remained
Catherine's favorite, at a distance, till his death. Meanwhile, she
chose her later lovers merely for personal gratification, so as not to
endanger her autocracy by the presumption of powerful men. She had
brought about the election of her favorite Poniatowski as King of
Poland, but she tore the kingdom to pieces when she recognized that the
conquest of Poland alone could make her beloved Russia a civilized
European or Western power. The domestic reforms which she instituted
along all the lines of political, economic, and sociological endeavor
are stupendous, and, compared with them, the deeds of Elizabeth of
England appear insignificant. Only the Titanic success of pushing
forward the boundaries of the empire in all directions, adding to it the
Crimea, the country as far as to the Dniester, with Courland and Poland,
as well as the beneficence of her rule in the reform of justice,
administration, and sanitation, the establishment of schools and
hospitals, the building of canals and fortresses, and the improvement of
the conditions of the peasants and of the lower bureaucracy, can
compensate, in the minds of historians and publicists, for her private
moral corruption and the gigantic immorality which she carried on
without restraint and in open defiance of civilized moral order. She
died of an attack of apoplexy in November, 1796. History remains
doubtful which was greater, her boundless energy, ambition, and genius,
or her superhuman immorality.

Returning to Prussia, we find weakness to contrast with Russia's
strength. Fifteen years after the death of Frederick the Great, we have
seen that Prussia was politically in a state of decadence. As of
politics, so of morals; and even the good example of the royal family
was unable to redeem society from the demoralization that had seized
upon the higher classes, and especially upon a great number of the
officers of the army. Regarding them a credible report of a contemporary
states: "The ranks of officers, already for a long time given over to
idleness and estranged from science, are farthest sunk in debauch. They
those privileged disturbers trample under foot everything which was
formerly called sacred: religion, marital faith, all the virtues of
domesticity. Among them thei