oners had even declared that the comedy flagrantly jeered at the
monarchical power), and he began to doubt the justice of his command. He
ordered the piece to be played that very evening in the Hermitage
Theater (in the Winter Palace). Only he and the Grand Duke Alexander
(afterwards Alexander I.), were present at the performance. After the
first act the Emperor, who had applauded incessantly, sent the first
state courier he could put his hand on to bring Kapnist back on the
instant. He richly rewarded the author on the latter's return, and
showed him favor until he died. Another amusing testimony to the
lifelikeness of Kapnist's types is narrated by an eye-witness. "I
happened," says this witness, "in my early youth, to be present at a
representation of 'Calumny' in a provincial capital; and when Khvataiko
(Grabber), sang,

'Take, there's no great art in that;
Take whatever you can get;
What are hands appended to us for
If not that we may take, take, take?'

all the spectators began to applaud, and many of them, addressing the
official who occupied the post corresponding to that of Grabber,
shouted his name in unison, and cried, 'That's you! That's you!'"

Towards the end of Katherine II.'s reign, a new school, which numbered
many young writers, arose. At the head of it, by reason of his ability
as a journalist, literary man, poet, and savant, stood Nikolai
Mikhailovitch Karamzin (1766-1826). Karamzin was descended from a Tatar
princeling, Karamurza, who accepted Christianity in the days of the
Tzars of Moscow. He did much to disseminate in society a discriminating
taste in literature, and more accurate views in regard to it. During the
first half of his sixty years' activity--that under Katherine II.--he
was a poet and literary man; during the latter and most considerable
part of his career--under Alexander I.--he was a historian. His first
work to win him great renown was his "Letters of a Russian Traveler,"
written after a trip lasting a year and a half to Germany, Switzerland,
France, and England, begun in 1789, and published in the "Moscow
Journal," which he established in 1791. For the next twelve years
Karamzin devoted himself exclusively to journalism and literature. It
was his most brilliant literary period, and during it his labors were
astonishing in quantity and varied in subject, as the taste of the
majority of readers in that period demanded. During this period he was
not only a journa