"His! Look here, Adeline."

He took the other ring from his pocket, as he spoke. It was cut in two parts, and he threw them into the lake.

"There goes his ring, Adeline. May his pretensions go with it." "It is for this you have been to Odesque!"

"It is. Now they cannot question you; and they may think it his, if they will. The time will soon come when they will be undeceived." They turned towards the house, neither caring that Adeline's absence should be prolonged so as to be noticed. She continued to give utterance to her suspense and fears.

"If mamma could but be stopped from ordering the trousseau! But I dare not hint so to her."

"Where is the necessity of any hint ?" he asked, significantly.

She looked up at him, and caught the fond smile, full of meaning, on his face, apparent in the moonlight.

"The things ordered and intended for Madame De la Chasse-will they not do equally well for Mrs. Frederick St. John ?"

"Oh-but

she hesitated, her downcast face wearing a higher

colour, "it is so early-nothing will be wanted yet."

"Indeed they will. Do you think, my darling," he added, laughingly, "they would let me take you to the South, without our first being married!"

"I am not going to the South," she quickly said.

"Yes, Adeline. I mean to make it our wedding tour, and winter there."

"I am quite well now," she repeated. "I need not go to the South at all."

"The medical men pronounced it necessary for your health, your parents also consider it to be essential: do you think, my love, I should be less careful of you than they? And even if it be a superfluous precaution, you would not be dismayed at the prospect of passing a whole winter with me alone."

Dismayed! To the uttermost parts of the earth with him, and for a whole life. Father-mother-country-home-what were they all now, in comparison with him?

As they emerged to the open lawn, a dark figure crossed their path, and Adeline shrank at being seen thus alone with Mr. St. John. It was Father Marc, the officiating priest of the little neighbouring chapel, and the family confessor. He merely said "Bon soir, mon enfant," and took off his hat to Mr. St. John. The latter coolly raised his own: the priest was no favourite of his.

Adeline glided onwards to a side door, that she might gain her chamber, and see what she could do towards removing the traces of emotion from her face; whilst Mr. St. John strode round to the front entrance, and rang such a peal upon the tinkling old bell that it brought all the servants to the door, on the run.

And, as Adeline stood that night by his side in the brilliant ball-room, and watched the admiration his gifts of person and mind excited, and saw the cordial regard in which her father held him, and remembered his high lineage and connexions, and the fortune and position that must eventually be his, she almost felt as if overtures for her from such a man could never be declined. We shall see.

THE EMPEROR NICHOLAS.

RUSSIA reckons three historical dynasties-the first commencing with Rurik, a prince of Scandinavian origin; the second, that of the Grand-Princess of Wolodomir, commencing in 1157 with Andrew Yourewitch, who was assassinated in his palace; the third, that of the House of Romanoff, commencing in 1613 with Michael, and numbering among its descendants Peter the Great, who organised against Europe that great destructive power, known as the Russian Empire, and reformed his country with a hatchet in his hand instead of a sceptre. He was the Baal of the seventeenth century.

Nicholas I. was the ninth of ten children of Paul I.-who was strangled in his own scarf on the night of the 23rd of March, 1801 by his second marriage with Maria Feodorowna, of Wurtemberg, and was born on the 25th of June (old style), 1796, at Gatschina, near St. Petersburg. No demonstrations of joy, beyond those of an official character, were made at his birth. Why should it have been otherwise? The empire had been already divided, by Catherine II., between his two elder brothers, Alexander and Constantine. Alexander was destined by her to be the Czar of Russia; Constantine, Emperor of Greece; and with these views she had provided for the education of the two grand-dukes. On Nicholas she had no such boon to confer, nor was she enabled to form any plan regarding his future, he being but four months old when she died.

The boy Nicholas was not five years of age when the night palace murder made him an orphan. His brother Alexander was enthroned, and took the oath at the hands of his father's assassins, having been privy to the murder, and having been in the room immediately below at the time it was perpetrated. The empress, his mother, a woman of intelligence, superintended the education of Nicholas, which she committed to General de Lambsdorff, who was assisted, amongst others, by the Countess de Lieven, the philologist Adelung, the councillor Stork, and Dupuget of Lausanne. Nicholas showed no inclination for deep study; his tastes seemed to be for military life and modern languages, and especially for music, in which he was early so skilful as to be able to compose several parade marches.

When the French invasion took place, Nicholas was too young to take part in the noble defence which Russia made, or to join in those great military operations which ultimately led to the overthrow of Napoleon and the occupation of his capital. The year 1814 giving peace to the Continent, Nicholas availed himself of the free egress opened to set out on a tour to the chief courts of Europe; that of St. James's amongst others. In July, 1817, he April-VOL. CIII. NO. CCCCXII.

2 K

married Maria Charlotte, or Charlotte Louisa, the eldest daughter of Frederick William of Prussia, and sister of the present king. The royal bridegroom was hardly twenty-one, the bride some years younger. In accordance with the law of Russia, she had previously adopted the Greek religion, and with it the names of Alexandra Feodorowna. There was a strong resemblance between the youthful pair in personal appearance as well as in mind and in character. The issue of this marriage are-1st, Alexander, born on the 29th of April, 1818; 2nd, Maria, the widowed Duchess of Leuchtenberg; 3rd, Olga, Princess of Wurtemberg; 4th, Constantine, born on the 21st of September, 1827; 5th, Nicholas, born on the 8th of August, 1831; and 6th, and lastly, Michael, born on the 25th of October, 1832.

A few moments before dying at Taganrog, the Emperor Alexander raised himself upon his bed and designated Nicholas Paulowitch as his successor to the throne. The Grand-Duke Constantine had previously renounced in his favour, from motives upon which history throws no sufficient light. Nicholas is accused of a twofold degree of dissimulation upon this occasion: in the first place, in assuming ignorance of the deed of resignation; and the second, in affecting unwillingness to avail himself of it.

The accession to the throne was, however, by no means a proceeding unfraught with trouble and danger. A vast conspiracy, composed of two classes-the dreamers of a republic, and the old Russian party, the supporters of Constantine- had existed for some time. It now broke into open rebellion. The soldiers shouted alternately, "Hurrah, Constantine! Hurrah, Constituzia!" The latter, according to the author of "Revelations of Russia," they believed to be the name of Constantine's wife! The insurrection was not stayed without sacrifice of life. After a plentiful use of grape-shot, when the Neva had received the dead, and the living had been handed over to the executioner, Nicholas confronted personally a few veterans who still held together on Isaac-place, and, in a firm, martial tone, bade them return to their ranks, obey, and down upon their knees! "How sad a commencement of my reign," he is said to have observed, with much emotion, on his return to his palace; but five scaffolds were erected on the esplanade of the fortress of St. Petersburg, thirty-six nobles were executed, and eighty-five sent to Siberia, before the emperor considered himself firmly seated on his throne.

The only other conspiracy that broke out under Nicholas's reign was that of the military colonies of the south. The leader of this conspiracy was Colonel Paul Pestel; he was seconded by the brothers Mouravief, and acted in concert with the malcontents of Poland. Luckily for Nicholas, the plot was betrayed, and the soldiers, further finding that the views of the conspirators did not accord with theirs, the whole thing miscarried. This time Nicho

las, who had shown himself pitiless in 1825, spared most of those who were compromised, excepting the ringleaders.

Only a few months had passed after the conspiracy, when the Empress-Dowager Elizabeth was laid in the tomb at St. Petersburg, by the side of him whom she had so faithfully loved. Her death delayed the coronation of Nicholas, which was not celebrated until the 3rd of September, 1826. The Grand-Duke Constantine, believing the coronation to have been fixed for the 15th, had arrived from Warsaw the day before, without having apprised his brother of his intention. An aide-de-camp hastened to announce him to the Czar. Nicholas, who was employed in dressing, and thought that the visitor was his brother Michael, the grand-duke would have excused himself for a few minutes; but the aide-de-camp seemed embarrassed. Nicholas looked inquiringly at him, and the officer answered to the look "The Czarowitch." The emperor ran, with a joyful exclamation, to meet his brother; Constantine seized his hand and kissed it, with a low bow; but Nicholas, embracing him warmly, made the deepest protestations of respect and gratitude. Schnitzler, from whom the above is somewhat abbreviated, describes the coronation, with its magnificent attendant pageantry, at full length.

The genius of peace certainly did not seem to smile on Nicholas. Hardly had the excitement subsided which was caused by the twofold conspiracies, when, by an imperial manifesto, war was declared against Persia, in consequence of the invasion of the so-called province of Elizabethpol by Abbas Mirza, heir to the Persian crown. After a campaign of eighteen months a treaty was signed, on the 22nd of February, 1828, by which the Khanat of Erivan was ceded to Russia, besides an indemnity of 20,000,000 roubles. General Paskiewitch, who had the merit of obtaining an issue so advantageous to his country, was rewarded with the title of D'Erivan, or, as it is expressed in Russia, Erivanski; and, after the second conquest of Poland, the same officer was made Prince of Warsaw and Lieutenant of the Kingdom of Poland.

The Greek insurrection, to which the policy of Alexander had secretly contributed, served to extend the influence of Russia in the East; and in 1828 war was declared between the young emperor and the Sublime Porte, in consequence, as Nicholas asserted, of the Sultan having occasioned insurrection among the Circassian tribes, interrupted peace with Servia, and encouraged the outbreak of Persia. Great was the amazement and horror of the Turks when, in 1829, a Russian army, under General Diebitch, effected the passage of the Balkan-the Hamus of ancient Greece and appeared before the walls of Adrianople. The Osmanlis were completely humbled, and a temporary peace was purchased at an ignoble price. The Czar's protection of Greece and of the Greek subjects of the Porte was admitted; the authority of

Nicholas in Wallachia and Moldavia recognised; and the Dardanelles were thrown open. At the same time the prostrate Turks were to pay an indemnification of 12,000,000 of Dutch ducats, and all the Turkish fortresses on the left side of the Danube were to be razed to the ground.

The revolution in France, in 1830, imparted for the time a more wary policy to the Russian autocrat. He was led by that signal lesson to despots to moderate his career of ambition and aggrandisement. Nicholas even wrote a civil letter to Louis Philippe, in answer to one in which the King of the Barricades announced his accession to the throne. But he in reality meditated mischief. The seizure of state papers at Warsaw, in the portfolio of the Grand-Duke Constantine, and a letter to the Czar from Lubecki, the minister of finance, produced before the French "Chambre" on the 22nd of March, 1831, by La Fayette, show that a war with France was premeditated, if not resolved upon.

But if so, the revolution that broke out in Poland, as a sequence of that in France, diverted the emperor's attention to difficulties ncarer home. England and France preserved a very impolitic neutrality, whilst Austria and Prussia aided the Czar in crushing the insurgent patriots, and destroying a reviving nationality. After an heroic resistance Poland was reconquered, the Russians entered Warsaw, and an iron despotism was substituted for the semblance of constitutional government which had been previously permitted to exist. A citadel was built on the heights above Warsaw; and when, in 1835, the citizens went out to compliment the Czar, pointing to the citadel, he exclaimed, "You see that fortress; if you stir, I will order your whole city to be destroyed: I will not leave one stone upon another; and when it is destroyed it will not be rebuilt by me."

"The Russian government resolved on making examples of those who had been foremost in this insurrection: the population of Warsaw was invited to witness the exhibition of justice, the whole of the Russian garrison being put under arms, and the artillerymen, with lighted matches, standing beside their pieces, which were pointed on the crowd to prevent a rescue. The citizens poured out by thousands, the mournful silence of the multitude contrasting strongly with the merry tunes played in defiance of popular feeling by the Russian military band as the prisoners were brought forth to die; when they appeared on the scaffold, the vast and sympathising crowd fell on their knees with one accord, and offered up a prayer for the victims about to suffer!

"A Polish lady had through peculiar interest been permitted to have an interview with her son, who had been imprisoned on suspicion; she was led to his cell, and admitted to speak with him only in the presence of witnesses, and on condition of remaining blindfolded. Oh! my child,' said she, mournfully, 'how hard it