50,000 men was divided into two bodies, and gave a mimic representation of the conflict between Charles and Peter the Great. Catharine returned by way of Moscow to St. Petersburgh, having traversed nearly the whole length of her empire. This journey and its attendant scenes illustrate the energy and talents of Catharine. When Prince Potemkin returned to St. Petersburgh, after the capture of Ismail by the Russian army, the Empress received him with transports of joy, and bestowed upon him another palace which had been fitted up for his reception at a cost of 600,000 roubles, and also a coat laced with diamonds which cost 200,000 roubles. This extravagant minister and favorite expended in a few months at this period 1,200,000 roubles. He gave the Empress a grand entertainment at his palace, under a presentiment that it would be the last blaze of his grandeur. A month was spent in preparation. The Empress, the imperial family, the court, the foreign ministers, the nobility, were invited. When Catharine entered her carriage, immense piles of garments, lofty pyramids of eatables, and an enormous supply of liquors were distributed to the populace. When the Empress entered the palace, she was greeted by the music of an orchestra of six hundred performers. When she and the brilliant company had taken their seats, four and twenty couples of the most beautiful persons of both sexes, and of noble birth, including the Grand-dukes Alexander and Constantine, opened the dance with a quadrille. The value of their dresses was estimated at 10,000,000 roubles. The rooms of the palace were illuminated with a magnificence which struck the spectators with amazement. The walls and columns seemed to glow with various colored fires, while large mirrors made to form pyramids and grottoes, multiplied the effect. Six hundred persons then sat down at one table, where all the dishes were gold or silver. On the Empress' entering the vestibule after supper, the choir of voices melodiously chanted a hymn to her praise. Surprised and affected, she turned around to the Prince, who, overpowered with emotion, fell on his knees and, seizing her hand, bedewed it with tears. A gloomy foreboding seem Potemp ed to shake his whole frame. kin, the powerful, the magnificent Potempkin, the founder of so many palaces and cities, the conqueror of a kingdom, expired on the roadside. Taken suddenly ill on a journey, his cloak was spread upon the ground, on which he died. Catharine fainted three times when she heard of his death, and she was thought to be dying. Like Elizabeth of England, Mary of Scotland, Christina of Sweden, and all the empresses of Russia, Catharine had her favorites. There were twelve in all; but none of them lost their lives by the headsman's axe, as in England. None of them incurred her hatred or her vengeance. No one was ever seen to be punished-no one to be persecuted. Those whom she discarded went into foreign countries. The personal vices of Catharine, which were very many, have not been able to obscure her glory as a ruler, though they sullied her greatness. On all public occasions the Empress dressed with great magnificence, and wore a profusion of jewelry, especially diamonds, of which she had a prodigious number. Towards the close of her life, Catharine had so increased in size, that going up and down stairs in the palace, and the business of dressing, had become a wearisome task. Just previous to her death, an incident occurred that excited a deep interest. On the evening of her visit with the King of Sweden to the house of Samàïlof, a bright star shot from the sky over her head and fell into the Neva near the citadel in St. Petersburgh, in which all the tombs of the sovereigns are situated, in the Church of St. Peter and St. Paul. It was whispered that it was the harbinger of the approaching dissolution of the Empress. On the 4th of November, 1796, Catharine had a little party in the Hermitage, and displayed an uncommon share of spirits. She retired earlier than usual. The next morning she arose at her accustomed hour, and gave a short audience with her secretaries on business; but dismissed the last that came, bidding him wait in the ante-chamber, and she would presently call for him to finish what he was about. The valet waited for a while, but, uneasy at not being called, and hearing no noise in the apartment, opened the door and saw, to his surprise and terror, the Empress prostrate upon the floor. She was without sense or motion. Physicians were sent for, and consternation prevailed. All the means possible were resorted to, but without effect. She was still alive; her heart was found still to beat. Paul, her son and successor, arrived in the evening. His mother still breathed. About ten the next evening, the Empress appeared suddenly to revive, and began to rattle in the throat. The imperial family hastened to her. At FRIAR IVES AT ACRE. last she gave a lamentable shriek, and died, after having continued for thirtyseven hours in a state of insensibility. The body of the Emperor Peter I was brought from the convent and crowned, and the two coffins lay in state till they were removed to the Citadel Church of tombs for the sovereigns of Russia, where they now lie with the sovereigns of Russia, on the floor of the church, in sight of all who go there as spectators or as worshippers at that memorable historic spot. POETRY. [See Joinville's "Memoirs of St. Louis," Part II., for, this anecdote, which is quoted by Bishop Taylor in his" Great Exemplar," Part III., discourse 14th.] THE weary day is ended now, And cool night winds fan cheek and brow; With lute, and harp, and song, and shout. A thousand lamps are glitt'ring bright, The lamps of Heaven their radiance shed. The Frank's blue eyes and fair-skinn'd face. Pass'd, shadow-like, from street to street, What though they tear him limb from limb?-- Onward, engross'd with thoughts like these, He quickly pass'd, until his feet The Sultan of Damascus had sent to King Louis, offering his alliance. Friar Ives le Breton was to return with the ambassadors, and declare the King's mind to the Sultan he was chosen for the task on account of his knowledge of Saracenic. Tread in a narrow, silent street. Here, in the hush, he starts to meet The fire of youth gleam'd in her eye; Though scant and mean the robe she wore. And in the left beheld the Friar A vessel fill'd with coals of fire. He gazed upon her, and would fain Have asked, "Wherefore these vessels twain ?" To his unspoken thought replies She, fixing on him her dark eyes; "Wherefore this water?'-mark me well! With it I'll quench the flames of hell! "Wherefore this fire ?'-list thou and learn! The joys of Paradise to burn! That henceforth men may serve my Lord Nor fear of punishment abhorr'd: But freely yield their hearts-the whole- Is He not worthy? Brighter far The Day-spring, than yon brightest star? Chief 'mong ten thousand? fairer than Seek we a hero? Who hath stood, With bread from heav'n the hungry feeds, Our Samson, glorious, strong! betray'd! Our King of Peace! Behold Him crown'd Whence streams of blood and water ran Sooner than, blind one! thou shouldst miss 'Mid toys like these, supremest bliss, Sooner than Him thus slighted see, The Lord who lived and died for me. Oh, King of Beauty, when shall I With thee, 'twere Heaven in Hell to dwell!" The Breton friar pass'd on, alone, Oh, would that we, in our cold days, PAINED is my head with weary care, Sick is my heart with anxious thought; Oppressed with ills I needs must bear; With weakened frame, by suffering wrought, When evening clouds obscure the sun, I wish that it again were night; What once, with profit and delight, I am forbidden to renew; From where I, on my couch, am laid, But housetops and the murky sky; Whose memories alone remain; Tis summer in the country fields— And from the world the heart beguiles, Though here with patience nigh outworn, The music of the purling rill; To dream along the silent riverShall I e'er know such days again, Or have they fled away for ever? Oh what is learning, friendship, wealth, Deprived of Heaven's great blessing-health? In my distress, for aught unfit, May I perceive a wise design; In patience to my lot submit, My will to that of Heaven resign; And while I wish all pain removed, Let not the event pass unimproved. -Chambers's Journal. THE WORKER. "HARD is the lot of the worker, High rose the houses, a great human hive, From his sight The nurse, a simple neighbor, bore the babe Whose seven blithe years had brought no bitterness Between the sleeping and the dead Covered, still, and white, It lay-that awful burden-on the bed He should have shared. He did not lift the shroud Its lips with unfelt kisses; did not stain A sudden strangeness fell on all his life, The boy awoke And saw him sit there; slept, and woke again; And there he sat and loomed out of the dark -Miss Isa Craig. "THE RASH VOW." A BED, four walls, and a swart crucifix- Four scorpions! which instead of cloistered death, Oh! fiend incarnate, that could urge me on, They brought me here On my young sister Isa's wedding day, Hast thou not in thee something more than these, The words are but too true; though 'tis no "leaf;", Last May I roved with her into the woods: 1 (I at her feet), we sate. Anon there came THOS. HERBERT LEWIN. BRIEF LITERARY NOTICES. Dalziel's Illustrated Arabian Nights Entertainments. The text revised and emendated throughout, by H. W. DULCKEN, Ph. D. One hundred illustrations, by J. E. MILLAIS, R. A., A. B. Houghton, Thomas Dalziel, J. D. Watson, John Tenniel, G. J. Pinwell. Engraved by the Brothers Dalziel. London: Ward and Lock. The Arabian Nights is one of the few books which supply a boundless field of collateral yet wholly independent study by the side of the mere amusement they afford. Read as a string of idle fictions, they still remain a perennial kaleidoscope and literary wonder of elementary human emotion. As in the kaleidoscope we see elementary colors thrown, as it were, at random together, not satisfying art, but producing astonishment, so in the Arabian Nights all the elementary emotions and colors of human nature follow one another in an apparently childlike cycle of innocence, credulity, and bewonderment, yet so as to baffle old and practised eyes in any attempt to unravel the secret of the juxtaposition and obtain the key to their sequence. As the wheel revolves, and fiction follows fiction, color color, we see dove-like gentleness and astounding cruelty, romantic courage and brazen craft, apparently unconscious folly and apparently unconscious wisdom, follow one another with the same arbitrary ease, the same rotatory gravity, the same absence of the slightest clue to the moving hand guiding the colors in their course, and but for the entertainment invariably afforded to the spectator, we had almost said, the same monotony of wonderful effect. If we endeavor to overcome the dazing influence of the tales themselves, to look with a critical eye upon the sequence of the ideas, if we try to reäscend by analysis and imagination to the springs of authorship, and to reconstruct the society out of which the stories grew, we pass abruptly into another world of thoughts, and tumble at the entrance into a sea of speculation. It seems no solution of the problem to suppose that the stories were in the origin designedly composed to amuse children. If the Boy's Own Book under the same name were the only relic of our civilization three thousand years hence, the doubt whether it was written for children or not would only complicate, not simplify the problem of the reconstruction out of that book of the civilization which gave birth to it. Any floating knowledge Englishmen have of contemporary Asiatic life does not seem to throw much light upon the reconstruction of the society out of which the |