LETTER XXXIII.

St. Petersburgh, October, 1807.

AFFAIRS of the greatest moment to your friend have kept his jour

nalising pen in its case during these many months: but you are too well informed of them, to need any apology for not transmitting a history of the public disasters which have so heavily struck at my private peace.

The whole cry here is the non-arrival of our troops off Dantzic; and he who till then greeted every Englishman as a brother, now turns from even a friend of that nation with a cold bow of suspicion. The battle of Friedland has been lost, the treaty of Tilsit signed, and the whole face of affairs entirely changed. I could hardly believe that I am awake, did I not feel in every nerve the alteration which stabs my happiness. I see two countries that I love, on the point of variance I see more in prospect than my heart at present can bear to dwell on.

The French General is in St. Petersburgh as Ambassador. He carries himself with all the gorgeous parade of the court he represents; and drives about in an equipage more becoming an Eastern Satrap than a hardy soldier. Splendid as his externals may be, I cannot find a similar refinement in his manners. I was told that the other day he dined in

company where some of our countrymen were present. The conversation fell on military affairs. Egypt was mentioned; and an English gentleman, meaning to do a courtesy to the French General, paid some compliments on the conduct of Menou at Alexandria.

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Aye," cried the Frenchman, "but had one of Napoleon's boats been there, Alexandria had never fallen to the British."

What Englishman's blood did not rise at this reply? and what ought to have been the silencing answer?

"Where then were these mighty boats that Napoleon did not bring them to the siege of Acre?”

No response could be made to this: and the blushes of every Frenchman present were not requisite to declare the mortifying consciousness that their Emperor had been beaten, and by an Englishman. The man still lived who had made him fly; who had driven him from the Holy Land he had polluted with apostacy; and who, by that heaven-directed action, locked the gates of the East against his menaced usurpations! As the proud Duke of Austria trembled before the name of the first Cœur de Lion, the no less haughty Emperor of the French must ever start at that of the second.

You will be surprised that I should be unable to say much of the French General, from my own personal knowledge: he possessed no magnetic powers over me, and therefore I kept as duè a distance as I liked.

My Lord Gower (having suceeded the Marquis of Douglas, now gone into the interior to visit Mosco), received a note from the government, intimating, that as a British Embassador he was no longer necessary at the Court of St. Petersburgh. Every thing is now preparing for his departure: and consequently, as the French interest is gaining ground, the British declines. All of our nation are eager to leave the country. Changed indeed is the face of things! But as it is the general idea that the new amity cannot last, and as abiding in the empire, under my peculiar circumstances, would militate against my feelings as an Englishman, who considers the duties he owes his King, and his own character as a loyal Briton, as paramount to all other interests; I shall make the earliest application for my passports.

November.

Since I wrote the above, the new Embassador has arrived from Paris to replace the old, who returns to his master. This man is even less polished than his predecessor, or else a bolder professor of the law which makes all means admissible to serve a desired end. Indeed, so little decency has he in vaunting his bloody deeds, that when a lady of rank, the other day, asked him how he could get any persons hard-hearted enough to shoot the Duke d'Enghein, he replied with the greatest coolness, "O madam, I took care of that."-With neither of these diplomatic gentlemen have I any acquaintance; so, my dear friend, you must excuse me sending you no better specimens of their merits.

In the midst of these political revolutions, which are on the point of dividing me for a time from the object most precious to me on earth, I

have received the painful intelligence of the death of my illustrious friend, the venerable Prince Gallitzen. Of such stuff is this life composed! Separations! Deaths! They are hard tugs upon the heart. But Hope, my friend, that smiling angel, looks in; and Despair, just lowering over the soul, is put to flight. I thank God for having given her to me as a sweet comforter through all my ills: and even under this heavy disappointment, when the rupture between two mighty nations opens a gulph betwixt me and my happiness; even now she promises brighter days to come, and I find the pangs of separation less intolerable.

This seems the very season of affliction. The poor Queen of Georgia has also breathed her last sigh. The Prince Bagration was of her family; and during her seclusion in Russia, she felt herself still a Sovereign, while listening to accounts of the commanding virtues of her kinsman. She was to be buried with a pomp suitable to her rank; and I went to the great perspective to be a spectator of the ceremony.

The Emperor and the Grand Duke, with the Court, attended; and also a procession of four thousand men, with twelve pieces of cannon, and their military bands. The solemn tones of the dirges, and the awful response of the minute guns as the line proceeded, had a very striking effect. The rich habits of the bishops and priests, with those of the Imperial family and the Court, and the long black-robed mutes bearing torches, by the extraordinary variety and mingling of the gay colours of life, with the mourning hues of death, increased the reflections of the observer, and deepened the melancholy of the scene.

The coffin, covered with a magnificent pall, was borne on a bier, and supported by ten men in military habits. Over their heads a canopy was carried, feathered and crowned according to her royal dignity. Several noblemen preceded and followed the body, bearing on embroidered cushions the various insignia of a sovereign. Thus passed the Queen of Georgia! The scene was fraught with such food for meditation; and meditations which, in these portentous times, are so Cassandralike in their prognostics, that I hurried from the church, quite in the dismals, to talk over the past, present, and to come, with my dear Mosco friend, now arrived in St. Petersburgh.

My pictures I had finished. They were deposited in the Hermitage with that of Peter the Great; and I now only waited for my passport to carry me across the frontiers into Sweden. It was the depth of winter, and I ordered the necessary equipages for that sort of travelling. The passport was sent to me. All was now closed with me in Russia, except to take my leave of the Imperial head of the Court in which I had experienced so much kindness. I was received with a condescension that redoubled my every hope; and as I received the most gratifying marks of the amiable Alexander's approbation, and interest in my fate; I withdrew from his presence with sentiments of never-dying respect and gratitude, and with the dear conviction that " it would not be long before peace would reunite the two countries, and bring me back to Russia and to happiness!"

That night I slept not. I passed it in the saloons of some of my best friends; and freighted with many a gentle sigh to distant England, I parted from some. But from others, than friendship dearer! their tears