- inhabitants belong. Besides New-Zealand and Japan, British Columbia and Upper Canada seem to us favorable localities for the preservation of the British type; and of Upper Canada, especially the peninsula lying between Lakes Huron, Erie, and Ontario, and having for base a line drawn from Kingston to Georgia Bay.

had spread so far inland in eastern America that it cost as much money to carry emigrants through the settled country to the backwoods as to convey them across the Atlantic. This obstacle was yearly increasing, when appalling famine and misery in Ireland, and horrible convulsions on the Continent, began to drive hundreds of thousands from their homes. America seemed barred against them, when suddenly, cotemporaneously with all this misery in Europe, there occurred that memorable discovery of gold in unheard-of abundance on the distant shores of the Pacific, and thousands of the exiles from Europe, and tens of thousands from eastern America, flocked eagerly to the golden land. The auri sacra famesnow even more than in ancient times, the great lever for moving mankind-has of late years been guiding man into the seats of his future glory, and is placing him on the throne of a new world. The races of the Old World have become strangely blended in the New ;* but it is in California that this commingling has reached its maximum, and has laid the foundation of a new nation. Emigrants from every country in Europe-English, Irish, Scotch, German, Swiss, Pole, French, Spaniardflocked hither, to work side by side with the Indian tribes and Anglo-Americans, and with the native Chilians and halfbreeds of the southern portion of the continent. The Australian joined them from his continent in the south, the Malay and Polynesian from the isles of the Pacific; while the Chinaman, come forth like an anchorite from his cell, builds a temple for his idols in San Francisco, and joins in a concourse of human tribes such as the world never before beheld. Even before gold was discovered, and the great immigration commenced, California possessed a strangly mixed population for so

However unable we of the present day may be to decide conclusively some of the more important questions relating to race and changes of race-types, future generations will be more fortunate, and if they do not approve our theories, they will at least benefit by the facts which we are providing for them. It is seldom that a new nation is ever born suddenly into the world. It generally grows up almost unnoticed, so that its early stages of development pass uncriticized and unrecorded. But the present is peculiarly an epoch of the birth of new nations not, indeed, of peoples rising out of barbarism into civilization, but of new combinations of races, aggregating and segregating themselves under new conditions of country and climate. The British race especially has spread itself over the world, and is rearing new empires in the most widely distant parts of the earth. The leadership of the races of the Old World has at length centered in Europe, and the nations of Europe are mingling together in most novel circumstances, giving rise to new states and peoples in the solitudes of the New World discovered by Columbus. Civilization can only attain maturity in countries of large cities and dense population; and as Europe was destined by Providence to be the seed-bed from which civilization was to be transplanted into the world's waste places, it behoved that the ocean which shut in our continent on the west should for long be impassable by its nations. But as soon as the ripening process was sufficiently advanced-outlying a place. "Among the two hunwhen commerce demanded more gold and dred souls who inhabit Monterey," wrote silver for its expansion, and religion need- Dupetit Thouars in 1843, "there are Creed a refuge from persecution-the Heaven- oles sprung from Spaniards and the native sent dream of Columbus opened up a women; strangers from all points of the new world which supplied both, and pre- globe-Scotch, Irish, American, French sented a field where civilization might de -who have taken wives from the halfvelop into new forms. Ever since then America has taken off the surplus and overboilings of European society, until emigration at length began to raise a bar-city of New-York at the present time, which comrier against itself-even as the influx of merce has brought to our shores. In crossing the

.*

*We doubt if there be another city in the world which can furnish so many nationalities as the

Atlantic some years since, we counted among the

a river into the sea raises a sand-bank at its mouth to check its course. Population

passengers twenty nationalities on board the Cunard steamer.-ED. ECLECTIC.

die away in the colored shadows of gor-
geous woods and sunlit mountain-peaks,
and the waves seem to languish in the em-
brace of the lovely brides of the sea-
those luxuriant islands, where Cybele still
sits crowned in their solitudes, have hard-
ly begun to yield their riches to civilized
man. But the hand of Providence has
brought a new race to the shores of that

The races of the Old World have
launched forth upon a new career, and are
seeking new triumphs and new comming-virgin ocean. England, the queen of the
lings in a quarter of the globe that hither- seas, the great colonizing power of the
to has had no history. It is a singular world, after building up a mighty empire
circumstance that, up to the present time, in India, has sent forth her offspring into
no great maritime or colonizing empire the Australian world, and is rearing a Brit-
has ever arisen on the shores of the ish empire at the antipodes. And if from
Pacific. Although possessing a length of the island-continent of Australia we turn
seaboard far surpassing that of the Atlan- our eyes to the northwest, another off-
tic, and gemmed with isles of spontaneous shoot of our race is seen growing into
fertility, suitable alike for the seat of col- power on the opposite shores of the ocean,
onies or entrepôts, the nations that sur- and from California the Anglo-Saxon race
round its shores have never embarked an begins to spread out across the isles to
army on its waters, or carried the torch meet its brethren in the south. How
of knowledge over its bosom to other sublime that meeting in the heart of the
lands. Never, either from the ports of Pacific! Setting out from a little island
China and India, where powerful states in the German Ocean, the offspring of
have existed almost from the dawn of his- England have fought their way through
tory; or from Arabia, where the most wilderness and over mountain, through
warlike and daring empire grew up that tribes of savage men, and athwart the
the world ever saw; or from the opposite tempests of ocean; they have spanned
shores of Africa and America, where, the globe in their march, they have jour-
with the sole exception of the empire of neyed from the lands of the rising to the
the Incas, humanity seems hitherto to home of the setting sun, and now they
have stagnated in barbarism-has a nation are about to reünite amidst the solitudes
sent forth colonies to cultivate the isles, of the eastern seas. Since the dispersion
or an emperor dispatched his navy to of Babel no such meeting has the world
capture them. The isles of the several witnessed. It is the dénouement of an
archipelagoes, teeming with fruits and epic-of an epic recounting the long war
blossoms, floating like baskets of flowers between Man and Nature, and ending
amid the smooth waters of the Pacific with seating him victorious in her last
-labyrinths of beauty, where the tides asylum.

breeds of whites, and these races are now crossed in such a way that the fusion is complete." The new nation which is consolidating itself in California is an assembly of all the others, and the novelty of its elements and of its situation presages the novelty of its future career.

THE STRONGEST BANK IN THE WORLD.-The Bank of Genoa, which has been in existence hundreds of years, has perhaps, proved itself the strongest institution of the kind in the world. It is a remarkable fact in its history, that its administration has always been as permanent and unchangeable as that of the republic has been agitated and fluctuating. No alteration ever took place in the mode of governing and regulating the affairs of the bank; and two sovereign and independent powers at war with each other, have been within the walls of the city, without producing the slighest shock to the bank, or causing it to secrete any of its books or treasures.-Appleton's Cyclopædia of Commercial Anecdotes.

MR. BRIGHT, in a recent speech, said that England was "the most merciless of all Christian countries." A prominent English journal admits this saying to be true, and going back to the historical character of England in this respect, adds: "In the reigns of the Henrys, 500,000 subjects and citizens of England alone are computed to have been executed for the mere offense of vagrant indigence. Even in the reign of Elizabeth, an unemployed peasant was liable to seizure and slavery. In the time of James the Second, only one hundred and seventy-six years ago, obnoxious citizens were sentenced to transportation wholesale, and sold by the Court to the courtiers, to be put up at auction as slaves in the plantations."

From the Temple Bar Magazine.

CATHARINE THE FIRST, EMPRESS OF RUSSIA.

THE autobiography of the second Catharine has become familiar to English readers through the exertions of Mr. Herzen: and a very wonderful story it is. The story of her predecessor is, however, even more surprising, not only through its romantic details, but also through the difficulty all historians meet with in drawing a satisfactory conclusion from the various rumors spread. The present paper is intended to convey an idea of the life of Catharine I., and, if possible, to clear up the doubts still existing as to her origin.

|

fell in a skirmish in 1705.* Catharine appears to have yielded to her fate; and some months after, Menschikoff, coming into camp, saw her, and asked Scheremetoff to hand her over to him. To this the subordinate consented; and Catharine was no loser by the change, for Menschikoff was a younger man, and took such a fancy to her, that in a few days it was impossible to distinguish whether he were master or slave. A little while after, the czar dined with Menschikoff; saw Catharine; heard her story; and-we will pass over honest Weber's details. After the czar's departure, she bitterly reproached Menschikoff for his subserviency; but Peter soon returned and made up matters with her. Three days latter he said to Menschikoff, "I shall keep Catharine-she pleases me; you must give her up to me;" and the favorite most politely complied.

When Peter was obliged to return to Moscow, he sent Catharine thither under an escort, and made her live in great retirement during two or three years, though he visited her nearly every night. In 1703 she joined the Greek confession, the Czarowitz Alexei acting as her godfather. By degrees the czar began to receive his ministers at the modest house of his beloved, and allowed her to be present

According to Weber, Catharine's mother was a serf in Esthonia, and gave birth to her without going through the previous church-ceremony. The mother's own er was a Lieut.-Colonel von Resen, a halfpay Swedish officer, and he is generally supposed to have been the father of the future empress. In her third year Catharine lost both father and mother, and the village sexton took charge of her. Glück, dean of Marienburg, happening to see her during a visit, took compassion on the girl, and received her into his family as a sort of companion to his daughters. According to Villebois, however, Catharine was the legitimate daughter of a Polish serf of the name of Skavronski, who fled from his country and settled in Dorpat. at the conferences. The correct judgment When Catharine was of the age of eight- she displayed; the tact with which she een, she was married to a smart curly-head-read Peter's character and humor; the ed Swedish dragoon, probably in August, calmness with which she watched his out1702. A week later the young husband bursts of passion; and her care for his was sent off to reconnoitre with his health-rendered her daily more indispensquadron, as the Russians were advancing sable to the enamoured czar; and it is to besiege Marienburg. The garrison said that he privately married her in 1707. capitulated, and Glück, with his whole This may have been an invention, howfamily proceeded to the tent of Schereme- ever, for the sake of legitimating her toff, the Russian general, to ask for mercy. daughter Anne, who was born in March, The general noticed Catharine, and asked 1707. At an early period of the liaison, who she was. And being told that she however, Peter gave his mistress the title was a foundling, and just married to a Swedish dragoon, he replied, "That is of no consequence; she is mine and shall remain with me." Of her husband nothing more is known, except that he probably

*Bussy Rabutin declares that the husband lived much longer, and that Catharine frequently saw him in private. The czar caught them once together; gave them both a hearty thrashing, and sent the husband to Siberia.

consort.

of Gossuradina. In December, 1709, | her five years before. He took her in his Catharine was delivered of the Princess arms, and scratched her face all over in Elizabeth; and on March 17th, 1711, the his attempts to kiss her. She boxed his day on which Peter set out for the Polish ears, and resisted as much as she could, war, he declared Catharine his legitimate saying that she would have none of this familiarity, which dishonored her. The czar laughed heartily at this notion, and conversed some time with her. As she had been taught, she spoke to him about his fleet and conquests; and this pleased him so much that he repeatedly said to the czarina that he would willingly give one of his provinces to have such a child.

According to the margravine, the czarina was "short and stumpy, very brown, and possessed neither air nor grace. One needed only to see her to guess her low birth. Through her ridiculous dress she

Catharine accompanied the czar on this campaign, in which the Russian army ran such an imminent risk of extermination on the Pruth. According to popular report, Catharine gave all her jewels to make up the sum required to bribe the Grand Vizier; and though we have no certain proof of this, the czar took advantage of it to found the order of St. Catharine, in memory of the czarina's presence at the battle with the Turks, where she behaved with all the dauntlessness of a man. In 1716 and 1717 Catharine accompanied the czar on his journey in foreign parts, might have been taken for a German actbut remained in Holland when he proced-ress, who had bought her clothes at a ed to Paris. On their way back the czaric second-hand shop. She was dressed à l'ancouple visited Berlin; and the Margra- tique, and overloaded with silver and vine of Baireuth supplies us with a most tinsel. Her stomacher was adorned with pregnant account of the visit in her precious stones, in a most peculiar design, "Memoirs." -a double eagle, whose wings were made The czar had requested the use of Mon- of very small and badly-set diamonds. bijou (a country seat belonging to the She had a dozen orders, and the same queen), which was most disagreeable to number of relics and pictures of saints the latter, because she knew in what a state fastened along the waist of her dress, so her house would be left. Hence she re- that when she walked you fancied you moved every thing fragile. The czar, heard a mule; for all these orders rattled his wife, and suite arrived at Monbijou by together and produced a precisely similar water, and were received by the king and sound. The czar, on the other hand, was queen on the river bank. So soon as the very tall and good-looking; his face was czar landed he gave the king his hand, handsome, but its expression so rough as with the words, "I am very glad to see to produce fear. He was dressed in sailyou, my dear Frederick." He then went or's fashion. The czarina, who spoke up to the queen and tried to embrace her; German very badly, and did not quite but was repulsed. The czarina began by understand all that the queen said to her, kissing the queen's hand, which she re-ordered her fool in, and conversed with peated several times. Then she introduc- her in Russian. This poor creature was ed to her the Duke and Duchess of Meck- a Princess Golyzin, and was compelled to lenburg, and four hundred so-called ladies play this part in order to save her life, as in her suite. They were mostly German she had been mixed up in a conspiracy serving - wenches, who performed the against the czar: she received the knout duties of nurses, bedchamber- women, twice. Her gossip caused the czarina to cooks, and laundresses. Nearly each of laugh loudly." these creatures carried a richly-dressed babe in her arms; and when asked whether the children were their own they replied with a curtsey à la Russe, "The czar did me the honor to make me this child."* So soon as the czar saw the Princess Friedrika, then eight years of age, he recognized her, as he had seen Probably the margravine saw one or two children; but memoir-writers in those days liked amusing their readers more than telling the truth.

*

The margravine assumes that it is well known that Peter was poisoned in his youth, which affected his nerves, and frequently brought on fits. He had one of the latter at dinner; and as he had his knife in his hand, the queen leaped up in great terror, to get out of his way. Peter, however, declared he would not hurt her, and seized her hand, which he squeezed so hard that she screamed for mercy; at which Peter laughed, and said

that she had more delicate bones than his | been to see one of his pages, who was ill.

Catharine. So soon as the Russian court departed, the queen hurried to Monbijou, and found such desolation that she was obliged to have nearly the whole house rebuilt.

When he returned home he found his family together, surrounded by the officers of the court. He ordered Mons to look at the clock, and it was past nine; on which the czar said, "It is time to be gone," and retired to his bedroom, and the courtiers proceeded home. Mons had undressed, and was smoking a pipe, when General Uschakoff came in, told him he was arrested, took his sword and key, sealed up every thing, and conducted him to his own house. The czar was there, and looked at Mons disdainfully, but merely said, "Are you here?" and went away. On the next morning Mons was conveyed to the cabinet-chancery, where Peter also was; and Mons, on seeing the latter, fell into a fainting fit. He was let blood, and the czar ordered that time should be granted him to recover.

Peter returned to Russia for the melancholy catastrophe of his son Alexei. We have directly opposed testimony as to the share Catharine had in this occurrence. Those authors who are generally disposed to judge the czarina favorably, declare that she tried to interfere; while her opponents, among them Villebois, assert that this conduct was feigned, and are of opinion that she was the cause of the murder, as she had the strongest interest in the death of the unfortunate youth. For several years Catharine retained the unaltered confidence and esteem of her husband, who often expressed his admiration at the way in which she behaved as empress, while never forgetting that she was not born to the purple. He undertook hardly any thing without her; and she accompanied him on the dangerous Persian campaign of 1722, sharing all his fatigues and peril. As a reward for this, Peter had her solemnly crowned empress in Moscow in May, 1724.

Peter thus raised the wife of his heart to the highest position in his power, and at the same time wished to secure her future in the event of his death; and yet, before he sank into the grave, she ran a terrible risk of being toppled from her height. The most intimate friends of the czarina were her first chamberlain, Mons de la Croix, and his sister, her first ladyin-waiting, the widow of General von Balk. Not only were they the channels through which petitions reached Catharine-and probably they did not go unrewarded for their intercession-but Peter formed a suspicion that Mons was too intimate with his consort, and that Frau von Balk was the go-between. The liaison seems to have been tolerably notorious; and Villebois declares that every body at court was aware of the czarina's passion for Mons. It is also stated that the czar collected proofs which did not allow him longer to doubt about his consort's guilt; but no one has as yet told us of what nature these proofs were. At any rate, neither the conduct of Peter nor of Catharine in the affair seems to show that substantial proofs were acquired. On the evening of November 19th the czar had VOL. LXIII.-NO. 1

Various reports exist as to the further progress of this examination. It certainly appears, so far as came out before the tribunal, that the sole charge brought forward was that the brother and sister had received presents and misapplied the czarina's confidence; and Mons seemed to have at once confessed the truth of this. Many authors have believed that he did it nobly for the sake of saving the czarina, as he knew what his real offense was, and by confessing to the money question there was no occasion for going into the amour. But when we bear in mind the awful corruption obtaining at the Russian court, it is possible that Mons was selected as a warning example for the rest. On the other hand, we can scarce believe that Catharine, if conscious of guilt, would have ventured to intercede for Mons, as we know that she did from several quarters. The appeal was in vain; and on November 26th Mons was removed to the citadel. When he passed through the court-yard, on which the windows of the imperial princesses looked, in whose daily society he had lived so long, they came up to the window, and he took a reverential farewell of them. The czar himself is said to have visited him before his death, and to have said that he was very sorry to lose him; but it could not be altered. Mons was beheaded, and his body put on a wheel. Frau von Balk received eleven blows of the knout and was banished toTobolsk, but was recalled after Peter's death.

There are various anecdotes in existence 3