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 However unable we of the present day hundreds of thousands from their homes. may be to decide conclusively some of America seemed barred against them, the more important questions relating to when suddenly, cotemporaneously with race and changes of race-types, future all this misery in Europe, there occurred generations will be more fortunate, and if that memorable discovery of gold in unthey do not approve our theories, they heard-of abundance on the distant shores will at least benefit by the facts which we of the Pacific, and thousands of the exare providing for them. It is seldom that iles from Europe, and tens of thousands a new nation is ever born suddenly into from eastern America, flocked eagerly to the world. It generally grows up almost the golden land. The auri sacra famesunnoticed, so that its early stages of de- now even more than in ancient times, the velopment pass uncriticized and unrecord- great lever for moving mankind-has of ed. But the present is peculiarly an late years been guiding man into the seats epoch of the birth of new nations not, of his future glory, and is placing him on indeed, of peoples rising out of barbarism the throne of a new world. The races of into civilization, but of new combinations the Old World have become strangely of races, aggregating and segregating blended in the New ;* but it is in Califor themselves under new conditions of coun- nia that this commingling has reached its try and climate. The British race especial- maximum, and has laid the foundation of ly has spread itself over the world, and is a new nation. Emigrants from every rearing new empires in the most widely country in Europe-English, Irish, Scotch, distant parts of the earth. The leader- German, Swiss, Pole, French, Spaniardship of the races of the Old World has at flocked hither, to work side by side with length centered in Europe, and the nations the Indian tribes and Anglo-Americans, of Europe are mingling together in most and with the native Chilians and half novel circumstances, giving rise to new breeds of the southern portion of the states and peoples in the solitudes of the continent. The Australian joined them. New World discovered by Columbus. from his continent in the south, the Malay Civilization can only attain maturity in and Polynesian from the isles of the Pacountries of large cities and dense popula- cific; while the Chinaman, come forth like tion; and as Europe was destined by an anchorite from his cell, builds a temple Providence to be the seed-bed from which for his idols in San Francisco, and joins civilization was to be transplanted into in a concourse of human tribes such as the world's waste places, it behoved that the world never before beheld. Even bethe ocean which shut in our continent on fore gold was discovered, and the great the west should for long be impassable immigration commenced, California posby its nations. But as soon as the ripen- sessed a strangly mixed population for so ing process was sufficiently advanced-outlying a place. "Among the two hunwhen commerce demanded more gold and silver for its expansion, and religion needed a refuge from persecution-the Heavensent dream of Columbus opened up a new world which supplied both, and presented a field where civilization might develop into new forms. Ever since then America has taken off the surplus and *We doubt if there be another city in the world overboilings of European society, until which can furnish so many nationalities as the 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 a river into the sea raises a sand-bank at its mouth to check its course. Population dred souls who inhabit Monterey," wrote Dupetit Thouars in 1843, "there are Creoles sprung from Spaniards and the native women; strangers from all points of the globe-Scotch, Irish, American, French -who have taken wives from the half merce has brought to our shores. In crossing the Atlantic some years since, we counted among the passengers twenty nationalities on board the Cuhard steamer.-ED. ECLECTIC. breeds of whites, and these races are now | die away in the colored shadows of gorcrossed in such a way that the fusion is geous woods and sunlit mountain-peaks, complete." The new nation which is con- and the waves seem to languish in the emsolidating itself in California is an assem- brace of the lovely brides of the seably of all the others, and the novelty of those luxuriant islands, where Cybele still its elements and of its situation presages sits crowned in their solitudes, have hardthe novelty of its future career. ly begun to yield their riches to civilized man. But the hand of Providence has brought a new race to the shores of that virgin ocean. England, the queen of the seas, the great colonizing power of the world, after building up a mighty empire in India, has sent forth her offspring into the Australian world, and is rearing a British empire at the antipodes. And if from the island-continent of Australia we turn our eyes to the northwest, another offshoot of our race is seen growing into power on the opposite shores of the ocean, and from California the Anglo-Saxon race begins to spread out across the isles to meet its brethren in the south. How sublime that meeting in the heart of the Pacific! Setting out from a little island in the German Ocean, the offspring of England have fought their way through wilderness and over mountain, through tribes of savage men, and athwart the tempests of ocean; they have spanned the globe in their march, they have journeyed from the lands of the rising to the home of the setting sun, and now they are about to reünite amidst the solitudes of the eastern seas. Since the dispersion of Babel no such meeting has the world witnessed. It is the dénouement of an epic-of an epic recounting the long war between Man and Nature, and ending with seating him victorious in her last asylum. The races of the Old World have launched forth upon a new career, and are seeking new triumphs and new comminglings in a quarter of the globe that hitherto has had no history. It is a singular circumstance that, up to the present time, no great maritime or colonizing empire has ever arisen on the shores of the Pacific. Although possessing a length of seaboard far surpassing that of the Atlantic, and gemmed with isles of spontaneous fertility, suitable alike for the seat of colonies or entrepôts, the nations that surround its shores have never embarked an army on its waters, or carried the torch of knowledge over its bosom to other lands. Never, either from the ports of China and India, where powerful states have existed almost from the dawn of history; or from Arabia, where the most warlike and daring empire grew up that the world ever saw; or from the opposite shores of Africa and America, where, with the sole exception of the empire of the Incas, humanity seems hitherto to have stagnated in barbarism-has a nation sent forth colonies to cultivate the isles, or an emperor dispatched his navy to capture them. The isles of the several archipelagoes, teeming with fruits and blossoms, floating like baskets of flowers amid the smooth waters of the Pacific -labyrinths of beauty, where the tides 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." CATHARINE From the Temple Bar Magazine. THE FIRST, EMPRESS OF RUSSIA. THE autobiography of the second Cath- | arine 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. 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 Cath- When Peter was obliged to return to arine lost both father and mother, and the Moscow, he sent Catharine thither under village sexton took charge of her. Glück, an escort, and made her live in great redean of Marienburg, happening to see her tirement during two or three years, during a visit, took compassion on the though he visited her nearly every night. girl, and received her into his family as a In 1703 she joined the Greek confession, sort of companion to his daughters. Ac- the Czarowitz Alexei acting as her godcording to Villebois, however, Catharine father. By degrees the czar began to rewas the legitimate daughter of a Polish ceive his ministers at the modest house of serf of the name of Skavronski, who fled his beloved, and allowed her to be present 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, 1702. A week later the young husband was sent off to reconnoitre with his squadron, as the Russians were advancing to besiege Marienburg. The garrison capitulated, and Glück, with his whole family proceeded to the tent of Scheremetoff, the Russian general, to ask for mercy. The general noticed Catharine, and asked who she was. And being told that she 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 calmness with which she watched his outbursts of passion; and her care for his health-rendered her daily more indispensable to the enamoured czar; and it is said that he privately married her in 1707. This may have been an invention, however, for the sake of legitimating her daughter Anne, who was born in March, 1707. At an early period of the liaison, however, Peter gave his mistress the title *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. 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 day on which Peter set out for the Polish war, he declared Catharine his legitimate consort. his attempts to kiss her. She boxed his ears, and resisted as much as she could, 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. 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 mem- According to the margravine, the czarory of the czarina's presence at the ina was "short and stumpy, very brown, battle with the Turks, where she behaved and possessed neither air nor grace. One with all the dauntlessness of a man. In needed only to see her to guess her low 1716 and 1717 Catharine accompanied birth. Through her ridiculous dress she 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 of very small and badly-set diamonds. She had a dozen orders, and the same number of relics and pictures of saints fastened along the waist of her dress, so that when she walked you fancied you heard a mule; for all these orders rattled together and produced a precisely similar sound. The czar, on the other hand, was very tall and good-looking; his face was handsome, but its expression so rough as to produce fear. He was dressed in sailor's fashion. The czarina, who spoke German very badly, and did not quite understand all that the queen said to her, ordered her fool in, and conversed with her in Russian. This poor creature was a Princess Golyzin, and was compelled to play this part in order to save her life, as she had been mixed up in a conspiracy against the czar: she received the knout twice. Her gossip caused the czarina to laugh loudly." The czar had requested the use of Monbijou (a country seat belonging to the queen), which was most disagreeable to the latter, because she knew in what a state her house would be left. Hence she removed every thing fragile. The czar, his wife, and suite arrived at Monbijou by water, and were received by the king and queen on the river bank. So soon as the czar landed he gave the king his hand, with the words, "I am very glad to see you, my dear Frederick." He then went up to the queen and tried to embrace her; but was repulsed. The czarina began by kissing the queen's hand, which she repeated several times. Then she introduced to her the Duke and Duchess of Mecklenburg, and four hundred so-called ladies in her suite. They were mostly German serving wenches, who performed the duties of nurses, bedchamber- women, cooks, and laundresses. Nearly each of 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 chil. dren; 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 When he returned home he found his departed, the queen hurried to Monbijou, family together, surrounded by the officers and found such desolation that she was of the court. He ordered Mons to look obliged to have nearly the whole house at the clock, and it was past nine; on rebuilt. 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 |