At last he is found guilty. A council of clergy, who are among those referred to for a sentence, quote from the Bible, and especially Absalom's case, and recommend mercy. But further transgressions are said to have come to light, and the ministers, senators, and generals unanimously condemned him to death, without stating the manner or time of the same, and of course well knowing that the breath of the czar could revoke their edict. Whether Peter intended to save his son, or really to permit his execucution, is among those secrets which history can never pierce. The sentence alone literally terrified Alexis to death! On hearing it read, he fell into a fit, from the effects of which he never recovered, although he regained his senses sufficiently to implore the presence of his father. An interview was granted, at which it is said both father and son shed tears; and finally, after receiving the pardon of the czar, and the consolations of religion, the miserable Alexis breathed his last in prison on the 7th of July.

The most absurd stories were current for a long time, and repeated from mouth to mouth, and copied by one biographer after another. They are still to be found in many otherwise grave authorities. The very number and variety of these tales falsify them all. The czar was accused of poisoning his son (sending openly one messenger after another for the poison); other accounts say that he knouted him to death with his own hands; others, that he cut off his head himself, and had it privately stitched on again. The best argument against such fables is, that if Peter really wished his son's death, he had only to let the so-called 'course of justice' have its way. Besides, the circumstance of his receiving extreme unction, when on the point of death, is a fact authenticated and established.

As may be imagined, Catherine did not escape her share of these accusations; but all the evidence which remains tends to prove that, so far from meriting them, she endeavored to incline her husband to the side of mercy,

We are drawing near the close of the active and eventful life of Peter the Great. We need not dwell upon his Persian campaign, in which, after having found a pretext for a quarrel, because he wanted one, he acquired those sunny provinces to the south of the Caspian, which compensated for the loss of Azoph. It is not land I want, but water,' was his frequent exclamation, when studying the requirements of his vast empire. The ruler who had first evinced his love of maritime affairs by paddling a skiff upon the Yausa, and who had inherited only a wild and barbarous inland country, was now the master of a respectable navy, the lord of the sunny Caspian and of the icy Baltic.

After his return from Persia in 1722, we find him, as usual after any lengthened absence, instituting examinations for mal-administration. The vice-chancellor Schaffiroff, one of his favorites, was condemned to death; but on the scaffold his punishment was commuted to banishment. Menzikoff was sentenced to pay 200,000 rubles into the exchequer, and was deprived of a great part of his income, and flogged by the emperor's own hand. For the infliction of this punishment Peter used his dubina-a cane of thick Spanish reed. Several others were disgraced, flogged, or heavily fined-thus at once showing the czar's impartiality, and proving how well

he knew the impossibility of reforming the masses while corruption existed in high places.

In July 1724, Peter again conducted a fleet against Sweden, to enforce his claims on Sweden and Denmark in behalf of the duke of Holstein. Having effected this purpose, he returned to Cronstadt, where he celebrated, by a splendid parade, the creation of his navy, which now consisted of forty-one ships of war, with 2106 cannon, and 14,960 seamen. It was on this occasion that he caused the little skiff we have mentioned to be brought from Moscow, and to be consecrated by the name of the Little Grandsire the father of the Russian navy. This little shallop is still preserved at St. Petersburg with almost religious veneration.

The last years of this great monarch's life were employed in providing against the inundations to which his new capital was exposed in the autumn, in continuing the Ladoga canal, and in the erection of an academy of sciences. He turned his attention next to the examination and punishment of state criminals; to the promotion of the labors of the legislative body; and the establishment of the order of Alexander Newsky;' the improvement of the condition of the monks; the banishment of the Capuchins from Russia; and a new commercial treaty with Sweden. He also betrothed his favorite daughter Anna to the duke of Holstein in 1724, having already placed the crown, with great pomp, upon the head of his wife Catherine on the 18th of the preceding May, in token of his love and gratitude. He likewise provided that an education should be given to the surviving son of the unhappy Alexis, such as would become a future emperor of Russia -his only son by Catherine having died, as before mentioned, when a child, in 1717.

Peter had been for a considerable time in a weak state of health; but he owed the acceleration of his death to an act of humanity. Late in the autumn of 1724, going to visit the forge and manufactory of arms at Systerbeck he saw a boat filled with soldiers and sailors stranded, and sent a shallop to assist, but which failed in the attempt. Determined to gain his end, he set out for the spot himself; and as his vessel could not quite reach the spot, he leaped into the water, and waded to the boat, which he aided in getting off. A severé cold followed this dangerous but humane act, and this, in addition to the painful disorder from which he had long been suffering, brought on the most fatal symptoms. These came on so suddenly at last, and his sufferings were so great, that he was unable to make his last wishes perfectly intelligible. There is, however, little or no doubt that he intended to appoint his wife his successor. His words, so far as they could be understood, expressed this; and on the very day of his death she succeeded him without opposition. Catherine watched by his bedside, without quitting him, for the last three nights of his life; and he breathed his last in her arms January 28, 1725, being only in his fifty-fourth year.

The reader of this brief biography may sum up the character of Peter the Great more satisfactorily than we can do it for him; for different minds will estimate differently his services to his country. That he was a man of powerful and original genius, who did everything himself, and was never the instrument of others, must be conceded on all hands. His ardor was joined with prudence and resolution. His violent passions and sensual excesses were the fruits of the barbarism of his nation, his imperfect education, and uncontrolled power. His services to a people so ignorant and

barbarous were of the greatest possible value; indeed all of good that Russia now enjoys may, without much exaggeration, be ascribed to him. But, for him, or such as him, they might have remained till now as rude and powerless as when he found them. Among the Russians his name is venerated as it deserves to be. St. Petersburg, the city of his love and of his creation the western portal of the empire '-is now a magnificent metropolis, with palaces, arsenals, quays, bridges, academies, and temples, rising one beyond another; albeit that the severity of its climate must forever be a drawback to its many advantages.

COUNT RUMFORD.

BENJAMIN THOMPSON, better known by the name of Count Rumford, which he afterwards acquired, was born at Woburn in Massachusetts on the 26th of March 1753. His ancestors appear to have been among the earliest of the colonists of Massachusetts, and in all probability came originally from England. They seem to have held a respectable rank among their neighbors, and to have been for one or two generations moderately wealthy. Ebenezer Thompson, the grandfather of Count Rumford, held a captain's commission in the militia of the province, and was therefore a man of some repute in the place where he resided, Count Rumford's father, whose name was also Benjamin, dying while his son was a mere infant, the mother and child continued in the grandfather's house, which had been their home even while the husband was alive. In October 1755, however, the old man died, leaving a small provision for his grandson, barely sufficient, it would appear, to maintain him till he should arrive at an age to be able to do something for himself. In the following year Mrs. Thompson, whose maiden name was Ruth Limonds, married a second husband, Josiah Pierce, also a resident in Woburn; and the boy accompanied his mother to the house of his stepfather, who stipulated, however, that he should receive the weekly sum of two shillings and fivepence for the child's maintenance till he attained his eighth year. His grandfather's little legacy seems to have furnished the means of meeting this demand.

As soon as young Thompson was able to learn his letters, he was sent to the school of his native town, taught by a Mr. John Fowle, who is said to have been a gentleman of liberal education, and an excellent teacher ;' and here in company with all the children of the place, he was taught reading, writing, arithmetic, and a little Latin, having the reputation, it is said, of being a quick boy. At the age of eleven he left the school of Woburn, and joined one taught by a Mr. Hill at Medford, under whose care he made greater advances in mathematics than he had attempted under Mr. Fowle. The only circumstances from which we can form an idea of the progress he made, is the statement that his knowledge of mathematics and astronomy was sufficient to enable him to calculate eclipses.

At thirteen years of age Thompson was bound apprentice to Mr. John Appleby, a respectable merchant in Salem, the second town in point of size in Massachusetts, although at that time it must have been little more than a village. His occupations with Mr. Appleby were principally those of a clerk in the counting-house; and he appears to have had sufficient leisure, while attending to his duties, to extend his reading and his acquaintance with scientific subjects. At this time also he began to exibit a

taste for designing and engraving, as well as for mechanical invention. Among other contrivances upon which he exercised his ingenuity, was one for solving the famous problem of the Perpetual Motion; a chimera upon which young men of a turn of mind similar to his often try their untaught powers. One evening, we are informed, the young speculator was so sure that he had at length found out the Perpetual Motion, that he set out with the secret in his head to Woburn, intending to communicate it to a friend and old schoolfellow, Loammi Baldwin, in whose knowledge in such matters he placed great confidence. Loammi spent the night discussing the project with him, and so sensibly, that we are told young Thompson became convinced of the mechanical impossibility of his or any other Perpetual Motion, and returned to his counting-house in Salem next morning, resolved to attempt something less magnificent and more practicable.

About this time the differences between the mother country and the American colonies were beginning to assume a serious aspect. The imposition of the famous stamp tax in 1765 had excited great indignation among the colonists, and its repeal in the following year was celebrated with proportionate rejoicings. At Salem, where the commercial interest predominated, it was determined that there should be a great display of fireworks on the occasion; and as the town did not possess a professional pyrotechnist, Mr. Appleby's clerk contrived to get his services in that capacity accepted. Unluckily, while preparing some detonating mixture, he handled the pestle so as to cause an explosion, by which he was so severely burnt that his life was despaired of. At length he was able to remove from his mother's house at Woburn, to which he had been carried after the accident, and resume his employment at Salem. The renewed attempts of the mother country, however, to impose taxes on the colonies, followed as they were by the resolution of the merchants in the colonies not to import any of the products of the mother country, produced such a stagnation of trade in Salem, as at other towns, that Mr. Appleby, having no occasion for the further services of a clerk, was glad to give young Thompson up his indentures, and allow him to return to Woburn.

This happened apparently in 1767 or 1768; and for a year or two afterwards, Thompson's course of life seems to have been wavering and undecided. In the winter of 1769 he taught a school at Wilmington; and some time in the same year he seems to have thoughts of pursuing the medical profession, for which purpose he placed himself under Dr. Hay, a physician in Woburn, and entered zealously upon the study of anatomy and physiology. While with Dr. Hay, he is said to have exhibited greater fondness for the mechanical than for other parts of the profession, and to have amused himself by making surgical instruments. How long Thompson pursued his medical studies is uncertain; in 1770, however, we find him resuming his mercantile avocations, in the capacity of a clerk in a dry-goods store at Boston, kept by a Mr. Capen. He was in Boston during the famous riots which took place on the attempt to land a cargo of tea from a Bri tishvessel contrary to the resolution of the colonists against admitting British goods. Mr. Capen's business seems to have declined in the critical circumstances of the colony, as Mr. Appleby's had formerly done; and Thompson was again obliged to return to Woburn. During the summer of 1770, he attended, in company with his friend Baldwin, a course of lectures on experimental philosophy delivered in Harvard College; and at

no time of his life does he seem to have been so busily intent upon the acquisition of knowledge. Besides attending the lectures of the professor, he instituted experiments of his own of various kinds, some of which were the germs of valuable conclusions which he published in after-life. In particular, we may mention a course of experiments which he began for ascertaining and measuring the projectile force of gunpowder.

Thompson, though still only in his seventeenth year, had acquired that degree and kind of reputation which it is usual for youths of his stamp to obtain among intelligent acquaintances; and late in 1770, he was invited by Colonel Timothy Walker, one of the most important residents in the thriving village of Rumford, now Concord, in New Hampshire, to take charge of an academy in that place. Accepting the invitation, Thompson, says his American biographer, Dr. Renwick, found himself caressed and welcomed by a society not wanting in refinement or pretensions to fashion. His grace and personal advantages, which afterwards gained him access to the proudest circles of Europe, were already developed. His stature of nearly six feet, his erect figure, his finely-formed limbs, his bright blue eyes, his features chiseled in the Roman mould, and his dark auburn hair, rendered him a model of manly beauty. He acquired an address in the highest degree prepossessing; and at the counter of the Boston retailer, had learnt, from its fashionable customers, the polish of manner and dialect which obliterates all peculiarities that are provincial, and many of those that are national. He possessed solid acquirements far beyond the standard of the day, and had attained already the last and highest requisite for society-that of conversing with ease, and in a pure language, upon all the subjects with a knowledge of which his mind was stored. In addition, he possessed the most fascinating of all accomplishments, for he had a fine voice; and although far from a proficient in music as a science, sang with taste, and performed on several instruments.' With such advantages the young schoolmaster appears to have made an impression on not a few female hearts in the country village where he shone; on none, however, so decidedly as on that of Mrs. Rolfe, a colonel's widow, possessed of what was then considered a large fortune, and although considerably older than himself, still young and handsome enough, according to his biographer, to render it probable that a feeling more creditable than one arising from interested motives led him to seek her hand.' However this may be, the affair was soon brought to a happy conclusion. On giving out his vacation for the year 1772, the young schoolmaster stepped into the widow's carriage and then drove together to Boston, where he fitted himself with a dress in the extreme of fashion of the day, scarlet being then a favorite color. Clad anew from top to toe, he reëntered the equipage, which whirled away towards Woburn. The astonishment of the villagers at seeing their young townsman in such a guise, and in such company, was past description. Why, Ben, my child,' said his mother, gazing at his splendid outfit as he dismounted at the door, 'how could you spend your whole winter's earnings in this way?' In the presence of his fair companion the youth could hardly explain, and he was obliged to employ a friend to break the subject of his intended marriage to his mother. No objections were offered on her part, although she took twenty-four hours to deliberate on the matter; and the happy pair drove back to Rumford, where the wed

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