blamed for his death, but without cause); Iwan's Mother, Princess Anne, (mercifully) 18th March, 1746.

See Russian Histories, TOOKE, CASTERA, &c.,--none of which, except MANNSTEIN, is good for much, or to be trusted without scrutiny.] This is the Chetardie-L'Estoc conspiracy, of 5th December, 1741; the pitching up of Princess Elizabeth, and the pitching down of Anton Ulrich and his Munnichs, who had before pitched Bieren down.

After which, matters remained more stationary at Petersburg: Czarina Elizabeth, fat indolent soul, floated with a certain native buoyancy, with something of bulky steadiness, in the turbid plunge of things, and did not sink.

On the contrary, her reign, so called, was prosperous, though stupid; her big dark Countries, kindled already into growth, went on growing rather.
And, for certain, she herself went on growing, in orthodox devotions of spiritual type (and in strangely heterodox ditto of NONspiritual!); in indolent mansuetudes (fell rages, if you cut on the RAWS at all!); in perpetual incongruity; and, alas, at last, in brandy-and-water,--till, as "INFAME CATIN DU NORD," she became terribly important to some persons! At her accession, and for two years following, Czarina Elizabeth, in spite of real disinclination that way, had a War on her hands: the Swedish War (August, 1741-August, 1743), which, after long threatening on the Swedish side, had broken out into unwelcome actuality, in Anton Ulrich's time; and which could not, with all the Czarina's industry, be got rid of or staved off; Sweden being bent upon the thing, reason or no reason.

War not to be spoken of, except on compulsion, in the most voluminous History! It was the unwisest of wars, we should say, and in practice probably the contemptiblest; if there were not one other Swedish War coming, which vies with it in these particulars, of which we shall be obliged to speak, more or less, at a future stage.