Stars,--not very heavenly, but of fixed nature, and heavenly to Catharine,--a star or two, shine through the abominable murk: Steady, patient; steer silently, in all weathers, towards these! "Young Catharine's immovable equanimity in this distracted environment strikes us very much.

Peter is careering, tumbling about, on all manner of absurd broomsticks, driven too surely by the Devil; terrific-absurd big Lapland Witch, surrounded by multitudes smaller, and some of them less ugly.

Will be Czar of Russia, however;--and is one's so-called Husband.

These are prospects for an observant, immovably steady-going young Woman! The reigning Czarina, old CATIN herself, is silently the Olympian Jove to Catharine, who reveres her very much.

Though articulately stupid as ever, in this Book of Catharine's, she comes out with a dumb weight, of silence, of obstinacy, of intricate abrupt rigor, which--who knows but it may savor of dumb unconscious wisdom in the fat old blockhead?
The Book says little of her, and in the way of criticism, of praise or of blame, nothing whatever; but one gains the notion of some dark human female object, bigger than one had fancied it before.
"Catharine steered towards her stars.