life*, which a young, but masterly hand, in Hanover, with quick sensibility, historical addrefs, elevated stile, and with equal truth and candour, has submitted to the judgement of impartial posterity?

Whoever has the fortune to be ridiculed and laughed at, as I have heard the count of Schaumburg Lippe a thousand times, on account of his long face, his flying hair, his great hat, and his small sword, but who is at the same time heroic and great like him, may well be allowed sometimes the privilege of smiling. The count of Buckeburg, however, never laughed at the world but with good nature. With a breast devoid of malice and hatred, he spent his time in the retirement of a country seat in the midst of a wood, often quite alone, or with the fair one whom he had chosen for his wife; by whom he did not appear to me to be beloved; but for whom, after he was dead, he died of love.

EIN LIEBHABER.

AN USEFUL HINT.

THE difference between rising every morning at 6 and at 8, in the course of forty years, supposing a man to go to bed at the same time he otherwise would, amounts to 29,000 hours; or three years, 121 days, and sixteen hours; which will afford eight hours a day for exactly ten years; so that is the same as if ten years of life, a weighty consideration, were added, in which we could command eight hours every day for the cultivation of our minds, or the dispatch of business.

Memoirs of court William of Schaumburg Lippe; by Theodore malz, Hanover, 1783.

ORIGINAL ANECDOTES OF PETER THE GREAT, COMMUNICATED BY ARCTICUS.

Characteristical anecdotes of great men, are among the most interestig, species of literary amusements to the speculative philosopher as they strip mankind of all their extraneous trappings, and display the mind. in its pure and unadorned simplicity. The king and the beggir are thus upon a footing; and we often see that those splendid beings whose nod makes the world tremble, when thus anatomized, consist of "such stuff as fools are made of," and though the greatest m en bow down before them in public with admiration, they become in private the jest of servants, and the tool of knives. But when we have thus an opportunity of seeing men, who, though exposed to all the temptations which uncontrculable power so naturally produce, continue still to be actuated by a spirit of beneficence on all occasions, it ought to raise them in our estimation in a very high degree. The anecdotes communicated by my respectable correspondent, of Peter the Great, and the amiable Catharine, serve to give a pleasing view of the talents, and dispositions of that monarch, even in his most unguarded moments; and though they often exhibit him in a laughable point of view, and 'give an idea of the mode of conducting his operations, and carrying on business in an absolute court, ext.emely different from what we might otherwise expect, yet they serve to make us esteem the man, perhaps yet more than we admire the monarch.

By the very obliging attention of my kind correspondent, I shall be able to lay before my readers from time to time, several very characteristic anecdotes of this great man, and his most distinguished courtiers, some of them laughable enough.

Anecdote first, by general Betskoy.

PETER the Great was one day questioning some of his ministers, returned from their mifsions at foreign courts, relative to the progrefs of the young gentlemen he had sent abroad for education, to the different countries of Europe, and seemed highly pleased with the favourable accounts given of them,

when the conversation was suddenly interrupted by de Costa, one of Peter's jesters, vociferating. from a corner of the room, Peter you are a fool. This abrupt and singular salutation drew the empeFor's attention, who declared, that if de Costa could> not make good his afsertion, he fhould be tofsed in a blanket immediately, and called on him therefore to begin. The jester, by no means disconcerted, advanced gravely to the middle of the room, where there always stood a round table, covered with red cloth, containing implements for writing; and taking a fheet of fine paper, doubled it, and after drawing the ivory cutter hard over the ply, bid Peter try to take it out.

The emperor, with much good humour, set about the task afsigned him by his jester; but after working some time, was obliged to confefs himself unable to effect it; then, says de Costa, I hope you now avow yourself the fool, and not me; so let us change places, for I must be emperor in my turn. However, Peter declared that he still did neither. understand his claim, nor allegory; and he must explain, or cut capers in the air. Then, says de Costa, the moral and meaning of my folded paper is this: You send young men abroad at the age of fifteen or sixteen, to acquire foreign instruction and manners, to civilize your empire; but they have already taken a ply at home, like my paper, which can never. be taken out; so that if you wish, O! Czar, to do the work effectually, send children abroad for instruction, who are still without imprefsion of any kind, and they will facilitate thy labours.

General Betskoy, though then very young, was so struck, with the justnefs of the disguised satirist's reproof, (to which he was witnefs, as being ordimance on duty at the time,) that he never forgot it; and when Catharine II. gave him the commifsion to found the establifhment for the education of the female nobility, called le Couvent des Demoiselles Nobles, the Academy of Arts, and to make a new plan for the Imperial Corps of Land Cadets, founded by the famous count Munich, he took care to insert, as fundamental principles,

First, That children fhould be received into all those seminaries at from five to six years of age.

Secondly, That they should be educated' entirely by foreigners, with little or no intercourse with the Rufsians, even their relations, except on public. days, merely to fhow their moral and physical improvement.

And lastly, that they should not be let out of the seminaries, till an age when the allegoric ply of Peter's jester had been so strongly given by foreigners, that no future intermixture with the natives, nor: force of example, could take it out.

**This anecdote was communicated to Arcticus by general Betfkoy himself, the oldest nobleman in. St Petersburgh.

Another of the same, by the same.

THE emperor came home one day much irritated against his favourite prince Mencikoff, from a complaint of the chancellor Shafire, relative to a large

that purpose.

sum of money which the prince had refused to account for to the senate, in defiance of the edict for Catharine knowing her husband's severity on a supposed breach of trust, was alarmed for her ancient benefactor, fhould he fall in Peter's way, before he had an opportunity of explaining the cause of such an action, and of so haughty a behaviour to the senate which he desired so much to be respected. This consideration engaged the amiable lady to encourage a scheme of Balachereff, Peter's Rufsian jester, calculated to put the emperor in good humour, which was to practise on the occasion one of those ridiculous but humorous scenes which occasionally made him laugh; and by that means to procure for the prince a cooller interview, to explain so delicate a subject, on which the emperor was terrible to his dearest friends.

The jester, then, according to agreement, bolted into the room in which the emperor was sitting waiting for Menchikoff, in one of those fits of anger to which he was known to be occasionally subject; and called for justice on the prince for some supposed affront loading his fictitious adversary with every epithet he could invent, and finished by demanding his head in a wooden bowl he had brought to receive it; but added, that if the emperor would not do him justice, he was resolved to take it himself whenever he met the prince.

The end of this clamourous harangue, was the preconcerted signal for the prince to enter, as if by accident, which he had no sooner attempted than the fool flew at him like a fury, and fairly drove him