The present empress has been wiser, for, abandoning the romance, she spent her winter in Naples, where she seems to have recovered her health. The climate of Taganrog, though so far to the south, is unfavorable, and in winter it is exposed to the terrible winds which sweep across the desert, unobstructed from the pole. But Alexander determined to attend to her health there himself, and preceded her by some days to make preparations. A strange and singularly depressing ceremony preceded his departure. For some years he had been liable to melancholy impressions on the subject of religion. The Greek church, which differs little from the Romish, except in refusing allegiance to the bishop of Rome, abounds in formalities, some stately, and some severe. Alexander, educated under the Swiss, who could not have taught him more of Christianity than was known by a French _philosophe_, and having only the dangerous morals of the Russian court for his practical guide, suffered himself, when in Paris, to listen to the mystical absurdities of the well-known Madame de Krudener, and from that time became a mystic. He had the distorted dreams and the heavy reveries, and talked the unintelligible theories which the Germans talk by the fumes of their meerschaums, and propagate by the vapours of their swamps. He lost his activity of mind; and if he had lived a few years longer, he would probably have finished his career in a cell, and died, like Charles V., an idiot, in the “odour of sanctity.” The preparation for his journey had the colouring of that superstition which already began to cloud his mind. It was his custom, in his journeys from St Petersburg, to start from the cathedral of “Our Lady of Kasan.” But on this occasion, he gave notice to the Greek bishop, that he should require him to chant a service at four o’clock in the morning, at the monastery of St Alexander Newski, in the full assembly of ecclesiastics, at which he would be present. On this occasion every thing took an ominous shape, in the opinion of the people. They said that the service chanted was the service for the dead, though the official report stated that it was the _Te Deum_. The monastery of St Alexander Newski is surrounded by the chief cemetery of St Petersburg, where various members of the reigning family, who had not worn the crown, were interred, and among them the two infant daughters of the emperor. The popular report was, that the ecclesiastics wore mourning robes; but this is contradicted, whether truly or not, by the official report, which states that they wore vestures of crimson worked with gold. Just at dawn the emperor came alone in his calèche, not even attended by a servant. The outer gates were then carefully reclosed, the mass was said, the old prelate gave him a crucifix to accompany him on his journey, the priests once more chanted their anthem, they then conducted him to the gate, and the ceremonial closed.