lover of Alexius Shubin, a sergeant in the Semenovsky Guards, and after his banishment to Siberia, minus his tongue, by order of the empress Anne, consoled herself with a handsome young Cossack, Alexius Razumovski, who, there is good reason to believe, subsequently became her husband. During the reign of her cousin Anne (1730-1740), Elizabeth effaced herself as much as possible; but under the regency of Anne Leopoldovna the course of events compelled the indolent but by no means incapable beauty to overthrow the existing government. The idea seems to have been first suggested to her by the French ambassador, La Chétardie, who was plotting to destroy the Austrian influence then dominant at the Russian court. It is a mistake to suppose, however, that La Chétardie took a leading part in the revolution which placed the daughter of Peter the Great on the Russian throne. As a matter of fact, beyond lending the tsesarevna 2000 ducats, instead of the 15,000 she demanded of him, he took no part whatever in the actual _coup d'état_ which was as great a surprise to him as to every one else. The merit and glory of that singular affair belong to Elizabeth alone. The fear of being imprisoned in a convent for the rest of her life was the determining cause of her irresistible outburst of energy. At midnight on the 6th of December 1741, with a few personal friends, including her physician, Armand Lestocq, her chamberlain, Michael Ilarionvich Vorontsov, her future husband, Alexius Razumovski, and Alexander and Peter Shuvalov, two of the gentlemen of her household, she drove to the barracks of the Preobrazhensky Guards, enlisted their sympathies by a stirring speech, and led them to the Winter Palace, where the regent was reposing in absolute security. Having on the way thither had all the ministers arrested, she seized the regent and her children in their beds, and summoned all the notables, civil and ecclesiastical, to her presence. So swiftly and noiselessly indeed had the whole revolution proceeded that as late as eight o'clock the next morning very few people in the city were aware of it. Thus, at the age of three-and-thirty, this naturally indolent and self-indulgent woman, with little knowledge and no experience of affairs, suddenly found herself at the head of a great empire at one of the most critical periods of its existence. Fortunately for herself, and for Russia, Elizabeth Petrovna, with all her shortcomings, had inherited some of her father's genius for government. Her usually keen judgment and her diplomatic tact again and again recall Peter the Great. What in her sometimes seemed irresolution and procrastination, was, most often, a wise suspense of judgment under exceptionally difficult circumstances; and to this may be added that she was ever ready to sacrifice the prejudices of the woman to the duty of the sovereign.