To these details, which I extract from a notice communicated to me, I ought to add that the first person who spoke to me on the subject was Constantine Arsenieff, the preceptor of the present Emperor. He told me, in 1840, that he had obtained permission to read many secret documents relative to the events which followed the death of Peter I, up to the reign of Alexander I. Among these documents, he was authorized to read the Memoirs of Catherine II. (At that time he was teaching the Modern History of Russia to the Grand Duke, the heir presumptive.) During the Crimean war, the archives were transferred to Moscow. In the month of March, 1855, the present Emperor had the manuscript brought to him to read. Since that period one or two copies have again circulated at Moscow and St. Petersburg. It is from one of these that we now publish the Memoirs. As to their authenticity, there is not the least room for doubt. Besides, it is only necessary to read two or three pages of the text to be quite satisfied on the point. We have abstained from all corrections of the style, in every case in which it was not evident that the copy presented some fault of transcription. Passing to the Memoirs themselves, what do we find? The early years of Catherine II--of that woman-Emperor, who occupied for more than a quarter of a century all contemporary minds, from Voltaire and Frederic II to the Khan of the Crimea and the Chiefs of the Kirghis--_her young days described by herself!_ ... What is there for the Editor to add to this? In reading these pages, we behold her entering on the scene, we see her forming herself to that which she afterwards became. A frolicsome girl of fourteen, her head dressed "_à la Moïse_," fair, playful, betrothed of a little idiot, the Grand Duke, she has already caught the disease of the Winter Palace--the thirst of dominion. One day, while "perched" with the Grand Duke upon a window-sill, and joking with him, she saw Count Lestocq enter: "Pack up your things," he said, "you are off for Germany." The young idiot seemed but little affected by the threatened separation. "It was pretty nearly a matter of indifference to me also," says the little German girl; "_but the Crown of Russia was not so_," adds the Grand Duchess. Here we have, in the bud, the Catherine of 1762! To dream of the crown, however, was quite natural in the atmosphere of that court; natural not only for the betrothed of the Heir Presumptive, but for every one. The groom Biren, the singer Rasoumowsky, the Prince Dolgorouky, the plebeian Menchikoff, the oligarch Volynski--every one was anxious for a shred of the imperial mantle. The crown of Russia, after Peter I, was a _res nullius_.