Born on the 22d of December, 1770, at the Hague, where his father, a favorite of the Empress Catherine, was accredited as ambassador of Russia, young Gallitzin saw before him the opening of a career bound to lead to the highest dignities of either military or administrative service. Nothing, therefore, was spared in giving him a complete education, according to the requirements of the world. This education, developed and closed under his mother's eyes, must be perfected by travel; but whither to direct it was a question of moment. The aristocratic banks of the Rhine were ravaged by the revolutions and war had converted Europe into a vast battle-field. It opportunely happened, at that time, that a young priest, by the name of Brodius, whom the princess had known through the family of the Droste, and who had been admitted to her circle, was about crossing the Atlantic as a missionary to America. The princess had had occasions to value the rare endowments of this priest, and knew how justly her confidence in him could extend. She therefore proposed to him the companionship of her son in a journey which seemed to her to be the only practicable one warranted by the times. The princess, fortunately, met with no opposition on the part of the prince, her husband. An admirer of Washington, and still more so of the philosophic Jefferson, he readily agreed that his son should devote a couple of years to a visit to the United States, so as to judge for himself of the institutions all that country. He earnestly charged him to be introduced to these two great men; while the princess on her part armed him with a letter of recommendation to the Right Reverend Bishop Carroll. In August, 1792, when twenty-two years of age, young Gallitzin took ship at Rotterdam on his way to America. No one could, certainly, have then stirred him with the idea that the land of America was marked out as a theatre for the evolutions of his existence. Was there a presentiment in that parting hour which, he could not know, was to mark an eternal farewell? Was it a last return of the original indecision of character which made him linger at the roadstead to which his mother had accompanied him? No one can now tell; but what we can say is that when, on the crests of the foaming billows, he caught sight of the yawl which was to carry him on board, his heart failed him, and he turned back to retrace his steps. Then did his mother turn back to him and, with a look of disappointment, "Dimitri," said she, "I blush for thee"--and, grasping his arm, she urged him on to the boat. In a moment, and how no one could tell, the young prince was engulfed in the waves. As quick as thought the practised hands of the sailors fished him up from the waters, and wafted him to the vessel that was to bear him away. Such was his farewell to Europe; but this sea baptism had regenerated him into a new man, as, at a later period, he told the story to his biographer. {148}