Of the more than imperial splendour—the profuse extravagance—of her court and social life, space will not allow us to speak: a number of curious and amusing anecdotes on this subject, and other details relative to her person, manners, and habits, are to be found in Coxe’s Travels in Russia, and Tooke’s Life of the Empress Catherine II. The licentiousness of her conduct we should alike pass over, but for its connexion with affairs of state: for she paraded her prostitution before the eyes of all, apparently considering herself released by supreme rank and irresponsible power, from the control of those decencies which fetter even the vicious. A lover was part of Catherine’s state furniture, and a most expensive one: since the sums lavished on her series of favourites during her reign of thirty-four years, without including the enormous annual expense of their establishment, amounted, according to Mr. Tooke, (vol. iii. p. 374,) to more than eighty millions of roubles. This, at the lowest rate of two shillings a rouble, (Mr. Tooke states it to have been then worth four,) would be more than eight millions of pounds sterling. Nor was this the only evil: though Catherine suffered none of her favourites, except Potemkin, to interfere in the chief affairs of the state, their influence at a distance and in subordinate departments was immense; and whoever enjoyed their protection was sure of advancement beyond his merits, and enabled to tyrannize over others, and trample on law with impunity. Chosen for the most part from officers of the Guard, without a particle of sentiment, solely for personal attractions, we look in vain among them for one raised above the common level by talent or accomplishment, except the celebrated Potemkin, and perhaps the coarse and brutal Orloff, her husband’s murderer, and one of the chief instruments in placing herself upon the throne. Potemkin did possess a certain barbarous grandeur of ideas, fitted to strike an answering chord in Catherine’s ambitious and ostentatious mind; together with an aptitude for affairs, and a nature born to command, had it been improved by education and self-restraint, or chastened by adversity: and he alone, after he ceased to be a lover, preserved an all-ruling influence as a friend and confidant.