took place in 1795. We must refer to the various historical works on these times for an account of Catherine’s complicated negotiations with foreign courts, the blow which she aimed at the British dominion of the sea by the establishment, in 1780, of the celebrated Armed Neutrality, the war which she commenced against Persia at the end of her reign, and other events inferior in importance to those of which we have here given an imperfect outline. It is asserted that, having turned her arms towards the east, she had ventured to conceive the design of overturning the British empire in India. But her ambition and her life were simultaneously cut short by an attack of apoplexy, which carried her off very suddenly, November 9, 1796. She was succeeded by her grandson Paul I. Catherine, in imitation of Frederic II., aspired to fame as an author. Besides the Instructions, she wrote moral tales and allegories, for the education of her grandchildren, and a number of dramatic pieces and proverbs acted at the Hermitage, and published under the title of Theatre of the Hermitage. Her correspondence with Voltaire and others is published. [Illustration: [The Pavilion at Tzarsko-Tzelo. From a Print in the King’s Library.]] [Illustration] DEFOE. Daniel, the son of James Foe, citizen and butcher, was born in London, in the parish of Cripplegate, in or about the year 1663: at what time, or on what account he prefixed the syllable De to his paternal name, does not clearly appear. He was a Dissenter himself, and appears to have been of a dissenting family. Early imbued with a dread of Papal ascendancy, he took up arms to support the Duke of Monmouth’s insurrection, and was fortunate in escaping not only the sword, but the legal consequences of that rash adventure. In 1685 he went into business as a hosier, in Freeman’s Yard, Cornhill. He was not successful, probably because his attention was engrossed by affairs foreign to his trade: for he not only mingled in the political and religious dissensions of that stormy time, but was too much occupied, according to his biographer Mr. Chalmers, by engagements, which became neither the conscientious dissenter, nor the steady man of business. “With the usual imprudence of superior genius, he was carried by his vivacity into companies who were gratified by his wit, and he spent those hours in the idle hilarity of the tavern, which he ought to have employed in the calculations of the counting-house; and being obliged to abscond from his creditors in 1692, he attributed those misfortunes to the war, which were doubtless owing to his own misconduct. He afterwards carried on the brick and pantile works near Tilbury Fort, though probably with no success. He was in after-times wittily reproached, ‘that he did not, like the Egyptians, require bricks without straw, but, like the Jews, required bricks without paying his labourers.’ He was born for other