PETERSBURG. 
hacl served fifty years in the Russian army, and 
attained the rank of Colonel, was broken without 
the smallest reason. Above an hundred officers 
met with their discharge, a' l of whom were 
ruined ; and many others were condemned to 
suffer imprisonment or severer punishment. 
The cause of all this was said to be the Em- 
peror’s ill-humour ; and when the cause of that 
ill-humour became known, it appeared that his 
mistress, who detested him, had solicited per- 
mission to marry an officer to whom she was 
betrothed. To such excessive cruelty did his 
rage carry him against the author of an epigram, 
in which his reign had been contrasted with his 
mother’s, that he ordered his tongue to be cut 
out ; and sent him to one of those remote 
islands, in the Aleoutan Tract, on the North-west 
coast of America, which are inhabited by 
savages 1 . 
Viewing the career of such men, who, like a 
whirlwind, mark their progress through the 
ages in which they live by a track of desolation. 
(l) The following is the literal sense of that memorable Epigram. 
It originated in the Emperor Paul's attempting to finish with brick* 
writhe beautiful Church of St. Isaac, which his predecessor Catheb.ns 
had begun in marble. 
“ Of two reigns behold the image : 
“ Whose base is marble, and summit brick!" 
