land and freedom from taxes for a term of years to all who would migrate into her territory from Poland.  Perhaps also she had a double object, wishing to weaken a rival power.  Much counterfeit coin was found to be in circulation.  The regent issued an edict, that any one found guilty of depreciating the current standard of coin, should be punished with death, and this death was to be barbarously inflicted by first cutting off the hands of the culprit, and then pouring melted lead through a tunnel down his throat.

On the 3d of April, 1538, Helene, in the prime of life, and with all her sins in full vigor and unrepented, retired to her bed at night, suddenly and seriously sick.  Some one had succeeded in administering to her a dose of poison.  She shrieked for a few hours in mortal agony, and soon after the hour of twelve was tolled, her spirit ascended to meet God in judgment.  Being dead, she had no favors to confer and no terrors to execute; and her festering remains were the same day hurried ignominiously to the grave.  Her paramour, Telennef, alone wept over her death.  Russia rejoiced, and yet with trembling.  Whose strong arm would now seize the helm of the tempest-torn ship of State, no one could tell.

The young prince, Ivan IV., was but seven years of age at the death of his mother Helene.  For several days there was ominous silence in Moscow, the stillness which precedes the storm.  The death of the regent had come so suddenly, so unexpectedly, that none were prepared for it.  A week passed away, during which time parties were forming and conspiracies ripening, while Telennef was desperately endeavoring to retain that power which he had so despotically wielded in conjunction with his royal mistress.  The prince Vassili Schouisky, who had occupied the first place in the councils of Vassili, opened the drama.  Having secured the cooeperation of a large number of nobles, he declared himself the head of the government, arrested all the favorites of Helene, and threw Telennef, bound with chains, into a dungeon.  There he was left to die of starvation—­barbarity, which, though in accordance with that brutal age, even all the similar excesses of Telennef could not justify.  The beautiful sister of Telennef, Agrippene by name, was torn from the saloons her loveliness had embellished, and was imprisoned for life in a convent.  The victims of the cruelty of Helene, who were still languishing in prison, were set at liberty.

Schouisky was a widower, and in the fiftieth year of his age.  He wished to strengthen his power by engaging the cooeperation of the still formidable energies of the horde at Kezan, and accordingly married, quite hurriedly, the daughter of the czar of the horde.  But the regal diadem proved to him but a crown of thorns.  Conspiracy succeeded conspiracy, and Schouisky felt compelled to enlist all the terrors of the dungeon, the scaffold and the block to maintain his place.  Six months only passed away, ere he too was writhing upon the royal couch in the agonies of death, whether paralyzed by poison or smitten by the hand of God, the day of judgment alone can reveal.