“I have not kept my bed a single instant, and I have received company every day.  I am about to have my only son inoculated.  Count Orlof, that hero who resembles the ancient Romans in the best times of the republic, both in courage and generosity, doubting whether he had ever had the small-pox, has put himself under the hands of our Englishman, and, the next day after the operation, went to the hunt in a very deep fall of snow.  A great number of courtiers have followed his example, and many others are preparing to do so.  Besides this, inoculation is now carried on at Petersburg in three seminaries of education, and in an hospital established under the protection of Dr. Dimsdale.”

The empress testified her gratitude for the benefits Dr. Dimsdale had conferred upon Russia by making him a present of fifty thousand dollars, and settling upon him a pension of one thousand dollars a year.  On the 3d of December, 1768, a thanksgiving service was performed in the chapel of the palace, in gratitude for the recovery of her majesty and her son Paul from the small-pox.

The Turks began now to manifest great apprehensions in view of the rapid growth of the Russian empire.  Poland was so entirely overshadowed that its monarchs were elected and its government administered under the influence of a Russian army.  In truth, Poland had become but little more than one of the provinces of Catharine’s empire.  The Grand Seignior formed an alliance with the disaffected Poles, arrested the Russian embassador at Constantinople, and mustered his hosts for war.  Catharine II. was prepared for the emergency.  Early in 1769 the Russian army commenced its march towards the banks of the Cuban, in the wilds of Circassia.  The Tartars of the Crimea were the first foes whom the armies of Catharine encountered.  The Sea of Azof, with its surrounding shores, soon fell into the possession of Russia.  One of the generals of Catharine, General Drevitch, a man whose name deserves to be held up to eternal infamy, took nine Polish gentlemen as captives, and, cutting off their hands at the wrist, sent them home, thus mutilated, to strike terror into the Poles.  Already Frederic of Prussia and Catharine were secretly conferring upon a united attack upon Poland and the division of the territory between them.

Frederic sent his brother Henry to St. Petersburg to confer with Catharine upon this contemplated robbery, sufficiently gigantic in character to be worthy of the energies of the royal bandits.  Catharine received Henry with splendor which the world has seldom seen equaled.  One of the entertainments with which she honored him was a moonlight sleigh ride arranged upon a scale of imperial grandeur.  The sleigh which conveyed Catharine and the Prussian prince was an immense parlor drawn by sixteen horses, covered and inclosed by double glasses, which, with numberless mirrors, reflected all objects within and without.  This sledge was followed by a retinue of two thousand