by experience in England. Whenever you come to have a liberalizing emperor, with ministers like our Lord John Russell and Lord Melbourne, instead of Pratasoffs and Mouravieffs, to let loose the Raskolniks and the "Catoliks" to vex and attack your Church, then you too will no doubt discover that it would have been better, instead of sheltering yourselves behind the most autocratic Emperor, to have tried to think and speak and act like true Catholics, not only, by recitation of the Creed, confessing with your lips the unity of the Church, but believing it in your hearts, and manifesting that belief in words and deeds."

CHAPTER XLVIII.

Dinner at Admiral Rikard's.

HE same day I dined with Admiral Rikard, whose

THE

sister is a Roman Catholic. His wife said that they have no idea of there being any discrepancy or opposition between the Bible and the Church. The Admiral said, "Prince Alexander Galitsin' is the first man of all with the Emperor, and he takes care of the Imperial family when the Emperor is absent. It is true that he was prevented by the Archimandrite Photius from favouring and introducing missionaries, but certainly (whatever you may have heard) he never was on the point of making any union with Rome. He has a magnificent private chapel, and his mode of receiving his friends is to invite them to attend the service there, and then if they like, they can stay and converse with him for a short time afterwards. He lives very retired, and gives no parties." The Admiral said that when he was at Rome the Pope (Gregory XVI.)

1 [Vid. supra., p. 138; infra, p. 258.]

would not talk French to him for fear of making mistakes, but he sent him one of their great palms, blessed on Palm Sunday, and at parting the Pope said to him, "Ricommando à lei i miei Cattolici," and when the Admiral seemed not to understand, he repeated with emotion the same words, "Ricommando à lei i miei Cattolici." Afterwards the Admiral (who had thought, or said that the "Catholiques" no more needed protection than the other confessions, all being equally tolerated) perceived clearly enough what the Pope had been thinking of, when the Uniats were reconciled to the Russian Church (in 1839). The Admiral spoke with horror and wonder of the irreligion of the French.

Ο

CHAPTER XLIX.

The Emperor inquires after Mr. Palmer.

CTOBER 16th [o.s.].-A Russian gentleman
CTOBER

called on me and told me that the wife of the present Maréchal de la Noblesse at Petersburg, "having heard much of me from the Emperor," wished to see me. He took me the same morning to call on her. In the course of conversation, she asked me whether I should like to have an interview with the Emperor, as perhaps it might be possible for her to obtain one for me. I said that if any good could come of it, I should be glad, but I thought I had no sufficient reason for desiring it. She said, "Who can tell?" I said I had no sort of public mission, nor authority, that my own private object needed no such personal presentation to the Emperor, and that I had good reason to be on my guard against giving any false impression, as some persons in England (to say nothing of the newspapers) were already disposed to regard me as undertaking,

out of my own private presumption, something like a public mission.

I had reason afterwards to feel satisfied that I had so answered, for Mr. Law, after giving a lesson in English to the Grand Duchess Alexandra, was asked by her whether he knew me, for "Papa told me yesterday that I had been sent by the University of Oxford to ascertain what possibility there might be of bringing about a union of the Churches."

Mr. Riumine came and told me that his wife, being the evening before with Mde. Potemkin, had given as a reason for his not coming, that he had an English deacon with him, on which Mde. Potemkin said that she wished to see me; so he took me with him, and presented me to her, when she said that she had heard of me from the Emperor, who told her that I had come from Oxford to study the Russian Church, and that the Ober-Prokuror, Count Pratasoff, had spoken favourably

of me.

About this same time Mr. Law told me that, as he was reading with the Grand Duchess Alexandra the reign of Queen Elizabeth, she suddenly exclaimed, "What a wicked old woman she was! How I hate her!" And then she asked him whether he knew me, and she continued, "He is sent by the University of Oxford to try to make union with our Church." Mr. Law said that was a mistake, but she insisted upon