"I hope, notwithstanding your age, you may still serve me."
Munich replied, "Since your majesty has brought me from darkness to light, and called me from the depths of a cavern, to admit me to the foot of the throne, you will find me ever ready to expose my life in your service. Neither a tedious exile nor the severity of a Siberian climate have been able to extinguish, or even to damp, the ardor I have formerly shown for the interests of Russia and the glory of its monarch."
REIGN OF CATHARINE II.
From 1765 to 1774.
Energy of Catharine's Administration.—Titles of Honor Decreed to Her.—Code of Laws Instituted.—The Assassination of the Empress Attempted.—Encouragement of Learned Men.—Catharine Inoculated for the Small-Pox.—New War with Turkey.—Capture of Crimea.—Sailing of the Russian Fleet.—Great Naval Victory.—Visit of the Prussian Prince Henry.—The Sleigh Ride.—Plans for the Partition of Poland.—The Hermitage.—Marriage of the Grand Duke Paul.—Correspondence with Voltaire and Diderot.
The friends and the foes of Catharine are alike lavish in their encomiums upon her attempts to elevate Russia in prosperity and in national greatness. Under her guidance an assembly was convened to frame a code of laws, based on justice, and which should be supreme throughout all Russia. The assembly prosecuted its work with great energy, and, ere its dissolution, passed a resolution decreeing to the empress the titles of "Great, Wise, Prudent, and Mother of the Country."
To this decree Catharine modestly replied, "If I have rendered myself worthy of the first title, it belongs to posterity to confer it upon me. Wisdom and prudence are the gifts of Heaven, for which I daily give thanks, without presuming to derive any merit from them myself. The title of Mother of the Country is, in my eyes, the most dear of all,—the only one I can accept, and which I regard as the most benign and glorious recompense for my labors and solicitudes in behalf of a people whom I love."
The code of laws thus framed is a noble monument to the genius and humanity of Catharine II. The principles of