testimony supplied by fifteen long years spent in preaching the Gospel throughout Europe.

There is one author to whose gross mis-statements I should like to draw attention. I refer to the wellknown French bibliophil P. L. Jacob in the volume entitled Mme. de Krudener, ses lettres et ses ouvrages. On the opening page he states that Mme. de Krudener was at one period of her life (1782) the acknowledged mistress of Suard, the Academician, a statement drawn from the life of Suard by J. D. Garat, who, however, only refers to the lady as "Mme. de Kr—.” On what authority Jacob elects to identify this person with Julie de Krudener it would be difficult to say. I will only point out that the liaison is described as taking place in Paris in 1782 after the lady had been deserted by her husband. As a matter of fact, in 1782 Mme. de Krudener, aged eighteen, and still unmarried, was living with her parents in Livonia. Nor did she set foot in the French capital before the year 1789. Other inaccuracies of detail serve to yet further discredit this highly improbable legend, of which not the faintest corroboration is forthcoming in any other life of the lady. Unfortunately, it has not always proved so easy to unravel the many mis-statements both intentional and accidental of which our heroine has been the victim.

The Russian authorities concerning Mme. de

Krudener are, unfortunately, singularly meagre and uninstructive. This is not surprising, when it is remembered that the later years of Alexander's reign were marked by a painful revival of all the most stringent press regulations. It would have been high treason to pass criticism on any person who had been received into the intimacy of the reigning sovereign. Even to-day the period is scarcely sufficiently remote, and the parallels that might be drawn between the later policy of Alexander I. and the actual régime of Alexander III. are too distasteful to the authorities, to allow of unfettered historical research. Hence, with the exception of an admirable essay by Poupine in one of the Russian historical magazines, there is but little information to be obtained, short of a permission to search through the Imperial Archives at St. Petersburg.

The writer of the present volume can lay claim to no originality of research, to no successful unearthing of hitherto unsuspected documents. The book professes to be no more than the outcome of a careful and conscientious sifting of all material accessible to the historical student in the libraries of London and Paris. The task has been vastly facilitated by the existence of numerous letters of Mme. de Krudener, collected from many sources, letters which reveal the real characteristics of the gifted writer far more vividly than any words of

Hence the

her biographer could hope to do. letters have been largely drawn upon, the majority indeed being printed in their entirety in the present volume. It is hoped that the result, presented for the first time in the English language, may prove not without interest to the English reading public.

February 1893.