person was under a wrong impression, that it was impossible Lord Lyttelton could have been the author, as Mr. Twisleton's work on Junius proved, beyond doubt, that Lyttelton was not in England when some of these letters were written.

In like manner I feel convinced that there exists good grounds for believing that the so-called Will is not altogether an 'illusion or phantom,' and I must be permitted to mention some of these; and first, as neither Dr. Berkholz nor the editor of the Russische Revue takes notice of or attempts to impugn the authority of the amended Life of D'Eon, published in 1866, I venture to print from that work what Gaillardet tells us on the subject. At page 47 he says:- En même temps que l'acte de réunion d'Elizabeth au traité de Versailles, le Chevalier d'Eon avait apporté avec lui un document précieux, dont il dut la découverte à ses investigations dans les archives les plus secrètes du palais des Czars.' He adds in the following page that the document was in 1757 transmitted confidentially, and with a special work on Russia, both to Louis the Fifteenth and the Abbé Bernis, and, professing to quote D'Eon's words, says: C'est une copie littérale du testament laissé par Pierre le Grand à ses descendants et successeurs au trône Moscovite.' After some observations on the extreme curiosity of the document and its grave historical and political importance, and expressing his regret that D'Eon had abridged les considérations préliminaires,' he prints at full length the Copie du plan de domination européenne laissé par Pierre le Grand à ses successeurs au trône de la Russie, et déposé dans les archives du Palais de Péterhoff près Saint-Pétersbourg.' This plan occupies about three pages, and concludes :-Ainsi peut et doit être subjuguée l'Europe.'-Gaillardet then proceeds to tell us how D'Eon, who was then confined to his bed by his fractured limb, urged upon the Government, but urged in vain, the importance of what he had thus communicated :

Cette communication, dit le Chevalier d'Eon, fut traitée sans importance par les ministres de Versailles; on en jugea les plans impossibles et les vues chimériques. En vain de mon lit de douleur je rédigeni et j'envoyai des mémoires particuliers au Roi, à M. le Maréchal de Belle-isle, à M. l'Abbé de Bernis, à M. le Marquis de l'Hôpital, qui venait d'être nommé ambassadeur à Saint-Pétersbourg en remplacement du Chevalier Douglass, et enfin à M. le Comte de Broglie, Ambassadeur en Pologne, pour leur déclarer que l'intention de la Cour de Russie était, à la mort imminente d'Auguste III., de garnir la Pologne de ses troupes pour s'y rendre maîtresse absolue de l'élection du roi futur, et de s'emparer d'une partie de son territoire, conformément au plan de Pierre le Grand; toutes mes ouvertures furent sans attention sérieuse, parce que sans doute elles venaient d'un jeune homme ; mais on éprouve en ce jour (1778) les funestes effets de la prévention que l'on eut alors contre mon age.

These, it will be seen, profess to be the words of D'Eon himself, and a foot-note informs us that they are 'presque textuellement reproduites' in La Vie Politique du Chevalier d'Eon published in

1779 by La Fortelle. I have therefore referred to La Fortelle's book, who, after stating that Marshal Belle-isle, the Minister of War, and the Abbé Bernis, the Minister for Foreign Affairs, had called upon D'Eon to furnish them with Mémoires instructifs sur la Russie," proceeds:

Ces Mémoires, que le chevalier voulut rédiger, malgré des douleurs que lui causoient encore les suites de sa chûte, présentoient un tableau frappant de l'état actuel de la Russie et en laissoient apercevoir l'état futur comme dans le lointain. Cette étendue de connoissance dans une si jeune personne étonna les Ministres, et éclaira le Bureau sur divers objets qu'il leur importoit de connoître. Ce fut dans ses Mémoires rédigés en 1757, que, longtemps avant l'événement, il prédit que l'intention secrète de la Cour de Russie étoit à la mort du roi Auguste III. de garnir la Pologne de ses troupes afin d'en mettre la couronne sur la tête d'une de ses créatures et de se ménager par-là les moyens de s'emparer d'une partie des Palatinats. Il observoit que cette intention de la Cour de Russie n'étoit pas récente, que l'invasion d'une partie de la Pologne étoit le projet favori de Pierre le Grand, qui souhaitoit ardemment de rapprocher ses frontières de l'Allemagne, pour être à portée d'y jouer un rôle. Ces vues d'un jeune homme ne firent pas alors un grand effet. Le Marquis de l'Hôpital et le Comte de Broglie, auxquels il en avoit fait part quelque temps auparavant, parurent y faire plus d'attention; l'événement a justifiée les hardies et saines conjectures.1

It may be a question how far Gaillardet is borne out in identifying L'Histoire de Pierre le Grand, which D'Eon forwarded to the Comte de Choiseul at Vienna in October, 1760, and for which Choiseul thanks him in a letter of the 26th of November, printed in his Lettres et Mémoires, with his Plan de Domination europé

But certainly Berkholz is not justified in treating Gaillardet's version as le prétendu document de Lesur.' The two versions differ essentially. There is nothing to show that Gaillardet knew of the existence of that published by Lesur; while on the contrary in the preface to his amended edition he expressly claims the credit of having been the first to publish it :-La copie du fameux testament de Pierre le Grand transmis aux ministres de Louis XV. par le Chevalier d'Eon, et que j'ai été la premier à mettre au jour.'

When my attention was first called to this subject I turned to some French books of reference with the view of ascertaining if possible how far the Will was now regarded in France as a myth or a fact. In Vapereau's useful and comparatively recently published Dictionnaire des Littérateurs it is stated:

L'organisateur de l'Empire russe, qui apprit tant de choses pour les enseigner à ses sujets, a laissé plusieurs écrits qui ont un intérêt historique. Outre son Testament Politique, qui, sans être rédigé de sa main, a été composé avec des documents émanant de lui, on cite un Journal de ses campagnes contre la Suède (1698– 1714), qui fut imprimé par ordre de Catherine II. (1773, 2 vol. in 4), au même temps traduit en français (Londres, 2 vol. in 8), un recueil de Lettres au Comte de Scheremetof (1774), puis des traductions de divers ouvrages français sur les arts industriels conservées en manuscrit à Saint-Pétersbourg.

1 La Fortelle, Nouvelle Edition, 1799, pp. 29-31.

While in La Rousse's Grand Dictionnaire Universel au XIXe siècle (the volume is dated in 1874) the great emperor is spoken of, Ce puissant génie qui a fondé la grandeur de la Russie, aux destinées duquel son esprit préside encore par un testament politique, qui est devenu le règle de conduite de ses descendants.'

Since the foregoing was written I have obtained copies of two books upon the subject which were mentioned in the Academy of the 1st of June. I was naturally very anxious to see one of them, ‘a recent French pamphlet, Les Auteurs du Testament de Pierre le Grand, attributed to M. Thiers,' and proportionately disappointed at finding it a mere réchauffé of Dr. Berkholz's pamphlet, even to the quotation from Sir Robert Wilson, and equally remarkable for taking no notice of the 1866 edition of Gaillardet's Mémoires du Chevalier d'Eon. How any one who had read it could attribute its authorship to M. Thiers, I cannot imagine.

But the second book, the Deutsche Revue, really contains new and important information upon the subject in an article by Dr. Harry Breslau, from which we learn that the publication of the German version of Dr. Berkholz's essay had led Dr. Koser to examine the archives at Berlin with a view of ascertaining what light they would throw upon the Will of the great Czar.

The result seems to have satisfied Dr. Koser that the hypothesis of Dr. Berkholz that Napoleon was the author of such Will is without foundation; that some such Will, with directions as to the future government of the kingdom, was in existence, and the text accessible to Russian statesmen, about 1750, and its existence known out of Russia. Dr. Koser found a report from the Prussian Minister v. Podewils to Frederick the Great (about 1749) of a conversation which he had had with the Russian ambassador, Kaiserlink. Podewils writes: Kaiserlink told me he recollected having seen a manuscript in the deceased Emperor Peter's own handwriting, on the fundamental principles of his House, in which he recommended to his successors friendship with Prussia.' The Berlin archives contain also a notice. by a certain Baron Lettrum of a conversation which he had had with Frederick the Great, in which the king referred to the will of the Emperor Peter the First of glorious memory, glorreichen Andenkens.' Finally, it appears that in 1798 Frederick William the Third handed over to his Minister a memoir which had the year before been submitted to the French Government by a certain Sokolnicky, a pretended deputy from Poland. As a supplement to it there is the will of Peter the Great This plan,' said Sokolnicky, 'is preserved in the secretarchives of the ruler; I have only been able to commit to memory the more important articles.' Then follows a résumé corresponding very closely with the version given by Lesur, with the exception of Art. 8 and the last clause of Art. 14, which are wanting in Sokolnicky's copy.

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Having thus laid before the reader, with an earnest endeavour to do so impartially, such evidence as I have been able to collect, I leave the verdict in his hands. For my own part I feel confident that though the publication of the Will by Lesur may have been demandé by Napoleon, that version was not written by him; and that the statement that the existence of such a will is an illusion and a phantom' is at present far from being clearly established.

These notes have grown much more extensive than I originally contemplated, but so far from having exhausted all my materials, I can assure the reader I have not done so by any means, neither have I 'bestowed all my tediousness upon him,' whatever he may think.

WILLIAM J. THOMS.

VOL. IV.-No. 17.

H

IMPRESSIONS OF AMERICA.

IV. POPULAR EDUCATION (CONCLUDED).

THE latest returns showing the revenues and expenditure of the several States and territories for educational purposes are for 1875. These show a total revenue of 88,648,950 dollars, or 17,729,7901.; and a total expenditure of 81,932,954 dollars, or 16,386,590.1 The State taxes yield 15,194,525 dollars, or 3,038,9051.; the local taxes, 59,050,191 dollars, or 11,810,0381.; the total from taxation, including 2,246,261 dollars, not assigned in the returns to either source, was 76,490,977 dollars, or 15,298,1957.

By far the larger part of this enormous revenue is derived from taxation, and the amount received from taxes levied and administered by the local authorities exceeds by 43,855,666 dollars, or 8,771,133l., the amount received from taxes levied by the State Legislatures. Some of the forms in which money is raised for school purposes are curious. In New Hampshire a railroad tax for schools yields 6,401 dollars, and a 'dog tax and contributions' are credited for 24,883 dollars; why the dog tax and the voluntary contributions of zealous educationists should be classed together is not very intelligible. In Delaware there is an educational revenue derived from marriage and tavern licenses. North Carolina appropriates to the maintenance of schools the taxes levied on auctioneers' licenses. In some of the States the ordinary tax on property is supplemented by a poll-tax.

Part of the educational revenue consists of the annual income derived from 'permanent funds.' These are of a very miscellaneous character. Some of them are 'local,' consisting of property appropriated to educational purposes by cities and townships, or of money contributed by private donors. Others are State funds. In Iowa the permanent school fund receives 5 per cent. on the net proceeds of the sale of all public lands; in Florida it receives 25 per cent.; other States levy a varying percentage. Escheated estates, fines which have been paid for exemption from military service, fines levied in courts of justice are in many States appropriated to the same purpose. The permanent fund is also largely increased by private

'Eaton's Report, p. xxxiii.