THE ORLOFF.                              55 August, 1826, his coronation progress was not meant to gladden the people but to make them quake. When the Czar left the Cathedral of the Assumption, his crown upon his head and his sceptre in his hand, " his face looked as hard as Siberian ice." So wrote of him an eye­witness, who further says the people were too frightened to cheer — they dropped on their knees with their faces in the dust. It was a gloomy coronation notwithstanding all the dia­monds and glitter of the pageant. There was but one redeeming incident that spoke of human kindliness and affection. When the Czar had been crowned his mother, the widow of the murdered Paul, advanced to do homage to him as her sovereign, but the Czar knelt before his mother and implored her blessing. After the Empress Mother came Constantine, the elder brother, who had waived his rights to the crown, and he was in turn affectionately embraced by Nicholas. This exhibition of fraternal affection in Russia, where brothers had been known to