An event which may prove of immediate importance has occurred
in Russia. The Czarina was on the 12th inst. safely delivered of a son, to the delight of her husband and all loyal Russians, who had fancied from the birth of four successive daughters that Providence might refuse a male heir. He has, however, been born at last ; and, with a curious contempt for historic omens, has been named Alexis, after the unfortunate son of Peter the Great, the only other heir to Russia who has ever been born in the purple. The Emperor has issued a decree declaring the child Czarevitch and inheritor of "the Power trusted by God to the Sovereigns of Russia," and settling that should he himself predecease the boy, the Grand Duke Michael Alexandrovitch, who stands nearest in the suc- cession, shall be Regent, but the Czarina guardian of the child. He has also created the baby Colonel-in-Chief of some eighteen or twenty regiments, and Hetman of the Don Cossacks. It is said that he will also abolish the corporal punishment of peasants, and pardon some political malefactors, but this has not been done yet; and it is improbable, as we have argued elsewhere, that the Czar, full of a new assurance of the favour of Heaven, will relax the rigour of his admini- stration or incline to peace with Japan.
