NEWS OF THE WEEK
THE death of the Empress of Russia, which occurred suddenly on the 3rd inst., may prove an important event. Her Majesty, born a Princess of Hesse Darmstadt, had passed through a troubled life, had become a devotee of the Greek Church, and had for many years ceased to influence politics ; but her death leaves the Emperor a lonelier man than ever, and removes a moderating influence in the Imperial family. There has recently been an idea in Russia that the close of her long and trying illness—a painful form of consumption, requiring the frequent administration of opiates—wochl be the signal for the Emperor's abdication. It certainly marks an epoch in his life, and must have a profound effect upon a nature always given, like that of all the Romanoffs, to melancholy, and of late reduced almost to despair by the hostility of certain classes of his subjects. Alone in the world, with no friend of his own rank, with an heir of other opinions, with his person guarded as if he were hated, and with all his great enterprises unsuccessful, there can be few men in Europe more unhappy than the Czar of Russia, who an order a war with a word.
