Page:The Russian Review Volume 1.djvu/155

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THE RUSSIAN REVIEW
133

and a Memoir on the Cossacks to the Portfolio, published in Philadelphia. He wrote a series of articles for a Russian periodical, giving a general view of the Republic of the United States, its religious sects, the newly invented steamboats, the Niagara Falls, and the sports of the Indians, and collected these into a volume, adding to it a series of interesting illustrations. He carefully studied the construction of steamboats, took keen interest in the trial-trip of Fulton's new boat, the Paragon, on the Hudson, made the offer to his Government to build steamboats for Russia at his own expense; but in this he was thwarted by Fulton's grant to build such vessels, which he had obtained through John Quincy Adams' intervention but of which he did not take advantage, leaving it to Oberhüttenverwalter Berd, known in Russia for his mechanical skill, to rig up a steamboat which later plied between St. Petersburg and Cronstadt. Unfortunately, Svinin's profitable stay in the United States was cut short in 1813, when he took General Moreau, whose acquaintance he had made here, back to Europe, to fight for Russia and against Napoleon.

Eustaphieve was the only one who remained in America a greater length of time. In the almost half a century of his American life, he, by slow process of transmutation, passed over from a perfervid love of his own country to an equally ardent admiration for everything American, which went so far that he made the reports to his Government in English. He began his career in America by interpreting the acts of his Emperor to the public, but he soon strove to gain a social position in the country of his residence and to give tone to the milieu in which he moved. In his inexhaustible ambition he combined the activities which usually belong to a number of distinct and unrelated individuals: he was a man of letters, wrote political pamphlets, and tried himself in poetry and the drama; he succeeded in putting three of his productions on the stage and cultivated the acquaintance of the famous actors of the day; he was proficient on the violin, and occasionally helped out the Boston Symphony; he acted as an art critic and for a while was Boston's dramatic critic; he was one of the chief advocates of homoeopathy in its incipient stages, gaining the approval of Hahnemann himself.

His ability, though remarkable in many respects, was not proportionate to his sublime ambition, and he earned scorn and derision as well as admiration and approval, and his enemies were as plentiful as were his friends. Nothing could daunt him