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did much to break their spell. Catherine found herselfbetter suited by the measured moderation of Montesquieuand was by no means an admirer of all things French.It was the cosmopolitan, humanitarian enlightenment ofthe great opposition writers that spelt to her France.Politically she was hostile, or at best cool, towards theFrance of Louis XV and Louis XVI, and her generalpredilections were towards England and the Germanlands.Peter the Great has been called a germanized Russian,Catherine the Great a russianized German. From thefirst, when she came to Russia at the age of fifteen (1744),she was at pains to show herself a good Orthodox and tolearn the language, history, and ways of her adoptedcountry. What had begun as duty and artifice becamemore and more part of herself, and in her last years shemay be classed as a Russian nationalist. She plunged intoRussian chronicles, encouraged the writing of Russianhistory, and herself composed two dramas, in imitationof Shakespeare, in the national setting of Rurik and Oleg.At the end, partly in reaction against the French Revolution,her outlook was closely similar to that of the bestknownRussian dramatist of her age, when he wrote:" All the tales of the superiority of this country [France]are arrant lies; people are the same everywhere; a reallywise and deserving man is everywhere a rarity; in ourfatherland it is possible to live as happily as in any othercountry."Catherine's nationalism naturally did not mean arenunciation of Peter and Europe. It sought to fuse themwith the historic past and distinctive characteristics ofRussia. It was of a piece with the confident pride of somany of the dominant landed gentry in the prowess ofRussian arms and the achievements of Catherine's reign.It linked on to the still more pronounced nationalismthat was to be bred from 1812 and the final triumph overNapoleon.In her later years a very different current began to actas a powerful influence colouring Russian thoughtbetween 1780 and 1825. This was the influence ofmasonry, pietism and mysticism, deriving especially347