so far as this eulogy gave evidence of a patriotic spirit in the author, it found favor with the American critics, but his extravagant praise only provoked their smiles. A captious writer, signing himself "Claudio," put his sentiment in verse:
"Oh! then, Alexis, cease thy lay,
Nor think that Fame will ever pay
For time thus idly thrown away,
Or add to thy celebrity!"
The tragedy, which forms the second part of the book, was intended as a vindication of Peter from the charge of having killed his own son. Eustaphieve, no doubt, had intended to put this blank verse tragedy on the stage, but the approaching war of France with Russia for a time enlisted his literary ambition into another, more profitable direction, that of a champion of contemporary Russia and of a prophet of the final supremacy of his native country. In May 1812, his "The Resources of Russia, in the Event of a War with France, and an Examination of the Prevailing Opinion Relative to the Political and Military Conduct of the Court of St. Petersburgh, with a Short Description of the Cozaks," was published anonymously. The Russian successes of the following year, as predicted by him, soon raised him high in the esteem of American readers, and his pamphlet was three times reprinted in the United States and several times in England. But in England it roused the ire of the Edinborough Review, on account of the author's attack upon the English Government, and he was severely taken to task for his utterances. Eustaphieve enjoyed nothing better than a stiff fight, and he retaliated with a "Reply to the Edinborough Reviewers," in which he did not mince matters, and incidentally accused them of getting their good reviews, not from Englishmen, but from Walsh of Philadelphia. It was an irony of fate that Eustaphieve should find himself soon facing Walsh himself, whom he attacked vigorously and unsparingly in a long postscript to the "Reflections on the War of 1812," translated and expanded by him from the Russian of Chuykevitch.
The "Russian Consul of Boston" became an authority on European matters, and in 1815 his "Memorable Predictions on the Late Events in Europe," which had been published the year before, were supplemented by "More Predictions Concerning the Second Downfall of Bonaparte." His reputation was particularly great among the men of the Federalist party, who looked
