DASIIKOV, EKATER1NA ROMANOVA, a Russian princess, remarkable for her singular character and career, was the daughter of Count Roman Larionovich Vorontsov, and was born according to her own statement in 1744. If this be correct, at the age of fifteen she was married to Prince Dashkov, and nt the age of eighteen she was the principal agent in a revolution which changed the face of Russia. The Grand Duke Peter, averse to his wife the Priocesa Catharine [Csrusetes ALEXIEWNAI had formed the plan of repudiating her and of raising his mistress, Elizabeth Vorontsov, to her place. It was Elizabeth's sister, the Princess Dashkov, who, according to her own statement, first suggested to the grand duchess the idea and the means of thwarting the plan ; she was according to all accounts the soul of the conspiracy that was entered into, and she, a woman, took the principal part in the insurrection of 1762, which dethroned Catharine's husband, now become the Emperor Peter the Third, and raised Catharine to the imperial throne. She was not long however in losing the favour of the empress, whom she displeased by the independence of her character and the bluntness of her manners, and It was even with some difficulty that after she had lost her husband she obtained permission in 1768 to travel abroad. In a somewhat lengthened tour, which carried her over Germany, England, France, and Italy, she became acquainted with many of the leading literary men of the various countries, and we find among her correspondence letters from Garrick, Dr. Blair, and Dr. Robertson, with the last of whom she was desirous of placing her son for the purpose of education. Sho was partial to England, and her brother, Count Simon Vorontsov (or, as the name is often written, Woronzow), who was for some time ambaesador here, was so much so that, after giving up the embassy in 1806, he resided in London till his death in 1832. His son, at present (1856) high in the Russian service, and lately governor of the Cau casian provinces, was educated in England, and his daughter, the princess s niece, is the present Countess Dowager of Pembroke. On the Princess Darlkov's return to Russia in 1782, she found herself again in favour with the Empress Catharine, who had probably discovered in her absence, that a little freedom of character relieves the tedium of a court. Oue of their bonds of union was a strong partiality to literary occupation iu both.
The empress however somewhat amazed the princess by the proposal o appoint her to the presidency of the St. Petersburg Academy of arts and Science, and she at first replied that a more appropriate appointment would be that of 'Directress of her Majesty's Washer vomen.' The appointment was however pressed and accepted, and he princess appears to have made a very active and respectable wesident. She herself proposed to Catharine the establishment of a Russian Academy, in imitation of the French Academy, to promote he cultivation of the Russian language, of which the empress was so trdent an admirer that she once declared that, "combining as it did he richness and energy of German with the sweetness of Italian, it must one day become the leading language of the world." The Russian Academy was founded ; the princess, who became the first president, set the compilation of a dictionary on foot, assigned the different letters to different persons, and herself took three, with the general superintendence of the whole. The work was completed in twelve
years, it has since gone top second edition, and it occupies a highly respectable place among the standard dictionaries. It is remarkable that the priucess proposed the arraugement of the words under the alphabetical order of their roots, instead of the directly alphabetical order of both roots and compounds, which is the ordinary method of dictionaries; and that the method proposed by her is that adopted in Reiffs excellent dictionary of Russian, which is highly valued by philologists on that as well as other accounts. The empress, who, as is well known, traced the plan of the Comparative Dictionary of all Languages,' which was executed by Professor Pallas, was lass successful as a lexicographer. The princess did not confine herself merely to the presidency of academies ; she wrote some plays, contributed articles to periodicals, and set on foot and edited a monthly magazine, the Sobcsyednik Lyubiteley Roaaiyskago Slovo.' For some time the two literary ladies weut on in harmony, till a quarrel arose on the subject of a tragedy by Kniazhnin, the Russian poet, which the princess had allowed to bo printed in one of the publications of the Academy, but which the empress asserted contained revolutionary principles, and which, when the princess defended it, she declared should be "burnt by the hands of the common executioner." This quarrel was made up, or appeared to be so ; but not long after the princess resigned her offices, and retired to her estates at Serpukh, in the neighbourhood of Moscow. At the death of Catharine iu 1796 she received an intimation from the Emperor Panl that she was dismissed from her offices, and ordered to "retire to her Novgorod estates, and reflect on the events of 1762." As tho village which was assigned her for a residence in her exile was only a collection of cabins, she suffered considerable hardship till her friends procured her pardon and permission to return to Serpukh, where she resided till her death on the 4th of January 1810.
The fullest and best account of the life of the Princess Dashkov is from her own pen in the Memoirs of the Priucesa Dsechkaw, Lady of Honour to Catharine IL, edited from the Originals by Mrs. W. Bradford,' 2 vole: 8vo, London, 1840. The memoirs had been written by the princess at the request of Mrs. Bradford, thcu Miss Wilmot, an English lady, who with her sister spent some years at the princess's couutry-seat in the early part of the present century. They leave an impression that the princess, however eccentric and abrupt, was }'31h clever and amiable. The memoirs appear to have been originally written in French, though this is not distinctly stated by the editress; and some letters in English by tho princess, which are printed in connection, will even show that she had an excellent knowledge of our language. The volumes, though full of curious matter, seem to have attracted little attention here, and to have been till lately unknown in Russia, though some years ago a rumour was current there .hat such memoirs existed.