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and gnarls in a noble tree, than serious twists in the grain of his being. Severe, doubtless, he was; but his severity was seldom the outburst of mere passion, almost invariably the means to an end, that end being the redemption of Russia from chaos, and the establishment of the reign of law. Justice tempered by severity is often a blessing to a community that is little better than a social and political wild; and the wisdom and not the severity of the measures employed to regenerate his country is what we should chiefly look to in the case of Peter the Great, who had a half-civilised nation to discipline and make law-respecting and law-abiding. Seldom, especially in his riper years, was a delinquent punished without trial before a competent tribunal; and if Peter interfered with the sentences of the courts, which he seldom did, it was always to mitigate and not to aggravate the punishment. Once, when he was thought dying, it was suggested to him that he should release all the criminals in prison. Why,' said he, will God more readily forgive my sins because I have flooded Russia with its locked-up rascaldom?' The frequent rebellions against his government, fomented often by his own relations, were suppressed with a relentless hand, and the ringleaders were brought to vigorous justice; but what autocrat would have respected the forms of law as he did. when his choice was either to destroy his enemies or be destroyed by them? and was it not an additional aggravation that these revolts always broke out while he was away laboring and toiling for the good of Russia, learning ship-building in Holland, repelling the inroads of the Turks or Swedes, or fighting to give his

which brought on the spasms to which he was subject, the Czar entered his tent, ordering that no one should intrude. Catharine dared to disobey, and learned from him the hopeless condition of his army. Without consulting anyone, she despatched an ambassador to the Grand Vizier to make overtures of peace, loading him with gifts. Her own jewels and trinkets she tore off her body, and went the round of the camp, collecting all the valuables she could find, for which she gave receipts, signed by her own hand, and a promissory note payable on her return to Moscow. She also ordered preparations and bustling as for another and more serious effort to break the Turkish lines, and even led the Russian army within a hundred paces of the Turkish front, before the Grand Vizier consented to a truce, preliminary to a treaty of peace. The Czar never forgot his Catharine's heroism. He instituted a new order of Knighthood, which he called the Order of St. Catharine; and struck a medal bearing her image, encircled by precious stones, with the motto For Love and Fidelity' engraven upon it. And here is the manifesto he issued when he decreed her his successor on the throne. After reciting the dangers to which he had been exposed during his twenty years' wars, he continues:-The Empress Catharine, our dearest consort, was an important help to us in all these dangers in which she voluntarily accompanied us, serving us with all her counsel, notwithstanding the natural weakness of her sex more particularly at the battle of Pruth, where our army was reduced to 22,000 men, while the Turks were 220,000 strong. It was in these desperate circumstances above all others that she signalised her zeal, by a cour-country a seaboard? He signed the deage superior to her sex, as is well known to the whole army throughout the Empire. For these reasons, and in virtue of that power which God has given us, we are resolved to honor our spouse with the Imperial Crown in acknowledgment of all her services and fatigues.'

The disposition of Peter is generally represented to have been vicious and cruel. It is usual to depict him as a lawless despot who ordered heads to be lopped off in cold blood when the caprice seized him. His defects, however, seem rather to have been outside knots

cree for the execution of his eldest son ; and although the crimes of the latter would not be visited by such punishment now, there was nothing arbitrary or selfwilled about the Czar's conduct in the business. Indeed, his previous expostulations, warnings, pleadings with his perverse and prodigal son are almost heartrending. You see in him an.agonising wrestle between love of Russia and love of his child; and had Peter only lived two thousand years earlier and been a Roman consul, we should have lauded his patriotism, his stoic virtue,

his readiness to inflict the keenest suffering on himself, when his country's weal required it. But he was only a half-civilised Tartar savage, and his nature was torn with conflicting emotions; and he had not the philosophic and unruffled repose of speech and manner and feeling that makes a Lucius Junius Brutus so grand and admirable, and which to the present writer seems simply hateful. I will back this headstrong, illiterate, and noisy barbarian against any Roman of them all for the truest and most loveable humanity. What fate would Hannibal have met at the hands of Rome had he been captured? What doom did she decree to those who dared to defend their homes and hearths against her conquering armies? Dragged them at her chariot wheels, or threw them to the lions, or made them butcher each other in the Amphitheatre, 'to make a Roman holiday.' That they were noble and wise, and honored in their own land, only added zest and flavor to the sport. It was not thus that Peter treated the heroes he had conquered. He gave a grand entertainment in honor of the Swedish Admiral Ehrenschild, who had been taken prisoner of war. After the dinner he rose and said, 'Gentlemen, you see here a brave and faithful servant of his master, who has made himself worthy of the highest honor at his hands, and who shall always have my favor while he is with me, though he has killed me many a brave man. I forgive you,' he added, turning with a smile to the Swede, and you may always depend on my good-will. Ehrenschild, thanking the Czar, replied, However honorably I may have acted with regard to my master, I did no more than my duty. I sought death, but failed to meet it; and it is no small comfort to me in my misfortune to be a prisoner of your Majesty, and to be treated with so much distinction by such a mighty captain.' After the battle of Pultowa, too, when he broke the power of Charles XII., he displayed equal magnanimity towards the officers whom the fate of war had forced to yield up their swords. In the course of the banquet he gave in honor of them, Peter pledged a bumper to his tutors in the art of war.' One of the Swedish generals asked to whom he referred. Yourselves, gentlemen,' the Czar re

plied, the brave Swedish commanders.' Then,' asked his colloquist, 'has not your Majesty been somewhat ungrateful in dealing so hardly with your teachers?' The Czar was so pleased with the reply, that he unbuckled his own sword and presented it to the general, requesting that he would wear it in token of his esteem for his valor and fidelity to his sovereign. Revenge and every other Roman virtue would have prompted him to a different course. In an earlier stage of this contest Charles had stormed or seized Dresden, the capital of Saxony, to which kingdom Peter's ambassador, Patkul, had been attested. Charles kept in chains for three months, and finally, to quote what he calls his own' merciful' decree, 'broke upon the wheel and quartered, for the reparation of his crimes and as a warning to others.' The Czar was highly incensed; but instead of following the advice of his ministers to retaliate on the Swedish officers, he administered a severe rebuke to them for suggesting that he should stain his name with such an infamous crime. With all his blood-thirstiness and irascibleness of temper, Peter was far above petty feelings of revenge.

Him

The Czar cared little for outward pomp, believing that true greatness did not need to assert itself or pose in fine apparel or ostentatious magnificence. He dodged the receptions which his brother sovereigns got up in his honor, and spoke of them as unutterably childish and tiresome. Once at least he accompanied an ambassador to a foreign Court in the character of a private gentleman attached to the embassy, and took humble lodgings to disarm suspicion that he was other than he professed to be. There was a fibre of fine and beautiful simplicity in his character. While he was toiling as a shipwright at Zaandam, where he spent nine months learning his trade, he dressed like his fellow-workmen, in a round hat, white linen jacket and trousers, and joined in their banter and heavy Dutch chaff as well as his pretty considerable knowledge of the language would permit. While acting as a workman he let himself be spoken to and treated as one. He would take a heavy barrow from the hands of a feebler shopmate and hurl the load to its destination. Many a knotty mechanic

thumb did he bandage and dress, for he was proud of his surgical skill. He had self-control enough to treat with all desirable deference and respect the foremen in the several yards in which he labored, bound himself to adhere to the regulations in force, and requested to be enrolled in the books and addressed by the name of Peter Zimmerman. The Duke of Marlborough, in search of amusement, entered the shipbuilding yard one day, and asked the foreman to point out the Czar without making them known to each other. Peter Zimmerman,' cried the master to His Majesty, why don't you help those men toiling with that big log?' Peter at once ran to the assistance of his sweating and overtasked 'chums,' never suspecting that he was being trotted out for exhibition. His simplicity of character seems to be belied by the following speech he addressed to William III., who was then in Holland: Most renowned Emperor ! it was not the desire of seeing the celestial cities of the German Empire or the most powerful Republic of the Universe that made me leave my throne and my victorious armies to come into a distant country; it was solely the ardent desire of paying my respects to the most brave and generous hero of the day, &c.' The speech is so ridiculous, bombastic, foreign to Peter's nature, that it must have been written for him, or composed by him under the inspiration of that vanity to which lads just getting out of their teens are specially prone. 'Never fear,' he once said while out at sea in a storm, and the sailors were getting alarmed; the Czar Peter cannot be drowned; did you ever hear of a Russian Czar perishing on the waters?' Such hours of self-consciousness occur in the lives of all youths of talent, but do not all give tone or color to their riper character. During the four months he spent in England, William learned to appreciate the worth of the Czar in spite of his rough, uncouth ways and silly speeches and grotesque manners. Could anything denote less self-consciousness than this? The King's servants often laughed at him to his face, yet he left 120 guineas to be distributed among them. He presented to the monarch a rough ruby which the Amsterdam jewellers valued at 10,000l.,

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and which he carried to the palace in his vest pocket wrapped in a piece of fusty old brown paper. Once, while he was in Berlin, Frederick William sent a magnificent chariot drawn by richly caparisoned horses to drive him to the palace. Peter, seeing it arrive, went out of the back door of his lodgings and walked to the Court, instructing the gentlemen of his suite to follow in the carriage. Thanking and apologising to the King, the Czar said he was not accustomed to such splendor, and often walked five times as much at a stretch. Nothing pleased him better than to receive his old shopmates at St. Petersburg, and be addressed by them in the old familiar names, Peter Zimmerman, Peter Baas, or even Skipper Peter. And that he saw through the folly of such speeches as that he delivered to William is clear from the following. Shortly after the battle of Pultowa he visited Holland again. The municipalities arranged to give him a splendid reception. William's Dutch. Earl, Albemarle, then on a visit to the States, was deputed to bid the Czar welcome. This he did in a speech which vied for exaggeration with Peter's own to the Earl's master. 'I thank you heartily,' said the Czar in reply, though I don't understand much of what you say. I learnt my Dutch among shipbuilders, but the sort of language you have spoken I am sure I never learnt.' On the same visit he requested the shipbuilders and workmen not to call him Majesty.' 'Come, brothers,' said he, let us talk like plain honest shipwrights;' and then, summoning a servant who was filling the glasses out of a beer jug, he laughingly demanded the 'can,' and having got it, said, 'I can now drink as much as I like, and nobody can tell what I have taken.'

He attended surgical classes in Holland. Indeed, he dabbled in all the sciences and mechanical arts, but was specially proud of his attainments as a surgeon. He gloried in drawing a tooth, bleeding a patient, tapping for dropsy, or lopping off a limb; and on his return to Russia started a limited practice. His own valet once availed himself of Peter's weakness as a vehicle of revenge on his wife for her unfaithfulness, a misdemeanor towards which Peter was very tolerant. Noticing the

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flunkey with a sad countenance, the Czar asked the matter. 'Nothing, sire, but my wife has a toothache and won't let the tooth be drawn.' 'Let me see her,' 'Let me see her,' said Peter, and I warrant you I'll cure her.' The poor woman insisted she had no toothache. Sire,' said the valet, she always says that when I bring the doctor. Hold her arm then,' said His Majesty, and we'll relieve her suffering.' Peter seized the tooth which the woman's husband pointed to as the bad one and smartly whirled it out. The Czar afterwards discovered that he had been tricked, and the poor woman made to suffer unnecessarily, and he gave the valet a knouting with his own royal hands.

He had a strong dislike to be stared at, and hated all kinds of fêtes and ceremonies, unless he could mingle in the common crowd. 'Too many folks, too many folks,' he would say, when asked to take a part in any pageant.

A barber at Amsterdam, who had seen a description and portrait of him, was the first to pierce Peter's incognito, and confided the secret to each of his customers, who thereupon went about publishing it. Crowds at once gathered round his dwelling, and Peter sulked in his room for days. He was specially annoyed by the curiosity of the English, who forced themselves into his room while he was eating, and gazed at him with the celebrated stony British stare, as if he were a phenomenon. An amusing account is given in the Life of Thomas Story of an interview two Quakers cunningly effected with him. They endeavored to persuade him to adopt Quaker principles, and presented him with several treatises on the subject for private study. The good-natured Czar promised to attend their meeting, where it is said he conducted himself with great decorum. He wanted to see Parliament without being seen, in order to which,' Lord Dartmouth says, 'he was placed in a gutter upon the housetop, to peep in at the window, where he made so ridiculous a figure that neither king nor people could forbear laughing, which obliged him to retire sooner than he intended.'

Contact with the world brushed this shyness wholly off him. The Quaker interview must have made some impres

sion on him, for many years afterwards, when at Friedrickstadt, in Holstein, he inquired if there was any Quaker meeting in the place. As there happened to be one, he ordered his suite to accompany him, though they were quite ignorant of the language. The Czar kept up a running interpretation as the service proceeded, and afterwards thanked the preacher, saying, that whoever could live up to his doctrine would be happy.'

On his second visit to a town in Holland, he and the burgomaster of the place attended divine service, when an unconscious action of the Czar almost upset the gravity of the congregation. Peter feeling his head growing cold turned to the heavily wigged chief magistrate at his side and transferred the wig, the hair of which flowed down over the great-little man's shoulders, to his own head, and sat so till the end of the service, when he returned it to the insulted burgomaster, bowing his thanks. The great man's fury was not appeased till one of Peter's suite assured him that it was no practical joke at all that His Majesty had played, that his usual custom when at church, if his head was cold, was to seize the nearest wig he could clutch. Peter was tolerant towards all religious opinions, and wherever he was, attended church without asking after its special ism. The first building he erected in St. Petersburg was a citadel; the second, a church.

There are some stories told about Peter that do honor to his heart and disposition. On his arrival at Zaandam his first care was to search out and befriend the widow of a skipper of the name of Munsch, who had given him his first lesson in seamanship at Archangel, representing himself to be a fellow-workman of her late husband. In the retinue that accompanied the embassy to Holland there was a dwarf, who was Peter's faithful attendant at all festivities. One day there was no room in the carriage for this manikin, and it was suggested that he should travel in another. By no means,' said the Czar, and took the pigmy on his knee. The delight with which his old shipmates received him on his second visit to Holland may be easily imagined. As he landed, a thousand stentorian lungs cried out 'Welcome, Peter Baas!' while to

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his surprise a gushing old lady rushed forward to embrace him. My good lady,' said His Majesty, how do you know who I am?' Your Majesty,' she replied, often sat down and shared our humble meals nineteen years ago. I am the wife of Baas Pool.' The Czar instantly returned her salute, kissed her on the forehead, and invited himself to dine again with her that very day.

passed himself through a regular curriculum as a sailor, and never gave himself a higher commission till he had earned it. He started as the ship's drudge, was then promoted to be cook's menial, whose work was to light the fire, wash the dishes, and make himself generally useful; next he became cabin-boy and waited at table; and it was a proud moment in his life when he attained the Peter's highest ambition was to make high position of a sailor before the mast, Russia a great maritime power. He and in smooth waters was permitted to used to say, what Russia is practically handle the helm. He fought as a capsaying still alike in Europe and in Asia, tain of Bombardiers in a naval fight with that it was not land that he wanted but the Swedes, and was awarded the order sea. Not only did he spend a year of of St. Andrew for his gallant conduct; his life learning shipbuilding, but to and after the glorious action at which popularise the service he even toiled as Admiral Ehrenschild was taken prisoner, a common sailor. To foster the love of he was summoned by the Vice-Czar Roa seafaring life he had a garden laid out manofsky, by his name of Rear-Admiral in an island near St. Petersburg, on Peter, to take his seat beside the throne, which he built a palace. He presented and in recognition of his daring and sucboats to the nobility, that they might be cess was promoted to the office of Viceable to visit him, on the condition that Admiral of Russia, amid cries of Long each should keep his vessel in order and live the Vice-Admiral!' He left Russia, provide another when it was done. He which he got without a ship, with a fleet encouraged them to vie with each other of 41 vessels ready for service, carrying in regatta competitions. The Muscovite 2,106 guns, manned by 15,000 seamen, priests taught that it was a crime to leave besides a number of frigates and galleys. Russia and travel in the land of the infi- Peter died in the arms of his Cathadel, yet the Czar, in his zeal for the de- rine on January 28, 1725, some say poivelopment of Russia, braved their reli- soned by her; but that seems not believgious fury and prejudice. He ordered able. His body lay in state in the palthe nobility to go abroad and acquire, ace till the day of interment, March 21. not only the manners of foreign Courts In the interval between his death and and countries, but their arts and scien- burial his third daughter departed this ces, especially naval architecture. A life, and the obsequies of father and story is told of one who returned from child were celebrated together amid the Venice as ignorant as he went. 'What tears of a sorrowing nation, for the peothe deuce have you been learning?' said ple had begun to see the genuine worth the Czar.Sire, I smoked my pipe, and virtue of their monarch through his drank my brandy, and rarely stirred out rough outside coating. No memory is of my room.' More amused than en- more fondly cherished in Russia than raged, Peter suggested that the lord Peter's. Everything that can remind should be made one of his Court fools the nation of him is carefully treasured on the spot. He had the bitterest op- in her museums; his hat, sword, dogs, position and prejudice to contend with horse, even his old clothes, and the in his efforts to make Russia respected wooden hut he erected with his own and great. In his search for a sea-bor- hands while supervising St. Petersburg der, he extended his dominion to the sea as it rose above the waters-all are of Azoph, the Caspian Sea, and the Gulf sacred. He loved Russia with a kingly of Finland. love, and sacrificed his son rather than that an unqualified and worthless monarch should preside over its destinies.

Amsterdam was the model he had in his mind while planning St. Petersburg. He had a nervous dread of the sea to overcome in his youth, and this he did by spending all his spare time on the river that flows through Moscow. He

I would rather,' said he, 'commit my people to an entire stranger who was worthy of such a trust than to my own undeserving offspring.' It is not the

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