them; and he frequently conversed with the builders, who showed him their draughts, and the method of laying down, by proportion, any ship or vessel.”

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It is amusing to observe the contempt with which the servant of the gentle, pastoral Evelyn writes to his master concerning his imperial tenant, and the depredations and desecrations committed upon his "most boscaresque grounds." "There is a house full of people," he says, right nasty. The Czar lies next your library, and dines in the parlour next your study. He dines at ten o'clock, and six at night; is very seldom at home a whole day; very often in the king's yard, or by water, dressed in several dresses. The best parlour is pretty clean for the king to be entertained in." Moreover, in the garden at Sayes Court, there was, to use Evelyn's own language, "a glorious and refreshing object, an impregnable hedge of about four hundred feet in length, nine feet high, and five feet in diameter, at any time of the year glittering with its armed and variegated leaves; the taller standards, at orderly distances, blushing with their natural coral"; and through this "glorious and refreshing object," the Czar amused himself by trundling a wheelbarrow every morning for the sake of the exercise!

He visited the hospitals, and examined most of the public institutions in England; and particularly directed his attention towards acquiring information in engineering, and collecting a body of skilful engineers and artificers to carry on the great project, which he had already matured, of opening an artificial communication, by locks and canals, between the Volga, the Don, and the Caspian ;-a design, by the way, which was denounced by the clergy and nobility of his empire, as a piece of impiety, being to turn the streams one way, which Providence had directed another." His evenings were generally spent with the Marquis Caermarthen, with pipes, beer, and brandy, at a tavern near Tower hill, which is still called the "Czar of Muscovy."

During his stay in England, he went to see the University of Oxford, and visited many of the cathedrals and churches, and "had also the curiosity to view the Quakers and other Dissenters at their meeting-houses in the time of service." In this connection it is impossible not to quote the egregiously foolish remarks of Bishop Burnet, in his " History of his own Times."

"and was or

"I waited upon him often," says the bishop, dered, both by the king and the archbishop, to attend upon him and to offer him such information as to our religion and constitution as he might be willing to receive. I had good interpreters, so I had much free discourse with him. He is a man of a very hot temper, soon influenced, and very brutal in his passion; he raises his natural heat by drinking much brandy, which he rectifies himself with great application; he is subject to convulsive motions all over his body, and his head seems to be affected with these. He wants not capacity, and has a larger measure of knowledge than might be expected from his education, which was very indifferent; a want of judgment, with an instability of temper, appears in him but too often and too evidently. He is mechanically turned, and seems designed by nature rather to be a ship-carpenter than a great prince. This was his chief study and exercise while he staid here; he wrought much with his own hands, and made all about him work at the models of ships. He told me he designed a great fleet at Azoff, and with it to attack the Turkish empire; but he did not seem capable of conducting so great a design, though his conduct in his wars since this has discovered a greater genius in him than appeared at that time. He was desirous to understand our doctrine, but he did not seem disposed to mend matters in Muscovy. He was, indeed, resolved to encourage learning and to polish his people by sending some of them to travel in other countries, and to draw strangers to come and live among them. He seemed apprehensive still of his sister's intrigues. There is a mixture both of passion and severity in his temper. He is resolute, but understands little of war, and seemed not at all inquisitive in that way. After I had seen him often, and had conversed much with him, I could not but adore the depth of the providence of God, that had raised up such a furious man to so absolute an authority over so great a part of the world."- History of his own Times, Vol. 11., pp. 221, 222.

The complacency with which the prelate speaks of this "furious man," "designed by nature rather to be a ship-carpenter than a great prince," who "did not seem disposed to mend matters in Muscovy," is excessively ludicrous. Here was a youth of twenty-five, who had seen with a glance the absolute necessity of opening for his empire a pathway to the ocean, and had secured that pathway by a blow, and who now, revolving in his mind the most daring schemes of conquest over martial neighbours, and vast projects of internal improvement for his domains, had gone forth in mask VOL. LXI.No. 129.

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and domino from his barbarous citadel, not for a holyday pastime, but to acquire the arts of war and peace, and, like a modern Cadmus, to transplant from older regions the seeds of civilization to the barbarous wildernesses of his realm. Here was a crowned monarch, born in the purple, and, in the very heyday of his youth, exchanging his diadem and sceptre for the tools of a shipwright, while, at the same time, in his capacious brain his vast future lay as clearly imaged, and his great projects already to his imagination appeared as palpable as, long years afterwards, when completed, they became to the observation of the world; and yet, upon the whole, the churchman thought him "not disposed to mend matters in Muscovy," and rather fitted by nature "to be a ship-carpenter than a great prince."

The Czar, before his departure from England, engaged a large number of scientific persons, at the head of whom was Ferguson, the engineer, to accompany him to Russia, to be employed upon the various works of internal improvement already projected. To all these persons he promised liberal salaries, which were never paid, and perfect liberty to depart when they chose, with crowns for convoy put into their purse"; although, in the sequel, the poor devils never got a ruble for their pains, and those who escaped assassination by some jealous Russian or other, and were able to find their way "bootless home, and weather-beaten back," after a few profitless years spent upon the Czar's sluices and bridges, were to be considered fortunate.

One of the disadvantages, we suppose, of one man's owning a whole quarter of the globe and all its inhabitants, is a tendency to think lightly of human obligations. It is useless to occupy one's mind with engagements that no human power can enforce. The artificers, being there, might accomplish their part of the Czar's mission to civilize, or at least to Europeanize, Russia. This was matter of consequence to the world; their salaries were of no importance to any body but themselves. It is odd, that these persons were the first to introduce into Russia the science of reckoning by Arabic numerals, accounts having been formerly kept (and, indeed, being still kept by all shop-keepers and retail dealers) by means of balls upon a string, as billiards are marked in America. For the Czar to have introduced an improved method of account-keeping by means of the very men with

whom he intended to keep no account at all seems a superfluous piece of irony; but so it was. He had, however, a nicer notion of what was due from one potentate to another; for, upon taking his departure from England, he took from his breeches pocket a ruby wrapped in brown paper, worth about £10,000, and presented it to King William. He also, in return for the agreeable hours passed with Lord Caermarthen at the Czar of Muscovy" upon Tower hill, presented that nobleman with the right to license every hogshead of tobacco exported to Russia by an English company, who had paid him £15,000 for the monopoly, and to charge five shillings for each license.

Upon his return through Vienna, where he was entertained with great pomp, he received news of an insurrection which had broken out in Moscow, but which had already been suppressed by the energy of General Patrick Gordon. This news induced him to give up his intended visit to Italy, and to hasten back to his capital. He found, upon his arrival, that the Strelitzes, who, instigated of course by the Princess Sophia, were the authors of the revolt, had been defeated, and the ringleaders imprisoned. He immediately hung up three or four of them in front of Sophia's window, had half a dozen more hung and quartered, and a few more broken upon the wheel. Under the circumstances, this was quite as little as a Czar who respected himself, and who proposed to remain Czar, could have done by way of retaliation upon a body of men as dangerous as these Strelitzes.

It is not singular, however, that, at that day, when the Czar of Muscovy was looked upon by Western Europeans as an Ogre who habitually breakfasted upon his subjects, these examples of wholesome severity were magnified into the most improbable fables. Korb, the secretary of the Austrian legation at Moscow, entertained his sovereign with minute details of several banquets given by Peter to the nobility and diplomatic corps, at every one of which several dozen Strelitzes were decapitated in the dining-room. He tells of one select dinner-party in particular, in which the Czar chopped off the heads of twenty with his own hands, washing down each head with a bumper of brandy, and then obliging Lefort, and several of the judges, and some of the foreign ministers, to try their hand at the sport. In short, if we could believe contemporary memorialists, the Stre

litzes were kept in preserves like pheasants, and a grand battue was given once a week by the Czar to his particular friends, in which he who bagged the most game was sure to recommend himself most to the autocrat. If we were to rely upon the general tone of contemporary history, or to place any credence in circumstantial and statistical details of persons having facts within their reach, we should believe that there never was so much fun in Moscow as while these Strelitzes lasted. Residents there stated, that two thousand of them were executed in all, including those made way with by the Czar and the dilettanti.

Perhaps our readers may think that we are exaggerating. We can assure them that the flippancy is not ours, but history's. We should have dwelt less upon the topic, had not our friend the Marquis de Custine reproduced some of these fables with such imperturbable gravity.*

At all events, the Strelitzes were entirely crushed by these vigorous measures; and from cutting off the heads of the Janizaries, the Czar now found leisure to cut off the petticoats and beards of his subjects. The great cause of complaint which De Custine makes against Peter is, that he sought to improve his country by importing the seeds of civilization from the older countries of Western Europe. He

* On lit dans M. de Ségur les faits suivants: "Pierre, lui même a interrogé ces criminels (les Strélitz) par la torture; puis à l'imitation d'Iwan le Tyran, il se fait leur juge, leur bourreau; il force ses nobles, restés fidèles, à trancher les têtes des nobles coupables, qu'ils viennent de condamner. Le cruel, du haut de son trône assiste d'un œil sec à ces exécutions; il fait plus, il mêle aux joies des festins l'horreur des supplices. Ivre de vin et de sang, le verre d'une main, la hache de l'autre, en une seule heure, vingt libations successives marquent la chute de vingt têtes de Strélitz, qu'il abat à ses pieds, en s'enorgueillissant de son horrible adresse. L'année d'après, le contre coup, soit du soulèvement de ses Janissaires, soit de l'atrocité de leur supplice, retentit au loin dans l'Empire, et d'autres revoltes eclatent. Quatre-vingt Strélitz, chargés de chaînes, sont trainés d'Azoff à Moscou, et leurs têtes, qu'un boyard tient successivement par les cheveux, tombent encore sous la hache du Czar." Hist. de Russie et de Pierre le Grand, par M. le Général Comte de Ségur. — La Russie en 1839, par le Marquis de Custine, I. 306.

"Mais tandis que ce grand précepteur de son peuple enseignait si bien la civilité puérile aux boyards et aux marchands de Moscou, il s'abaissait lui même à la pratique des métiers les plus vils, à commencer par celui de bourreau; on lui a vu couper vingt têtes de sa main dans une soirée ; et on l'a entendu se vanter de son adresse à ce métier, qu'il exerça avec une rare férocité lorsqu'il eut triomphé des coupables, mais encore plus malheureux Strélitz," etc. De Custine, III. 330.

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