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 the most interesting characters of Europe. Far otherwise; but 'an enlightened barbarian' toiling for civilization; a sort of Hercules, cleansing Augean stables, and killing Nemean lions; ''a man whose labors were prodigious. A very extraordinary man; laboring with a sort of inspired enthusiasm to raise his country from an abyss of ignorance and brutality.'' He found Russia inland, isolated, girt around by hostile powers; without access to seas; vast, without a standing army on which he could rely; or even a navy however small; its people semi-barbarous, without education or knowledge of European arts. He left his country, after a turbulent reign, with seaports on the Baltic and Black seas; with a large, powerful, and disciplined army; a political power the nations have cause to fear; and which, from the policy he bequeathed, has been increasing in resources from his time to ours. To-day Russia stands out as a first-class power; with the largest army in the world; a menace to Germany; a rival of Great Britain; in the extension of conquests to the East, threatening to seize Turkey and control the Black Sea; and even to take possession of Oriental empires which extend to the Pacific Ocean. Nobody doubts or questions that the rise of Russia to its present proud and threatening position is chiefly owing to the genius and policy of Peter the Great."

"That which characterized him was a remarkable precocity, greater than that of anybody of whom I have read. At eighteen he was a man with a fine physical development, and great beauty of form, and entered on absolute power as Czar of Muscovy. At Holland he dressed like a common carpenter, and learned the trade of a ship-carpenter. He was a marked personage, a tall, robust, active man of twenty-five, with a fierce look and curling brown locks."

One glance at his portrait places him; as one glance at the man himself, in any land, would have marked him as a leader of men. Strong everywhere a man ought to be strong; generous and handsomely proportioned, he looks like one who could learn anything; and do anything; and do it well. Such a man upon any