and gowns, “I have but two lawyers in my dominions, and one of them I mean to hang as soon as I return.”  But while he visited everything, generally in a quiet way, avoiding display and publicity, he was most interested in mechanical inventions and the dock-yards and mock naval combats.  It would seem that his private life was simple, although he is accused of eating voraciously, and of drinking great quantities of brandy and sack.  If this be true, he certainly reformed his habits, and learned to govern himself, for he was very temperate in his latter days.  Men who are very active and perform herculean labors, do not generally belong to the class of gluttons or drunkards.  I have read of but few great generals, like Caesar, or Charlemagne, or William III., or Gustavus Adolphus, or Marlborough, or Cromwell, or Turenne, or Wellington, or Napoleon, who were not temperate in their habits.

After leaving England, the Czar repaired to Vienna, via Holland, sending to Russia five hundred persons whom he took in his employ,—­navy captains, pilots, surgeons, gunners, boat-builders, blacksmiths, and various other mechanics,—­having an eye to the industrial development of his country; which was certainly better than driving out of his kingdom four hundred thousand honest people, as Louis XIV. did because they were Protestants.  But Peter did not tarry long in Vienna, whose military establishments he came to study, being compelled to return hastily to Moscow to suppress a rebellion.  He returned a much wiser man; I doubt if any person ever was more improved than he by his travels.  What an example to tourists in these times!  All travelling (except explorations) is a dissipation and waste of time unless self-improvement is the main object.  Pleasure-seeking is the greatest vanity on this earth, for he who seeks pleasure never finds it; but it comes when it is a minor consideration.

The apprenticeship of Peter is now completed, and he enters more seriously upon those great labors which have given him an immortality.  I am compelled to be brief in stating them.

The first thing he did, on his return, was finally to crush the Streltzi, who fomented treasons and were hostile to reform.  He had wisely left General Gordon at Moscow with six thousand soldiers, disciplined after the European fashion.  In abolishing the turbulent and prejudicial Streltzi, he is accused of great cruelties.  He summarily executed or imprisoned some four thousand of them caught in acts of treason and rebellion, and drafted the rest into distant regiments.  He may have been unnecessarily cruel, as critics have accused Oliver Cromwell of being in his treatment of the Irish.  But, cruel or not, he got rid of troops he could not trust, and organized soldiers whom he could,—­for he must have tools to work with if he would do his work.  I neither praise nor condemn his mode of working; I seek to show how he performed his task.