“’As bees
     In spring time, when the sun with Taurus rides,
     Pour forth their populous youth about the hive
     In clusters:  they among fresh dews and flowers
     Fly to and fro, or on the smoothed plank,
     The suburb of their straw-built citadel,
     Now rubbed with balm, expatiate, and confer
     Their state affairs:  so thick the aery crowd
     Swarm’d and were straighten’d; till, the signal given,
     Behold a wonder!’

“The transfer of the seat of government, by the removal of the senate from Moscow, was effected a few years afterwards.  Since that time, the repudiated Oriental capital of the ancient Czars, with her golden tiara and Eastern robe, has sat, like Hagar in the wilderness, deserted and lonely in all her barbarian beauty.  Yet even now, in many a backward look and longing sigh, she reads plainly enough that she is not forgotten by her sovereign, that she is still at heart preferred, and that she will eventually triumph over her usurping and artificial rival.”

So writes a great historian; but to me it seems that the longing eyes of the Emperor of Russia are not turned to the old barbaric capital, but to a still more ancient capital,—­that which Constantine, with far-seeing vision, selected as the central city of the decaying empire of the Romans, easily defended, resting on both Europe and Asia, with access to the Mediterranean and Black seas; the most magnificent site for the capital of a great empire on the face of the globe, which is needed by Russia if she is to preserve her maritime power, and which nothing but the jealousy of the Western nations has prevented her from twice seizing within a single generation.  We say, “Westward, the star of empire takes its way.”  But an empire larger in its territories than all Europe, and constantly augmenting its resources, although still Cossack, still undeveloped, has its eye on Eastern, not Western extension, until China herself, with her four thousand years of civilization and her four hundred millions of people, may become a spoil to be divided between the Emperor of Russia and the Empress of India; not as banded and united robbers divide their spoil, but the one encroaching from the West and North, and the other from the West and South.

Peter, after having realized the great objects to which he early aspired, after having founded a navy and reorganized his army, and added provinces to his empire, and partially civilized it, and given to it a new capital, now meditated a second tour of Europe, this time to be accompanied by his wife.  Thirteen years had elapsed since he worked as a ship-carpenter in the dock-yards of Holland.  He was now forty-three years old, still manly, vigorous, and inquiring.  In 1715, just as Louis had completed his brilliant and yet unfortunate career, Peter first revisited the scene of his early labors, where he was enthusiastically received, and was afterwards entertained with great