Whatever may have been the faults of Peter, history cannot accuse him of ingratitude, or insincerity, or weak affections,—­nothing of which is seen in his treatment of the honest Dutchman, in whose yard he worked as a common laborer; of Lefort, whom he made admiral of his fleet; or of Mentchikof, whom he elevated to the second place in his empire.  Peter was not a great warrior, but he created armies.  He had traits in common with barbarians, but he bequeathed a new civilization, and dispelled the night of hereditary darkness.  He owed nothing to art; he looms up as a prodigy of Nature.  He cared nothing for public opinion; he left the moral influence of a great example.  He began with no particular aim except to join his country to the sea; he bequeathed a policy of indefinite expansion.  He did not leave free institutions, for his country was not prepared for them; but he animated thirty millions with an intense and religious loyalty.  He did not emancipate serfs; but he bequeathed a power which enabled his successors to loosen fetters with safety.  He degraded nobles; but his nobles would have prevented if they could the emancipation of the people.  He may have wasted his energies in condescending to mean details, and insisting on doing everything with his own hands, from drummer to general, and cabin-boy to admiral, winning battles with his own sword, and singing in the choir as head of the Church; but in so doing he made the mistake of Charlemagne, whom he strikingly resembles in his iron will, his herculean energies, and his enlightened mind.  He could not convert his subjects from cattle into men, even had he wished, for civilization is a long and tedious process; but he made them the subjects of a great empire, destined to spread from sea to sea.  Certainly he was in advance of his people; he broke away from the ideas which enslaved them.  He may have been despotic, and inexorable, and hard-hearted; but that was just such a man as his country needed for a ruler.  Mr. Motley likens him to “a huge engine, placed upon the earth to effect a certain task, working its mighty arms night and day with ceaseless and untiring energy, crashing through all obstacles, and annihilating everything in its path with the unfeeling precision of gigantic mechanism.”  I should say he was an instrument of Almighty power to bring good out of evil, and prepare the way for a civilization the higher elements of which he did not understand, and with which he would not probably have sympathized.

Who shall say, as we survey his mighty labors, and the indomitable energy and genius which inspired them, that he does not deserve the title which civilization has accorded to him,—­yea, a higher title than that of Great, even that of Father of his country?

AUTHORITIES.

Journal de Pierre le Grand; History of Peter the Great, by Alexander Gordon; John Bell’s Travels in Russia; Henry Bruce’s Memoirs of Peter; Motley’s Life of Peter I.; Voltaire’s History of the Russian Empire under Peter the Great; Voltaire’s Life of Charles XII.; Biographic Universelle; Encyclopaedia Britannica,—­article “Russia;” Barrow’s Memoir of the Life of Peter the Great; Schuyler’s History of Peter the Great.