The number of all descriptions of persons that finally left England, when the Tzar returned to Holland, is stated to have been nearly as follows:—­Three captains of ships of war, twenty-five captains of merchant ships, thirty pilots, thirty surgeons, two hundred gunners, four mast-makers, four boat-builders, two master sail-makers and twenty workmen, two compass-makers, two carvers, two anchor-smiths, two lock-smiths, two copper-smiths and two tinmen; making, with some others, not much less than five hundred persons.  However uncouth the manners of Peter may have been, he was a great favourite with King William, and the Tzar had also a high opinion of his Majesty, whom he visited frequently, and consulted on all important occasions.  The king engaged him to sit for his portrait to Sir Godfrey Kneller, who painted a very good picture, said to be a strong likeness, which is now at Windsor, and the portrait at the head of this volume is engraved from it.

(The reader will recollect Peter at Zaandam.  In after-life he visited this place,) and the little cottage in which some nineteen years before he had dwelt, when learning the art of ship-building:  he found it kept up in neat order, and dignified with the name of the Prince’s House.  This little cottage is still carefully preserved.  It is surrounded by a neat building with large arched windows, having the appearance of a conservatory or green-house, which was erected in 1823 by order of the present Princess of Orange, sister to the late Emperor Alexander, who purchased it to secure its preservation.  In the first room you still see the little oak table and three chairs which constituted its furniture when Peter occupied it.  Over the chimney-piece is inscribed

    PETRO MAGNO
    ALEXANDER,

and in the Russian and Dutch,

    “To a Great Man nothing is little.”

The ladder to the loft still remains, and in the second little room below are some models and several of his working-tools.  Thousands of names are scribbled over every part of this once humble residence of Peter the Great.

On entering this cottage, Peter is said to have been evidently affected.  Recovering himself, he ascended the loft, where was a small closet, in which he had been accustomed to perform his devotions and remained there alone a full half-hour; with what various emotions his mind must have been affected while in this situation, could be known only to himself, but might easily be imagined.  It could hardly fail to recall to his recollection the happy period when he “communed with his own heart” in this sacred little chamber, and “remembered his Creator in the days of his youth,”—­days which he might naturally enough be led to compare and contrast with those of the last nineteen years of his life, filled up as they had been with many and varied incidents, painful, hazardous, disastrous and glorious.