of our countrymen into his lodgings, and into the room even where he was eating, to which they gained access through the king’s servants.  Disgusted at their impertinent curiosity he would sometimes rise from table, and leave the room in a rage.  To prevent this intrusion, he strictly charged his domestics not to admit any persons whatever let their rank be what it might.  A kind of forced interview, however, was obtained by two Quakers, the account of which, as given by one of them, is singular and interesting.

One month’s residence having satisfied Peter as to what was to be seen in London, and having expressed a strong desire to be near some of the King’s dockyards, it was arranged that a suitable residence should be found near one of the river establishments; and the house of the celebrated Mr. Evelyn, close to Deptford Dock-yard, being about to become vacant, by the removal of Admiral Benbow, who was then its tenant, it was immediately taken for the residence of the Tzar and his suite; and a doorway was broken through the boundary wall of the dock-yard, to afford a direct communication between it and the dwelling-house.  This place had then the name of Saye’s Court.  It was the delight of Evelyn, and the wonder and admiration of all men of taste at that time.  The grounds are described, in the life of the Lord Keeper Guildford, “as most boscaresque, being, as it were, an exemplary of his (Evelyn’s) book of forest trees.”  Admiral Benbow had given great dissatisfaction to the proprietor as a tenant, for he observes in his Diary—­“I have the mortification of seeing, every day, much of my labour and expense there impairing from want of a more polite tenant.”  It appears, however, that the princely occupier was not a more “polite tenant” than the rough sailor had been, for Mr. Evelyn’s servant thus writes to him,—­“There is a house full of people right nasty. The Tzar lies next your library, and dines in the parlour next your study.  He dines at ten o’clock and six at night; is very seldom at home a whole day; very often in the King’s yard, or by water, dressed in several dresses.  The King is expected there this day; the best parlour is pretty clean for him to be entertained in.  The King pays for all he has."[8] But this was not all:  Mr. Evelyn had a favourite holly-hedge, through which, it is said, the Tzar, by way of exercise, used to be in the habit, every morning, of trundling a wheel-barrow.  Mr. Evelyn probably alludes to this in the following passage, wherein he asks, “Is there, under the heavens, a more glorious and refreshing object, of the kind, than an impregnable hedge, of about four hundred feet in length, nine feet high, and five in diameter, which I can still show in my ruined garden at Saye’s Court (thanks to the Tzar of Muscovy), at any time of the year, glittering with its armed and variegated leaves; the taller standards, at orderly distances, blushing with their natural coral?  It mocks the rudest assaults of the weather, beasts, or hedge-breakers,—­et ilium nemo impune lacessit."[9]