But William, who could not draw his breath in the air of Westminster, was little disposed to expend a million on a house which it would have been impossible for him to inhabit.  Many blamed him for not restoring the dwelling of his predecessors; and a few Jacobites, whom evil temper and repeated disappointments had driven almost mad, accused him of having burned it down.  It was not till long after his death that Tory writers ceased to call for the rebuilding of Whitehall, and to complain that the King of England had no better town house than St. James’s, while the delightful spot where the Tudors and the Stuarts had held their councils and their revels was covered with the mansions of his jobbing courtiers.9

In the same week in which Whitehall perished, the Londoners were supplied with a new topic of conversation by a royal visit, which, of all royal visits, was the least pompous and ceremonious and yet the most interesting and important.  On the 10th of January a vessel from Holland anchored off Greenwich and was welcomed with great respect.  Peter the First, Czar of Muscovy, was on board.  He took boat with a few attendants and was rowed up the Thames to Norfolk Street, where a house overlooking the river had been prepared for his reception.

His journey is an epoch in the history, not only of his own country, but of our’s, and of the world.  To the polished nations of Western Europe, the empire which he governed had till then been what Bokhara or Siam is to us.  That empire indeed, though less extensive than at present, was the most extensive that had ever obeyed a single chief.  The dominions of Alexander and of Trajan were small when compared with the immense area of the Scythian desert.  But in the estimation of statesmen that boundless expanse of larch forest and morass, where the snow lay deep during eight months of every year, and where a wretched peasantry could with difficulty defend their hovels against troops of famished wolves, was of less account than the two or three square miles into which were crowded the counting houses, the warehouses, and the innumerable masts of Amsterdam.  On the Baltic Russia had not then a single port.  Her maritime trade with the other rations of Christendom was entirely carried on at Archangel, a place which had been created and was supported by adventurers from our island.  In the days of the Tudors, a ship from England, seeking a north east passage to the land of silk and spice, had discovered the White Sea.  The barbarians who dwelt on the shores of that dreary gulf had never before seen such a portent as a vessel of a hundred and sixty tons burden.  They fled in terror; and, when they were pursued and overtaken, prostrated themselves before the chief of the strangers and kissed his feet.  He succeeded in opening a friendly communication with them; and from that time there had been a regular commercial intercourse between our country and the subjects of the Czar.  A Russia Company was incorporated in