small. In 1738 the Russians had thirty regiments of dragoons, consisting of a thousand men each, and well accoutered.

He likewise established the Russian hussars, and had even a school of engineers, in a country where, before his time, no one understood the elements of geometry.

He was himself a good engineer; but his chief excellence lay in his knowledge of naval affairs: he was an able seacaptain, a skillful pilot, a good sailor, an expert shipwright, and his knowledge of these arts was the more meritorious, as he was born with a great dread of the water. In his youth he could not pass over a bridge without trembling: on all these occasions he caused the wooden windows of his coach to be shut; but of this constitutional weakness he soon got the better by his courage and resolution.

He was

He caused a beautiful harbor to be built at the mouth of the Don, near Azof, in which he proposed to keep a number of galleys; and some time after, thinking that these vessels, so long, light and flat, would probably succeed in the Baltic, he had upwards of three hundred of them built at his favorite city of Petersburg. He showed his subjects the method of building ships with fir only, and taught them the art of navigation. He had even learned surgery, and, in a case of necessity, was able to tap a dropsical person. well versed in mechanics, and instructed the artists. Yet the revenue of the czar, when compared to the immense extent of his dominions, was very inconsiderable. It never amounted to four-and-twenty millions livres of our money. But a man may always be accounted rich who has it in his power to accomplish great undertakings. It is not the scarcity of money that weakens a State; it is the want of hands, and of able men.

Russia, notwithstanding the women are fruitful and the men robust, is far from being populous. Peter himself, in civilizing his dominions, unhappily contributed to their depopulation. Frequent levies in his wars, which were long unsuccessful; nations transported from the coasts of the Caspian Sea to those of the Baltic, destroyed by fatigue, or cut off by diseases; three-fourths of the Muscovite children dying of the small-pox, which is more dangerous in those climates

than in any other; in a word, the melancholy effects of a government savage for a long time, and even barbarous in its policy;-to all these causes it is owing that in this country, comprehending so great a part of the continent, there are still vast deserts. Russia, at present, is supposed to contain five hundred thousand families of gentlemen; two hundred thousand lawyers; something more than five millions of citizens and peasants, who pay a sort of tax; six hundred thousand men who live in the provinces conquered from the Swedes; the Cossacks in the Ukraine, and the Tartars that are subject to Muscovy, do not exceed two millions:-in fine, it appears that in this immense country there are not above fourteen millions of men; that is, a little more than two-thirds of the inhabitants of France.

While Peter was employed in changing the laws, the manners, the militia, and the very face of his country, he likewise resolved to increase his greatness by encouraging commerce, which at once constitutes the riches of a particular state, and contributes to the interest of the world in general. He resolved to make Russia the centre of trade between Asia and Europe. He determined to join the Düna [Dwina], the Volga, and the Don, by canals, of which he drew the plans; and thus to open a new passage from the Baltic to the Euxine and Caspian seas, and from these seas to the Northern Ocean.

The port of Archangel, frozen up for nine months in the year, and which could not be entered without making a long and dangerous circuit, he did not think sufficiently commodious. From the year 1700, he had formed a design of building a fort upon the Baltic Sea that should become the magazine of the North, and of raising a city that should prove the capital of his empire.

He was already attempting to find out a northeast passage to China, and the manufactures of Pekin and Paris were designed to embellish his new city.

A road of seven hundred and fifty-four versts long, running through marshes that were to be drained, led from Moscow to his new city. Most of these projects were executed by his own hands, and the two empresses who have successively followed him have even improved upon his schemes, when

they were practicable, and abandoned none but such as it was impossible to accomplish.

He was always traveling up and down his dominions, as much as his wars would allow him; but he traveled like a legislator and natural philosopher, examining nature everywhere, endeavoring to correct or perfect her; sounding with his own hands the depths of seas and rivers, repairing sluices, visiting docks, causing mines to be searched for, assaying metals, ordering accurate plans to be drawn, in the execution of which he himself assisted.

He built, upon a wild and uncultivated spot, the imperial city of Petersburg, which now contains sixty thousand houses, and is the residence of a splendid court, where all the refined pleasures are known and enjoyed. He built the harbor of Cronstadt, on the Neva, and Sainte-Croix, on the frontiers of Persia; erected forts in the Ukraine and Siberia; established offices of admiralty at Archangel, Petersburg, Astrakhan, and Azof; founded arsenals, and built and endowed hospitals. All his own houses were mean and executed in a bad taste; but he spared no expenses in rendering the public buildings grand and magnificent.

The sciences, which in other countries have been the slow product of so many ages, were, by his care and industry, imported into Russia in full perfection. He established an academy on the plan of the famous societies of Paris and London. The Delisles, the Bulfingers, the Hermanns, the Bernouillis, and the celebrated Wolf, a man who excelled in every branch of philosophy, were all invited and brought to Petersburg at a great expense. This academy still subsists; and the Muscovites, at length, have philosophers of their own nation.

He obliged the young nobility to travel for improvement, and to bring back into Russia the politeness of foreign countries; and I have seen some young Russians who were men of genius and of knowledge. Thus it was that a single man changed the face of the greatest empire in the universe. It is, however, a shocking reflection that this reformer of mankind should have been deficient in that first of all virtues, the virtue of humanity. Brutality in his pleasures, ferocity in

his manners, and cruelty in his punishments, sullied the lustre of so many virtues. He civilized his subjects, and yet remained himself a barbarian. He would sometimes, with his own hands, execute sentences of death upon the unhappy criminals; and, in the midst of a revel, would show his dexterity in cutting off heads.

There are princes in Africa, who, with their own hands, shed the blood of their subjects; but these kings are always detested as barbarians. The death of a son, whom he ought to have corrected, or at most disinherited, would render the memory of Peter the object of universal hatred, were it not that the great and many blessings he bestowed upon his subjects were almost sufficient to excuse his cruelty to his own offspring.-VOLTAIRE.

CHARLOTTE CORDAY was one of the most remarkable figures of the French Revolution. Her full name was Marianne Charlotte Corday d'Armans, which shows that she belonged to the upper class of society. She was born at St. Saturnin, near Séez, in Normandy, 1768, and was educated in the retirement of a convent. Being possessed of a fine understanding and indomitable spirit, she followed the bent of her own genius, and in that curious classical revival of the eighteenth century, she formed her mind to the models of antiquity.

The inauguration of the Revolution aroused her enthusiasm in the hope of the restoration of an ideal republic, guided by Plutarch's men. By the dispersion of the Girondins, the romantic visions of this republican dreamer were rudely disappointed. Her attention was excited by the spectacle of the squalid, bloodthirsty Marat presiding at the sacrifice of all that was noblest and worthiest in her poor country. It has been charged that she struck the blow which has rendered her name immortal in revenge of her lover, M. Belsunce, an officer in the garrison of Caen. But her resolve was formed, as she declared at the bar of Fouquier Tinville, after the proscriptions of the 31st of May, 1793. The murder of M. Belsunce had occurred in 1790, and the appalling manner of his death must have affected her with a lasting horror of sansculottism.

Charlotte left home secretly, and arrived at Paris on the