oSt 
wer ears of the mishapen image, until it was 
furiously thrown into the waters of the Bo- 
systhenes. ‘ p 
«< Immediately after this public act of ex- 
piatory vengeance, an edict of Vladimir, pro- 
claimed to his subjects, that all those who 
sefused the rites of baptism would be consi- 
dered and treated as enemies of Jesus Christ 
and of their prince. On the moment this 
order was published, many thousands of Rus- 
sians, instantly flocked to the rivers, with 
obedient joy, to receive the-sacrament of 
aptism. No persecutions nor admonitions 
were necessary to strengthen this decree; since 
they all tacitly submitted to the truth and 
goodness of a doctrine, which had been 
adopted by him and his boyars. 
<< Such was the final establishment of 
christianity, whieh soon levelled with the 
ground the gross and incongruous edifice of 
pagan superstition.” 
The narrative is continued to the death 
of Peter, called by Voltaire, Peter the 
Great. Voltaire willingly praised the 
sovereigns who turned adventurers, well 
aware he should thereby pave the way 
for adventurers to turn sovereigns; but 
if he had chosen to satirize Peter as a 
madman, posterity would quite as rea- 
dily have ratified the verdict. Has a 
sovereign nothing better to do than to 
put himself apprentice to a ship-carpenter 
in Holland? Is there no simpler, easier, 
surer way of teaching the art of ship- 
building to his subjects? Was it wise 
to shift his metropolis to Petersburgh, 
and thus to condense populousness where 
agriculture, commerce, and every sort 
oF productive industry are necessarily 
paralytic, during more than half the 
year, from climate? Je ordered the in- 
troduction of Danish legislation, which, 
before Bernstorff, was the most despotic 
in Europe; but he wanted to get under 
2 nobility, which ventured to resist his 
caprices, instead of distributing civiliza- 
tion to the people, through the medium 
of his nobles. By attempting to skip 
‘this step in the natural process, he de- 
ferred, a full half century, the possible 
march of Russian improvement. His 
military excellence was inconsiderable; 
his reforms in the ecclesiastical order ap- 
proach expediency; yet the active pa- 
tronage of what literature existed in the 
Russian church, would probably have 
conduced more to the progress of intel- 
lect, than a jealousy of the priesthood, 
and an extinction of the patriarchate — 
The people, as yet, were alike unprepar- 
ed to spare their beards, or their priests. 
As to the speeches put into Peter’s mouth 
by Levesque, and transeribed or con- 
HISTORY, POLITICS, AND STATISTICS. 
densed (there is one at page 558) by our 
author, they are not in costume, they are 
plainly manufactured, beside the Argand 
lamps of the Parisian book-makers; and 
have no more claim to authenticity, than 
Herodotus’s debate of the Persian con- 
spirators, on the best form of govern. 
ment. Could Peter have prated about . 
arts, and Greece, and glory, surely he 
would not have waged an obstinate war 
of twenty-one years, for deserts, against 
Sweden; surely he would not have been 
the executioner of his wife and of his son; 
nor have attempted that overthrow of 
hereditary succession to the throne, which 
is the only apology for the monarchie 
institution itself. 
Let us suppose Peter, in every thing, 
to have lived the reverse of his real ie 
it will be obvious, that Russia would 
have been more indebted to him; the 
extraordinary is not the excellent. If 
instead of a personal simplicity, border- 
ing on nastiness, he had been Inxurious 
and pompous in his apparel, the imitative 
nobility would have sent to Lyons for 
silks, and velvets, and embroidery ; and 
in order to meet the increased expendi- 
ture, would have endeavoured to increase 
on their estates the growth of hemp, the 
reserve of tallow and hides, and the 
smelting of iron. To personal would 
have succeeded apartmental decoration 5 
and the business of the carpenter, the 
plaisterer, the upholsterer, would have 
been taught to the apprenticed vassals of 
all the nobles,and the arts of life havebeen 
domesticated in every village. Had he 
increased the pomp of worship, and the 
numbers of the clergy, and carefully pa- 
tronized the literate among them, an or- 
der of school-masters would have been 
distributed over his empire, who could 
alone persuade his stupid subjects to the 
toil of alphabetic learning, by persuading 
them that prayers should be read aloud. 
Had he purchased, by the cession of 
Lapland and Finland, and of the very 
site of Petersburg itself, a twenty-one 
years peace of the Swedes, the popula- 
tion of his empire would meanwhile have 
doubled, the pioneers of desolation would 
have been making roads, and the archi- 
tects of ruin have built cities. "The scant- 
ling, not felled for pikes, would have be- 
come saleable timber; for moveable 
camps there would have been stationary 
villages; for murders, marriages. Had 
his metropolis been stationed near the 
mouth of the Don, a fertile soil, a.climate 
which ripens two erops within the year, 
