to compass his ends.

One of the most successful strokes of his policy, was his marriage with
Sophia, daughter of the Emperor Paleologos, who had been driven from
Constantinople by the Turks. This alliance, which he sought with great
assiduity, not only added to the dignity of his government at home, but
opened the way for an intercourse on equal terms with the greatest princes
of Europe. It was Sophia who dissuaded him from submitting to the
degrading ceremonial which had been observed on receiving the Tartar
ambassadors at Moscow--and to her he probably owed the feelings of
personal dignity which he evinced in the latter part of his reign. It was
this alliance that at once placed the sovereigns of Russia at the head of
the whole Greek church; whose dignitaries, driven from the stately dome of
St Sophia in Byzantium, found shelter in the humbler temple raised by the
piety of their predecessors, some ages before, in the wilds of Muscovy,
and more than repaid the hospitality they received by diffusing a love of
learning amongst a barbarous people. It was by means of the Greeks who
followed Sophia, that Iván was enabled to maintain a diplomatic
intercourse with the other governments of Europe; it was from her that
Russia received her imperial emblem, the double-headed eagle; it was in
her train that science, taste, and refinement penetrated to Moscow; it was
probably at her instigation that Iván embellished his capital with the
beauties of architecture, and encouraged men of science, and amongst
others Antonio, "the heretic," and Fioraventi Aristotle, the architect and
mechanician, to settle at Moscow.

But it is time we should proceed to the story. The greater part of the
first volume is occupied by an account of the family, birth, and youth of
the hero. Born of a noble family in Bohemia, he is educated as a physician.
This was not the voluntary act of his parents; for what haughty German