gorgeous that all London crowded to stare at them, and so filthy
that nobody dared to touch them. They came to the court balls
dropping pearls and vermin. It was said that one envoy cudgelled
the lords of his train whenever they soiled or lost any part of
their finery, and that another had with difficulty been prevented
from putting his son to death for the crime of shaving and
dressing after the French fashion.

Our ancestors therefore were not a little surprised to learn that
a young barbarian, who had, at seventeen years of age, become the
autocrat of the immense region stretching from the confines of
Sweden to those of China, and whose education had been inferior
to that of an English farmer or shopman, had planned gigantic
improvements, had learned enough of some languages of Western
Europe to enable him to communicate with civilised men, had begun
to surround himself with able adventurers from various parts of
the world, had sent many of his young subjects to study
languages, arts and sciences in foreign cities, and finally had
determined to travel as a private man, and to discover, by
personal observation, the secret of the immense prosperity and
power enjoyed by some communities whose whole territory was far
less than the hundredth part of his dominions.

It might have been expected that France would have been the first
object of his curiosity. For the grace and dignity of the French
King, the splendour of the French Court, the discipline of the
French armies, and the genius and learning of the French writers,
were then renowned all over the world. But the Czar's mind had
early taken a strange ply which it retained to the last. His
empire was of all empires the least capable of being made a great