circumstances so far similar that both those illustrious personages were
playing the part rather of subjects than of princes. I cannot, however,
conceive a greater mark of the contrast between their characters than
the different motives and manners of the incognitos severally assumed.

Philip, in a scene of low riot and debauch, hiding the Jupiter under the
Silenus,--wearing the mask only for the licentiousness it veiled, and
foregoing the prerogative of power, solely for indulgence in the
grossest immunities of vice.

Peter, on the contrary, parting with the selfishness of state in order
to watch the more keenly over the interests of his people, only omitting
to preside in order to examine, and affecting the subject only to learn
the better the duties of the prince. Had I leisure, I might here pause
to point out a notable contrast, not between the Czar and the Regent,
but between Peter the Great and Louis le Grand: both creators of a new
era,--both associated with a vast change in the condition of two mighty
empires. There ceases the likeness and begins the contrast: the blunt
simplicity of Peter, the gorgeous magnificence of Louis; the sternness
of a legislator for barbarians, the clemency of an idol of courtiers.
One the victorious defender of his country,--a victory solid, durable,
and just; the other the conquering devastator of a neighbouring
people,--a victory, glittering, evanescent, and dishonourable. The one,
in peace, rejecting parade, pomp, individual honours, and transforming a
wilderness into an empire: the other involved in ceremony, and throned
on pomp; and exhausting the produce of millions to pamper the bloated
vanity of an individual. The one a fire that burns, without
enlightening beyond a most narrow circle, and whose lustre is tracked by
what it ruins, and fed by what it consumes; the other a luminary, whose
light, not so dazzling in its rays, spreads over a world, and is noted,