ARTICLE IV.-MR. SCHUYLER'S PETER THE GREAT. Peter the Great. A Study of Historical Biography. By Et GENE SCHUYLER, Ph.D., LL.D., author of "Turkistan." New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1884. VOLTAIRE. Histoire de l'Empire de Russie sous Pierre le Grand. 1773. HERRMANN. Geschichte des Russischen Staates. 4. Band. Hamburg, 1849. MOTLEY. 1875. CARLYLE. Ch. vii. Peter the Great. North American Review: Oct., History of Friedrich the Second. Book IV., WALLACE. Russia. New York: Henry Holt & Co., 1877. BRÜCKNER. Peter der Grosse. Berlin, 1879. Quarterly Review. July, 1884. WHEN the Tsar Alexis was still in the prime of manhood, he lost his wife, a princess of the Miloslávsky family. Within the following year, two sons by this marriage died, and of the remaining two, Theodore was very infirm and sickly, and Iván was almost blind, had a defect of speech, and lacked little of being an idiot. Under the circumstances it seemed probable that the Tsar would marry again, and preparations were made for the inspection of candidates. According to custom the young girls, either in Moscow or the distant provinces, whose position and beauty rendered them suitable to be the Tsar's bride, might appear for inspection and review. Of course opportunity would always be furnished the Tsar to make his choice with deliberation; but in this instance the review was a mere formality. Alexis had already chosen a lady whom he had met at the house of his chief minister, Matvéief. This lady, Natalia Naryshkin, became the mother of Peter. From the first, the rivalries and jealousies of the MiloslávskyNaryshkin families divided the court. Matvéief was accused of sorcery and witchcraft and of using magic herbs to win a royal husband for his ward. A strict investigation followed, accompanied, as was customary, with torture. The marriage was put off for nine months, but was finally celebrated on the first of February, 1671. On the ninth of June, 1672, Peter was born. The formal and splendor-loving Alexis rejoiced in the event, and rejoiced scarcely less in the opportunity which the birth of a son afforded him to arrange processions and feastings,with great display of sanctity and sugar-work. Peter's measure was taken on the third day after his birth,—that is, the image of his patron saint was painted on a board of cypress. wood of the length and breadth of the child. Nineteen and a quarter inches long and five and a quarter inches broad!such, without flattery, were once the dimensions of the great Tsar. In August, 1673, we find orders for one of the rooms of his nursery to be hung with leather stamped with silver, and a year later new apartments were prepared, the walls of which were hung with fine red cloth, and the furniture covered with crimson, embroidered with yellow and blue. In 1676, the walls and part of the ceiling were decorated with paintings. In his earliest years, Peter enjoyed all the luxuries which at that time surrounded a prince, and from which, later on, he so readily broke away. Cradles covered with goldembroidered Turkish velvet; sheets and pillows of white silk, coverlets of gold and silver stuffs; caftans, coats, caps, stockings and shoes of velvet, silk, and satin, embroidered with gold and pearls. Peter's first impressions were not of the rude surroundings which he preferred in after life. When we are told, therefore, that at the same period his most common toys were miniature bows and swords, pikes, spears, wooden guns, banners, and all sorts of military equipments, the conclusion that he acquired a taste for war thus early is by no means obvious. In fact we may be allowed to doubt if Peter ever developed a genuine passion for war, or cared more for a cannon than for a hammer,-except as the former happened to be more serviceable against Charles XII. When Alexis was in Moscow, life at court must have been very uniform and sometimes monotonous. A round of dull ceremonial; to be thoughtfully considered, this court life, for in such school the Miloslávskys were trained, and this empty formalism may be taken as an expression of the ideas of the party of reaction, afterwards opposed to Peter,-to action and progress. Comparatively indifferent to affairs of state, Alexis scrupulously observed all the prescriptions of the Eastern Church, rather a priest than the ruler of a vast country. The Muscovite idea of woman, founded on the teachings and traditions of the Byzantine theology, was purely a monastic one. The virtues of the cloister, faith, prayer, charity, obedience, and industry, were those most commended, and the life of a cloister was best suited to preserve her purity. Socially, woman was not an independent being; she was an inferior creation, dependent on her husband, for except as a wife her existence was scarcely recognized. Whipped for her faults, having no share in the education of her children, ignorant of all things outside of her household work, counting obesity her principal charm and drunkenness a venial fault, the Russian woman of the seventeenth century added little to the finer side of life. In the family of the Tsar, the seclusion of the Terém, or women's apartments, was almost complete. This was in part due to a superstitious belief in witchcraft, the evil eye, and charms that might affect the life, health, or fertility of the royal race. Neither the Tsaritsa nor the princesses ever appeared openly in public. Von Meyerberg, Imperial Ambassador at Moscow in 1663, writes, that out of a thousand courtiers there will hardly be found one who can boast that he has seen the Tsaritsa, or any of the sisters or daughters of the Tsar. Even their physicians are not allowed to see them. When it is necessary to call a doctor for the Tsaritsa, the windows are all darkened, and he is obliged to feel her pulse through a piece of gauze, so as not to touch her bare hand! It is true there had been some relaxation of these strict Oriental rules under Basil and the false Dimitri; but with the establishment of the Románofs, ecclesiastical ideas prevailed, and it was only in the latter part of the reign of Alexis that foreign customs began again to edge in, owing in part to the annexation of Kief and Little Russia, and to the influx of teachers educated after Polish and Western standards, to the greater intercourse with the West of Europe, and in part to the increasing influence of the "German Suburb," or foreign colony at Moscow. It should be added here, anticipating somewhat, that the Tsaritsa Natalia Naryshkin, although she had been educated more after the "German" fashion,-that is, more liberally, could not sympathize with her son in his taste for innovation. In 1676, the Tsar died, after having given his formal benediction to Theodore. After the burial of Alexis and the coronation of Theodore, everything was changed. The Naryshkins went into retirement and Miloslávskys came again into power. A few months later, Matvéief was exiled as a state criminal. Two of the Tsaritsa's brothers, Iván and Athanasius Naryshkin, were also exiled. Others of her friends were removed from Moscow, and she and her children, for a daughter, Natalia, had been born in 1673,-were sent away from the palace of the Krémlin to live at Preobrazhénsky, a villa about three miles from the center of Moscow. This change, however, which at first seemed a misfortune, turned out to be an advantage. The freer life of the country was better for the development of Peter than the formal life at Moscow would have been. Soon after Theodore ascended the throne, he appointed as teacher for Peter a certain Zótof, a man enjoying a high reputation for his learning and morality. The Psalter, the Gospels, the Hours, were the books from which, like other boys of his age, he was taught. Besides learning to read, he acquired much by heart, and was able, even at a later period of his life, to recite many passages from the Scriptures. Ap. parently he learned to write late, when already seven years old, and his handwriting was always extremely bad. At the same time he learned to sing by note-an accomplishment which in later years afforded him amusement, when in country churches he would enter the chancel and add his deep bass voice to the strength of the choir. These modest attainments were supplemented by a general knowledge of Russian history, a rude idea of natural history, a slight acquaintance with gods and heroes of antiquity. The sum of Peter's education - if such it may be called-is complete! Education in the usual sense, including both discipline and protection, he never had. The experience of after life, he himself recognized as education, telling the Swedish captives after Poltava that they had taught him how to conquer them. Indeed, throughout his public life he was ever eager to put himself and his whole Russian people at school wherever masters in any department were to be found. But always the tasks were imposed by his own will. Peter had never been taught to doubt himself or to defer. A loss, this, and a gain. The force of natural desires was left in all its original strength. Peter's characteristic was self-assertion. It may be questioned how much he would have accomplished for Russia through the practice of self-restraint. All this time, Peter was doubtless hearing from his mother much sad talk of what she thought their wrongs and uncomfortable position, much criticism of people in power. The impressions which were then made upon him were deep, and would have sufficed greatly to influence his subsequent life, even without the events that followed. During their lease of power the Miloslávskys had been arrogant and self-willed. They had not conciliated the old nobility. Theodore abolished precedence, January, 1682. Aecording to the system of precedence, every noble kept strict account of all services which he or his ancestors had rendered to the State, and of the positions and offices which they had held. He felt that he could not accept a position less distinguished than any of those which his ancestors had previously occupied. For this reason it was almost impossible to put capable men into positions which the public welfare required them to fill, because incapable men of higher social rank refused to serve under them. The descendants of Rúrik were almost in open opposition. Taken with other things the abolition of precedence helped to make them unite their forces to support Peter. Now the death of Theodore, May 7, 1682, left two possible candidates for the throne: Iván, the elder brother, the son of Alexis by his first wife, Marie Miloslávsky, blind, lame, and half idiotic; and the son of Natalia Naryshkin, the strong, healthy, and clever Peter. Although there was no law regu lating the succession to the throne, except that it should be |