to sweep away the Swedish fleet. ngement was agreed to; and to ght, Peter obtained the supreme declared that that moment was this life, when he hoisted his flag -hip. Thence Peter proceeded to bsequently to Amsterdam, where y welcomed by his old associates. objected to have honour paid him, was not so absurdly exigent in the re. Peter Zimmerman, as he was n good spirits, and enjoyed his v. Catherine had just given birth ild, which died almost immediately; ater visited Paris, she remained in The Tsar was received in the French great cordiality: every one did him he was greatly pleased with his He purchased or was presented with "orks of art, etc., destined to embellish ital.

TER THE GREAT IN PARIS.

ace Regent sent Marshal de Tessé to : at Dunkirk, and the party arrived in 7th May The Russian monarch was lodged and entertained at the Louvre; sar got tired of the splendour very and having examined the furniture and ficent arrangements, he declined to sit the splendidly-appointed supper table. for a glass of beer and a piece of bread, requested to be shown less pretentious

He and his suite were accordingly i to the Hotel des Lisdiguières; and a d was fetched, which for that night was a a large wardrobe. But with all this implicity, Peter was in no way disposed quish any of the forms of respect due to On these points he was very punctilith the Regent, and remained at home e Duc d'Orleans had paid his visit of my. He treated the Regent only as his on entitled him to be treated. But to the King, aged seven, he was more deferential, h on the first interview he took the child $ arms and embraced him. Next day, when King was coming down to Peter's carriage, as Isar had come to the King's, Peter sprang and taking the boy up in his arms, carried up the steps into the reception room. Juring his stay in Paris, he visited the arsenals i workshops, the tapestry and other manufac"He took particular pleasure in studying and plans of fortresses, and the Jardin des tes. He fraternized with the soldiers at the

Invalides; and in his usual demeanour displayed a mixture of friendlines and dignity which was thoroughly characteristic. He ate and drank a great deal. He wore the same simple costume that he had worn in Holland, and in this matter of dress he differed considerably from those around him. He went to Versailles; and hearing that Madame de Maintenon was living at St. Cyr, he proceeded to pay her a visit. The lady was not up when the Tsar arrived; but nowise daunted, Peter penetrated into her chamber, drew aside the curtains, gazed at her a few moments in silence, and left the room without having uttered a word. He was particularly struck with Richelieu's bust, and at his tomb exclaimed, "I would give half my kingdom to such a man as you, who would teach me how to govern the other half." After passing some time in the French capital, Peter returned with the Tsaritza, via Amsterdam to Russia, where the conduct of his eldest son caused him great anxiety.

DOMESTIC TROUBLES IN RUSSIA; CONCLUSION. Whatever had been the faults of Alexis, and he had plenty, there can be no doubt that in Peter's treatment of his son the Tsar was most unnecessarily cruel and unjust. Alexis was greatly opposed to all the improvements that his father wished to carry out. His mother aided and abetted him to the utmost; yet Alexis was an unnatural son, as well as a most unfeeling and most licentious husband. The Tsar wished to fix the succession upon a stranger rather than permit Alexis to come to the throne; and Alexis formally renounced all claim to it. Peter then gave him his choice, either to amend his ways or to become a monk. He chose the latter, and Peter left the kingdom and went on his travels. After an interval the Tsar directed his son to join him at Copenhagen. This Alexis was persuaded not to do; and he accordingly turned aside and went to Italy, after in vain attempting to interest the Emperor of Germany in his fortunes. From Italy he was recalled by Peter under a solemn promise and understanding that he would be favourably received if he complied with his father's commands. Alexis consented to return with the ambassadors; but on his arrival in Moscow, in February (1718), he was made a prisoner. And then the dark and cruel side of the Tsar showed itself in all its terrors. He accused his son, and forced him to sign a renunciation of all claim to the succession; and Alexis was questioned closely as to his and his companions' intentions and plots. Various charges were preferred, and confessions extorted from Alexis' mistress and

his confessor. For five months these predetermined proceedings were carried on. The Prince was accused and condemned to death. But the very day on which the sentence had been pronounced, Alexis was taken ill in prison. Some writers allege that he was poisoned; some that Peter himself executed his son, or was present at his execution. But however that may be, it is a fact that the Tsar sacrificed his son, and subsequently many others; bishops, priests, and the Prince's relatives on his mother's side, being executed, impaled, or, when no evidence was forthcoming, poisoned. Nor did Peter's vengence stop here. He made a decree to exclude his grandson, Alexis' son, from the throne; but his own son by Catherine died, and as a matter of fact, his grandson Peter did reign after Catherine's death.

But notwithstanding his cruelties, Peter still continued his reforms for the benefit of his subjects; and all his efforts tended to the aggrandisement and prosperity of his kingdom. The death of Charles XII. changed the aspect of the political horizon; and the alliance with Sweden, which had been talked of, and the descent upon Scotland, with the Spanish occupapation of France, were all put a stop to. The war with Sweden went on for a time; but by the congress at Nystadt, in Finland, it was agreed to consent to all Peter's demands; and all his conquests were thereby secured to him. The peace was signed in September 1721. This event landed Peter upon the pinnacle of his glory. The popular joy was unbounded, and the Tsar was induced to accept the title of Emperor of All the Russias, Peter the Great, and Father of his Country.

His natural energy would not permit him to remain long inactive. He descended upon Persia, with which country he had discovered a pretext for war. He made his preparations, and, accompanied by Catherine, embarked at Astrakan. But his expedition turned out a failure, though the Russians succeeded in capturing Derbend. They were obliged to retire. He lost his ships, and was threatened by Turkey. But he subsequently obtained by diplomacy all he had hoped to gain by force, and a settlement was made on the Caspian Sea. Peter returned to Moscow, and subsequently proceeded to St. Petersburg. On the 1st February, 1724, Catherine was crowned Empress, her husband himself placing the diadem upon her brow. An order of St. Catherine was instituted for "Love and Fidelity," -pledges which the patroness did not keep, for Peter's life was now embittered by his wife's infidelity and her excesses. Raised from the

populace to the Imperial purple, the peasant nature cropped up. Her treason was discovered, her lover beheaded, and Peter very nearly had her also executed. He drove her to the spot where the head of Moens de la Croix, her para mour, had been set upon a pole, and hoped to enjoy her distress. But Catherine disappointed || him. She betrayed no emotion whatever; and this self-command probably saved her life. After this Peter's health gave way. A long-neglected disease had been slowly but surely undermining his constitution; and this one of his last acta brought to a crisis. He made up his mind, contrary to all advice, to proceed to Lake Ladoga to inspect some ship-building. Thence he proceeded to Lachta; but a storm coming on, they anchored. A boat was putting off from another vessel, and ran imminent danger of destruction. Peter sent a boat to their assistance, and subsequently, with his usual energy, set out to help Not being able to reach the boat in distress, be leaped into the water, and waded to the assist ance of the soldiers. This act of humanity so greatly increased his disorder, that he had ta retire immediately to St. Petersburg. His attack was incurable, and after living for days in great agony, he expired on the 28th of January, 1723 at the age of fifty-three, in the Peterhof Palaz

The body of Peter the Great, after lying in state, was laid to its last long rest in the Chur of SS. Peter and Paul, at St. Petersburg. To hi people he is nothing less than a saint; and t all people he stands forth as a marvellous e bodiment of strength and energy, the Founde of a mighty Empire. He was a curious comis nation, full of contradictions, and yet thorough' consistent to the great aims he had set bef: him, the improvement of his kingdom and th welfare of his people. For these he sacrifos his son, and led up to his own death. He w subject to fits of cruelty, and his excesses wer gross in the extreme. But, on the other ha he was kind-hearted and generous and se denying. Hundreds of people were assisted him, and in Holland he is still most grateful remembered. His public acts, more than the of any other Sovereign, speak for him, even his domestic and private vices and deeds thre him personally into the shade of our cond nation. A barbarian, he civilized his peop a King, he worked like a slave. By his mas mind he overcame all obstacles. In his a years he become much more sober and religio: and had a great respect for sacred forms a observances. His last words were, "I believe, a I trust." H. F

accounting gentle." He traced his line back on the one side, through a succession of Jacobite gentlemen and moss-troopers, to Auld Scott of Harden and his spouse, renowned in Border song as "The Flower of Yarrow." His pedigree on the other side connected him with the "Bauld Rutherfords that were sae stout; the MacDougalls of Lorn, and the Swintons of Swinton."

His father was a man of fine presence, who conducted all conventional arrangements with a certain grandeur and dignity of air, and "absolutely loved a funeral." "He used," says Scott, "to preserve the list of a whole bead roll of cousins, merely for the pleasure of being at their funerals, which he was often asked to superintend, and I suspect had sometimes to pay for. He carried me with him as often as he could to these mortuary ceremonies; but feeling I was not, like him, either useful or ornamental, I escaped as often as I could." Mr. Scott was a strict disciplinarian, a precisian in religion, and a legal formalist. He exacted from his children a strict observance of the outward forms of religion, and spared no trouble to imbue their minds with a knowledge of the doctrines of the National Church. He strove to make the actions of his domestic circle as strictly conformable to rules as his causes in the Court of Session.

Scott's mother, who was a Miss Rutherford, the daughter of a physician, had been better educated than most Scotchwomen of her day. She was a motherly, comfortable woman, with much tenderness of heart, and a well-stored, vivid memory. Sir Walter, writing of her after her death, says: "She had a mind peculiarly well stored with much acquired information and natural talent, and as she was very old, and had an excellent memory, she could draw, without the least exaggeration or affectation, the most striking pictures of the past age. If I have been able to do anything in the way of painting the past times, it is very much from the studies with which she presented me. She connected a long period of time with the present generation, for she remembered, and had often spoken with, a person who perfectly recollected the battle of Dunbar and Oliver Cromwell's subsequent entry into Edinburgh.”

Scott was the ninth of twelve children, of whom the first six died in ear childhood. Of the six later-born children all were boys but one, and the solitary sister was a somewhat querulous invalid, whom Scott seems to have pitied quite as much as he loved.

EARLY BOYHOOD.

The history of his early boyhood is the tale of a naturally strong constitution struggling with disease. He had attained the twenty-second month of his infancy when one morning his right leg was found to be powerless and parfectly cold hence ensued a lameness which proved incapable of cure, and which remained with him all his life. Everything that skill and tenderness could devise was tried to remove it, and at last his parents were recom mended to see what country air would do; so be was entrusted to the care of his paternal grandfather at Sandy-Knowe, on the Tweed.

Here Scott had the first consciousness of ex ence, as he tells us; and how deep and indelite the impression was which the scenery of that romantic spot made upon his imagination the readers of Marmion" and the "Eve of St. John" do not need to be reminded. Nor was it exci sively from the features of the landscape, including as these did some of the most striking objects on the Scottish border, that early inspira tion came. After spending hours in some sheltered nook, where he looked down upon the ewe-miing and listened to the ewe-milker's songs, he would be borne back again and laid upon couch, beside which his grandmother and aunt took it in turns to sit, and to keep him in the highest state of happy excitement with their border legends.

There were some fine crags in the neighboar hood of Sandy-Knowe, and to these crags the maid sent from Edinburgh to look after him ased to carry him, with a design-due of course to incipient insanity-of murdering the child there and burying him in the moss. She confessed br purpose one day to the housekeeper, and was of course at once dismissed.

His health was greatly improved by this stay at Sandy-Knowe, and it was thought that the Ba waters might complete the cure thus apparent begun. But though he spent a whole year at Bath, his aunt making the journey with his nothing came of it, so far as the lameness wa concerned.

At six years of age, Mrs. Cockburn, the accom plished authoress of the "Flowers of the Fores. described him as the most astounding genius of a boy she had ever seen. She went to supper c night, she tells us, at Mr. Walter Scott's The boy "was reading a poem to his mother when i went in. I made him read on: it was the dr scription of a shipwreck. His passion rose witz the storm. There's the mast gone,' saya be

'crash it goes; they will all perish.' After his agation he turns to me, 'That is too melan"y,' says he; I had better read you some

more amusing." And after the call, he al his aunt he liked Mrs. Cockburn, for "she va virtuoso like himself." "Dear Walter," ys Aunt Jenny," what is a virtuoso?" "Don't ka know! Why, it's one who wishes and will w everything."

SCHOOL AND COLLEGE DAYS.

In 1778, after attending first a little private od, and then a private tutor, Scott was sent h his brothers to the High School of Edintuh His school reputation was one of irreguaablity: he glanced like a meteor from one

of the class to the other; and received more se for his interpretation of the spirit of his Burs than for his knowledge of their language. U of school his fame stood higher. He exporized innumerable stories, to which his Mellows delighted to listen; and was, spite de lameness, to be found in the thick of try street-fight with the boys of the town. i was also renowned for his boldness in climbthe kettle nine stanes," which are "promad high in air from the precipitous black te of the Castle Rock." An interesting apse of him at this time is given by Mr. A.. teil, one of his tutors. "I seldom," he says, bad occasion all the time I was in the family to fanit with him, even for trifles, and only to threaten serious castigation, of which he Ta no sooner aware, than he suddenly sprang threw his arms about my neck, and kissed L And the quaint old gentleman adds this "entary:-" By such generous and noble at my displeasure was in a moment conred into esteem and admiration; my soul Aed into tenderness, and I was ready to my tears with his."

chief enjoyment of Scott's holidays was rst with a friend who had a taste for tales ar to his own, and the boys would then their wild inventions alternately. Arthur's was a favourite spot for those performances, were kept secret from the profane. The tale of knight-errantry, or what not, would Tuned from day to day.

Five years constituted the regular course of

g at the High School, and Scott went ugh them—not, however, without some inwas. He outgrew his strength, and in ence of illness was more than once wed. It was on one of these occasions, while ag with his aunt at Kelso, that he made

the acquaintance of the brothers Ballantyne, with whom in after life his connection became so intimate. It was also here, at the age of thirteen, that he became acquainted with a book destined to lead to much in his own future career-the Percy Ballads. Fascinated by them, he next read the similar collection by Evans, and that of Scottish Ballads by Herd.

From the High School Scott passed to the College. His career in the classes which he attended there resembled in all essential points his career at school. He made no figure either as a classic or as a metaphysician. But he persevered in a practice long ere this begun, and became an eager collector, in a small way, of old ballads and stories.

Towards the close of the year 1784, he had a violent attack of illness, for the only distinct accounts of which we are indebted to himself: "My indisposition arose, in part at least, from my having broken a blood-vessel; and motion and speech were for a long time pronounced positively dangerous. For several weeks I was confined strictly to my bed, during which time I was not allowed to speak above a whisper, to eat more than a spoonful or two of boiled rice, or to have more covering than a counterpane." In May, 1786, he was sufficiently recovered to commence his apprenticeship to his father as writer to the Signet, at that time the usual commencement of the education of Scotch barristers; and his subsequent life was little troubled with indisposition.

These juvenile sicknesses had a powerful influence on the development of Scott's mental powers. During the enforced inactivity of his illness of 1784, his habit of omnivorous reading-especially of anything having a romantic or traditionary character-became powerfully confirmed. He read almost all the romances, old plays, and epics, pertaining to a circulating library which formed his solace; tales of chivalry, Cyrus and Cassandra, the novels of modern days-all furnished alike his pabulum; his strong sympathetic nature, quick fancy, and enormously retentive memory assimilated and digested it all. He thus attained an early command of language, and acquired facility in the construction of tales on his own account, for the amusement of his companions.

Scott was surrounded, too, by characters calculated to leave a deep impression on the mind of a bookish boy. The Lowlands of Scotland had by that time settled down into regulated habits of steady industry, but many old-world characters, belonging to a less tranquil period, still survived.